Not far from Saratoga Performing Arts Center, which draws tens of thousands of concertgoers, a smaller festival took center stage over the weekend. Saratoga Springs’ fifth annual Porch Fest was a celebration of good music and better company.
15 porches up and down Spring Street hosted as many artists Saturday as the event continues to gain steam.
John Griffith runs a Facebook page that keeps tabs on artists performing throughout the Capital Region and says the idea for a local music festival was born during the pandemic.
“We got musicians in neighbor’s backyards and we could only have 25 people with masks and we followed the protocols. But we listened to it. And once that started with the backyard things, and when the musicians weren’t playing, we kept going. And we do a backyard once in a while, now the musicians have jobs,” said Griffith.
As it grows in popularity, Griffith says he’s ready to take it to the next level.
“If someone else took over everything, I could provide them with musicians for every porch in the city but I don’t want to have anything other to do than lead them to someone else to take over from there. It could be a city-wide thing, I’ve thought of that. I don’t know, it could be a Chowder Fest,” said Griffith.
Porch Fest is celebrated around the world at the end of August. But in Saratoga Springs that would mean they’d have to compete with the biggest days at Saratoga Race Course. So instead, the organizers have opted for mid-September.
Jeff Brisbin says while he plays about 300 gigs every year, he wouldn’t dream of missing this one.
“You know what? Look at the people. Everybody’s having a great time. You’ve got kids, you got all generations here which is beautiful because we’re all doing different songs. 15 different types of takes, sometimes on the same song which is cool,” said Brisbin.
Grover Hartard moved to Saratoga this summer and is enjoying bouncing from porch to porch with his French bulldog Stella.
“You know I’m a wannabe musician. I studied fiddle for like 14 years, I never got it after 14 years. Then I went to the mandolin figuring it’s tuned the same, got twice as many strings, but that didn’t work out either,” joked Hartard.
Apart from more traditional musicians, neighbor Rich Silby took to his porch to play his teeth — striking his own ivories with his fingernails at just the right angle to produce a tunable sound.
Silby says he discovered the skill when he was 7 and hasn’t looked back.
“I mean I don’t walk around all day doing it but I’ve done it for all kinds of venues my whole life big and small. Yeah, people really like it, especially the dentist community, they particularly like it. It’s a revenue enhancer for them,” said Silby.
Local musicians weren’t the only thing on display; the Saratoga Children’s Literacy League is hard at work.
Co-Founder Debra Nicastro says they’re on pace to give away their 10,000th free book today after just one year in operation.
“It’s a pretty simple mission. We take donations of books for children all the way from board books up to age 16, young adults. And we host book-bending workshops where we clean up the books, make them like-new, and we give them back out to children for free. We go to not only places like today at this awesome event, but we also go to free lunches throughout the summer time those venues, we go to summer camps, we go to Head Start classrooms and a lot of communities in Saratoga County,” said Nicastro.
The neighborhood also comes together to sell hot dogs, popcorn, lemonade, and ice cream from Ben & Jerry's with all profits going toward scholarship programs for young musicians at Caffé Lena, raising more than $600 at this year’s Porch Fest.
