Newest music event: Carmel's PorchFest

Brian Eason, brian.eason@indystar.com 4:15 p.m. EDT September 11, 2014

Thursday, September 11th, 2014, the Kirsh family sits on their front porch in Carmel Indiana. Left to right, Jacque Kirsh, grandson Holden Kirsh, age 1, Steve Kirsh.(Photo: Michelle Pemberton/The Star)

CARMEL Music venues don't get much more intimate than this.

A few blocks north of the state-of-the-art Palladium concert hall, more than 40 acts will perform in a Carmel neighborhood Sunday afternoon, using porches for a stage.

Organizers have high hopes that the quirky event, the city's inaugural PorchFest, will turn into an annual showcase of emerging musicians as well as the suburb's revitalized urban core.

For its first year, 43 acts will play on 20 porches along around three square blocks of the Arts & Design District northwest of Main Street and Rangeline Road. City Councilwoman Sue Finkam, the event chairwoman, said they're going for a laid back, grassroots atmosphere, with festival-goers bringing their own lawn chairs, food and drink.

Think of it as a small get-together with friends, gathered around an acoustic guitar except with more music genres, a larger audience and likely more talent than the last porch-side concert you attended. Finkam said a panel of judges whittled down the field from close to 70 applicants, and all but a handful were deemed "performance ready" for the 40-minute sets.

The lineup will play from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. and includes rock, blues, folk, and classical; acoustic sets and amplifiers; four-piece bands and solo acts. Plus, with as many as eight artists performing at once, visitors will have a plethora of alternatives if they find certain performers not to their tastes.

The original PorchFest was held in 2007 in Ithaca, N.Y., a city of about 30,000. Seven years later, Ithaca has seen the festival grow to 137 artists, and offshoots have sprung up in more than a dozen cities around the country.

Finkam said Mayor Jim Brainard suggested the festival last year after seeing another PorchFest elsewhere, and the idea took off from there. And while the music is the biggest selling point, Finkam's said she's most excited about the potential it has to connect people to Carmel.

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Newest music event: Carmel's PorchFest