'People who come to PorchFest generally love music,' Wellfleet PorchFest returns

The Wellfleet PorchFest is set to return to the lawns, porches and makeshift stages of historic Wellfleet on Saturday, Aug. 26.

“It's a glorious summer afternoon out in a beautiful Cape Cod village,” Paul Greenspan, a member of the Wellfleet PorchFest committee, said. “...They can hear everything from jazz music, Celtic music, old-time Americana, fiddle and banjo music. Barbershop quartets. Pretty much whatever they like they'll find a band or a single performer doing that.”

This year’s event boasts 49 acts, consisting of 144 musicians. Performances occur at 26 venues across downtown Wellfleet, including the Wellfleet Historical Society & Museum, and are broken down into two sets, with each act playing for an hour and a half.

Listen as you wander Wellfleet

“The great thing about PorchFest is that you get people wandering by and you can sort of read what's going through their mind from the porch…and it's just totally fun,” Eric Luskin, a member of Side Street said. “These are people we would never have a chance to reach in any other way and if they enjoy us for one song, or stick around for a whole set, or longer, what a gift that is.”

The idea of “Porchfest” first launched in Ithaca, New York, in 2007 and was implemented in towns across the country and even in Canada. In Wellfleet, PorchFest began in 2015 as a way to give the town access to free, acoustic music but also as a response to complaints being raised at town meetings.

“There have also been some issues at town meetings where people were bringing up noise ordinances and wanting to not have music outdoors and in some ways, this was a response to that,” Greenspan said. “To say, of course, music is important and we need to have it and people want to hear it.”

Who plays what at the annual event?

The festival gathers its talents primarily through applications though some performers are invited to return to the festival in order to ensure a diverse range of music. This year’s performers are a good mix of new and returning talents, like duo Billy & Beth.

“My impression is that the people who come to Porch fest generally love music,” Beth Sweeney, member of duo Billy & Beth said. “It's all open air, they get to stay as long as they want, walk away, and go to the next thing…I just appreciate that you get, you really get, the feeling that people love music. And that's a delight to play for.”

This year’s PorchFest marks Billy & Beth’s fifth gracing the stage at Wellfleet. The Cape Cod-based duo will be playing on Main Street outside the Wellfleet Historical Society during set one, performing a range of tunes, songs and instruments from Celtic to Bluegrass and even giving the fiddle a whirl.

“We have a set from Donegal and they tend to play reels fast there,” Sweeney said.

“We like to do Scottish slow airs too and kind of it seems to transport people from the cares of the world,” Billy Hardy said. “...All the music does, but that especially, I think, gets people to imagine themselves walking in some misty glen or something.”

Other PorchFest veterans, like accordionist Tom Leindenfrost, have been playing on and off since the festival’s conception. Leindenfrost became a regular at the festival and is excited to make his post-pandemic return.

“I haven't done it since COVID,” Leindenfrost said. “2019 was my last year doing it so (it’ll) be nice to be a part of the event…just the adventure of music itself in live performing.”

Other Main Street performers, including Eleanor and Darío — a New York-based jazz duo — are still relatively new to porch fest as the pair prepares for their second appearance at the event.

“We will play (what) we like to call a feel-good trip around the world,” Eleanor Dubinsky said. “So it'll be a mix of our original music and also classic French songs that people know but in an arrangement that we've created ourselves, which has some resilient influences. (We’ll) play some bossa nova, some Latin American music… some of it is planned and some of it is improvised, so that we can really create a shared experience with the audience that's there.”

'Side Street' made an early start last year

Side Street, an Americana folk band based out of Needham, will be taking the stage on Commercial Street during set 2, playing a mix of original songs and covers. The band garnered quite an audience at last year’s festival and hopes to do the same again this year.

“We started playing the soundcheck and all of a sudden, I looked up, and we had like about a dozen people already (listening),” George Pultz, a member of Side Street, said. “We said ‘Well, we're really not supposed to go on for another 15 minutes’ and I looked at these guys, and I said, ‘If we send them away, they might not come back in 15 minutes’…so we just said ‘OK, let's just go right into the set,’ and we just kept playing and the audience kept growing. We were thrilled, we had a very good response to the music.”

The Wellfleet PorchFest will take place from 1:30 to 5:00 p.m. Aug. 26 across downtown Wellfleet. The event is free to attend. Find a full schedule of performances at wellfleetporchfest.org.

This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Wellfleet PorchFest returns for another year in downtown Wellfleet