Lucy Grey Shields
The fifth annual Historic Athens Porchfest is taking place on Oct. 15. with over 200 performances.
Historic Athens Porchfest will take place from noon to 8 p.m. across seven Athens neighborhoods. The neighborhoods involved are Boulevard, Buena Vista Heights, Cobbham, Newtown, Normaltown, Pulaski Heights and the Reese-Hancock Area. This year, 203 porches are taking part in the festivities.
The event hosts artists performing various genres of music. This year, genres include folk, rock, goth pop and psychedelic. Having different genres of music at Porchfest is an important part of the event.
“Because we embrace the idea of including every genre, we also get to welcome a lot of people into the event that might not have been welcomed at local festivals, that might focus on different genre niches, you know we really get to take a little bit of everyone,” said Tommy Valentine, the executive director of Historic Athens.
The music festival is a way for local artists to showcase their talent, maybe for the first time.
“Because of the generosity of our hosts, we have a lot of stages to fill,” Valentine said. “And so we are able to offer a lot of performers their first gig. Every year I would say we have over a dozen performers where this is their first gig.”
Historic Athens Porchfest is known to be an event that both highlights the Athens music scene and showcases the immense community support of the arts.
“The community’s just is so amazing… I had no idea what it was going to be like when I moved here,” said Julianne Merritt, an Athens-based musician performing at Porchfest this year.
Historic Athens Porchfest is free to attend and open to people of all ages.
Social media coverage of the event.
Why I Wrote The Story
I wrote this story because the Historic Athens Porchfest is an event that is loved by the Athens community and relates to my beat (business). This event is newsworthy because it is a very popular event in Athens that brings the community together in a unique way. While reporting on Historic Athens Porchfest, I learned that I shouldn’t be afraid to just go up and interview people. Everyone that I talked to was very nice and excited to be interviewed. This event connects to my beat because being in a band is a business and because local businesses were supporting musicians by letting them play on their property.