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You catch the drums from a few blocks away. Then, after echolocating through the neighborhood, cymbals and kicks and snares eventually deliver you to a crowd. The block is probably closed to vehicles—with balloons or flags strung between garbage bins—so families can post up in the middle of the road to play cornhole or shoot hoops or watch the band playing a fully amplified concert on someone’s porch.
This is generally how the Overlook Porchfest goes. The festival took over the shady residential neighborhood in North Portland this weekend for the fifth year running. Saturday and Sunday, July 11 and 12, nearly 100 bands, DJs, soul singers, rock opera outfits and ska crews played on stoops and in the backyards of nearly 40 houses, as well as in some of the surrounding cafes and restaurants.
I met John Ewan on Saturday afternoon in the backyard of the Overlook House Community Center, which was hosting a stage sponsored by the youth music nonprofit Friends of Noise. Ewan was on the Overlook Neighborhood Association committee that organized Porchfest. He got involved with the festival after hosting a band on his own porch last year. “Had some hip-hop going,” he said, swinging his hips. “This year, I don’t know—you sign up and you get surprised by the genre that is on your porch.”
He gave an enthusiastic shrug and said, “OK, far out!” re-creating his reaction to the lineup. “I’m just kinda hangin’.”
Do any neighbors mind the noise? Any complaints? “I haven’t had any!”
The only hangup, Ewan said, is that you tend to get stuck somewhere at Porchfest. “Initially, you’re like, ‘I’m gonna go here, here and here.’ And then you get stuck. You get some good music on, and you’re like, ‘Well, I can’t leave!’”
You can plot out a master plan. The neighborhood association compiled a detailed schedule online. But perhaps because of the easygoing nature of the whole affair, and perhaps because most of the bands’ linked Instagrams have yet to crest 100 followers, I found wandering around was best. Lawn signs served as wayfinders, listing the address and the house’s schedule for the day, as well as a few nearby porches to check out.
Informal signage helped, too.
On Sunday, I set out walking toward Mocks Crest Park and found a child’s play chalkboard advertising “Lemonade, Iced tea, Popcorn, stuffys and a free show all this way!”
I headed in that direction but somehow missed the stuffies. Soon enough, I was talking to a guy named Douglas Dollars. There’s also a rummage sale component of the Overlook Porchfest, and I had stopped to buy an old Billy Idol tour T-shirt that Dollars was selling from a rack for his neighbor, a career roadie.
Dollars was standing in front of his own house and holding a mini pinscher–Chihuahua mix whom he introduced as Doglas Dollars, handing over a holographic card that listed such biographical details as Doglas’ height (“4 apples tall”). Dollars, the human, was also on the planning committee. He’s hosted bands for three years now, and explained demand was high. Each house was limited to three bands this year and only allowed to host one day. Often, the people gigging on your stoop are strangers, though Dollars said five homeowners hosted their own bands this year.
Dan Lurie & The Quarter System were playing on Dollars’ porch as we chatted. “We’ve been to Europe,” the singer, Lurie, joked after bantering about the group’s “latest chart-topping hit.” He explained the song, “Zoupette,” was about a Frenchwoman they’d met on tour, before launching into a wordless chorus: “bop bop bop ba badup ba.”
“I don’t recognize anybody in this crowd,” Dollars said. “This is all outside traffic.” Surveying the block, he estimated he saw 70 people. An hour later, a ska band called Friends With Salad took the stage at the Dollars residence, and the crowd doubled.
There was a bit of pride or at least excitement in Dollars’ voice. The turnout this year was the best he’d seen. But his comment also got at the almost unbelievably wholesome, neighborly energy that hung over the weekend. Strangers or not, it did kind of feel like everyone knew each other.
The day before, before I’d really grasped the Porchfest spirit, I’d witnessed a minor interaction that, while pedestrian enough, amused me. In retrospect, it makes perfect sense.
I was waiting outside a triangular yard where an instrumental metal band named Goldwing was setting up.
“Is this the metal band?” a man I guessed to be in his 60s wandered up and asked.
“It is,” a woman about half that age replied. “They’re just gearing up.”
The woman and a friend talked about wanting a beer. “I’ll just go grab one from my house,” one friend told the other. “I live right there.”
“Oh, can you grab me one, too?” the man asked. And without skipping a beat, the woman called back “yeah!” smiling at this perfect stranger as if they’d known each other for years.
