Historical September–October 2023 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
Skinker DeBaliviere will be transformed in the site of wide-ranging music festival on the afternoon on Sunday, Sept. 17. PorchFest STL, returning for its fifth year, takes place on porches and front yards across the neighborhood, with bands playing 45-minute sets and culminating with two main stage acts at Greg Freeman Park, 6008 Kingsbury, for the final portion of the day. You are invited to soak up the music throughout the day, starting at 1 p.m.
Please bring lawn chairs and consider inviting friends from outside the neighborhood. Last year’s event was enhanced by pictureperfect late summer weather and hopefully this year will be the same.
A full listing of performers and neighborhood venues is being finalized, and a map with suggested walking routes will be available online and in printed form on the day.
The performers playing at ad-hoc venues across the neighborhood span a wide range of genres including folk, indie, punk, Americana, new age, classic rock, jazz, and choral music.
The unusually wide diversity of the performers gives the event a chooseyour-own-adventure quality, and you can easily seek out a kind of music that you have not seen before – one band describes its genre as “chiptune,” electronic music based on arcade machines and computer games.
The Opera Bell Band, a Porchfest favorite, describe themselves as a “novelty folk” band. Of the 35-plus bands who have signed up, half have performed at Porchfest previously and half are performing at the festival for the first time. Throughout the day, food and drink will be available for purchase at Four Corners Park, as well as commemorative PorchFest posters and koozies.
After wandering the neighborhood in search of live music, attendees are encourage to claim a spot at Four Corners for an evening concert.
This year’s headline acts are alternative rock singer Hilary Fitz, followed by R&B performers the Diamond K Band, who aim to get the audience up and dancing. PorchFest STL traces its roots back to Ithaca, New York.
This unusual format of music festival has spread across the United States since 2007, predominantly in college towns on the east coast.
The first PorchFest was organized by Washington University students and alumni and as it has grown larger, it has been embraced by the neighborhood and is now a project of the Skinker DeBaliviere Community Council. Any profits from the festival will be donated to support the work of the community council. Hope to see you there!
The latest information about PorchFest 2023 can be found at facebook.com/PorchfestSTL/ and https://porchfeststl.wixsite.com/mysite.
Original photograph caption
Porchfest performer in original event preview; individual not captioned.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, September–October 2023.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Archival transcription note: Printed R&B html entity in PDF retained as source typographical artifact, not markup.
Original source: SD_Times2023_09.pdf, printed page(s) 1; PDF page(s) 1.
