After taking a year off due to the pandemic, a volunteer-run music festival will take place this weekend in a Decatur neighborhood.
Nearly 200 homeowners in the Oakhurst neighborhood will host bands Saturday afternoon and evening as part of a grassroots music event. The bands will perform on residents’ front porches as neighbors and visitors wander from street to street.
Scott Doyon, Oakhurst Porchfest’s co-organizer, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he thinks of the event as a “carnival on the move.” Each porch can host a band for only one hour to avoid people camping in one spot, making them see new places and hear new music.
“A part of Porchfest is to showcase the Oakhurst community,” he said. “A big part of the model is keeping everyone on the move so Porchfest doesn’t become a certain number of yards that just have music all day.”
The idea for a grassroots music festival on people’s porches originated in Ithaca, New York in 2007. Doyon, who has lived in Oakhurst for about 25 years, brought the idea to his neighborhood in 2015. Since then, it’s become an annual October staple for the southwest Decatur area.
Each year, roughly 200 bands participate and thousands of people attend. The event is free to attend and all the performers and porch-owners also participate for free. The Decatur Arts Alliance assists in hosting Oakhurst Porchfest.
While last year’s festival was canceled due to COVID-19 concerns, Doyon said it wasn’t hard to drum up support for this year’s event, which will take place from noon to 7 p.m. Saturday.
“The loss of 2020 meant that there was a lot of pent-up interest,” he said.
Typically, the proceeds from the Oakhurst Business Association’s wine crawl each February covers the event’s costs, but Doyon had to raise more than $15,000 through a GoFundMe campaign because that event also couldn’t take place due to the pandemic.
Attendees are encouraged to follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, but since each concert takes place on private property, Doyon said each person will have to use their discretion.
“We are not a top-down event where public access and attendee behavior is carefully controlled by a central organizing authority,” the event’s website said. “We’re a grassroots gathering where every venue is someone’s yard — where they have every right to set guidelines or not — and connection between those yards takes place on open and fully accessible public streets.”
Decatur police and sanitation workers will assist with the event. Public streets will not be closed, but Doyon recommends travelers avoid driving to participate, since he anticipates a lot of traffic. Parking and travel information, along with a list of performers and participating porches, is available at oakhurstporchfest.org.
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