PorchFest 2025: The Post-Guster Era
- Bradley Babendir & Lily Robinson
- 4 hours ago
- 6 min read
Somerville's beloved homegrown music festival saw a few changes this year. Here's what it meant for attendees.
Last year’s PorchFest is largely remembered for the appearance of Guster returning to its roots on Aberdeen Street. The band drew massive crowds that left behind litter, suffered winding bathroom lines, and blocked the path of an emergency vehicle responding to a downed festival goer. But Guster’s choice to blow into town on a whim left behind more than a mosaic of White Claw cans. The chaos of 2024 inspired a crackdown on the traditionally DIY event. So, what was different this year? Did greater oversight rein in a tradition growing too popular for its own good, or did the hardline approach dampen the mood?
What was new
A smaller map and updated registration process
Perhaps the biggest change this year was where bands were permitted to play. Thirteen main thoroughfares were removed from the PorchFest map and porches along those routes were required to be tune free. The Somerville Arts Council (SAC) also revised its application process for bands and required approved addresses to be tagged with “porch badges” proving they were official performance venues.
Crowds at PorchFest 2025. Credit: Bradley Babendir.
How this impacted festival goers largely depended on where they were coming from and how they were approaching the event. One person responding to a SOME Reddit post commented that it was more difficult to chart an efficient route through all three zones, while also catching consistent acts. “Unfortunately we often had to choose between a straightforward route and bands which are now only on side streets. As a result we didn’t get to quite as many bands as we wanted.”
Another poster from the Winter Hill area said their neighborhood filled with more bands than usual, potentially due to being displaced from primary streets. “Was super convenient for me,” they said, noting they were able to catch seven acts without much travel.
The two areas where people most missed the music were on Broadway and Summer Street. Both of these are typically major music arteries on PorchFest and are used as routes through town for those moving between acts on side streets and across time zones. Summer was a popular route between the central and east zones, which got the better end of the day weatherwise and bigger turnouts than the west zone. It drew large crowds that, at points, overflowed sidewalks, and caused competition between foot traffic, bikers, and cars.
For bands, the changes were a bit more complicated. Under the new application process, the band list—showing the 470 approved acts, where they would be playing, and when—was released one week in advance. Combined with limitations on where acts could play, this meant musicians found themselves scrambling to work out logistics with neighbors. Several members of bands said they were scheduled to play next door to at least one other act and had to coordinate timing to avoid drowning each other out.
One Redditer and member of an acoustic group detailed their experience. “Finding out who was playing nearby was last minute and stressful.” They were able to coordinate with the band next door to share the timeslot, but had not considered that one a few doors down might also conflict. That band was louder than they were, and they were not able to play until it quieted down. Though it worked out in the end, it still frustrated the acoustic players, “...it did feel like a bummer to have a bunch of places where bands had to reduce the amount of time they played or just had to deal with noise bleed,” they wrote.
More oversight
This year, the SAC implemented a volunteer ambassador program of about 40 community members. These people were trained and tasked with supporting the event by helping attendees, monitoring safety, and reporting back to city officials. The city also upped its police presence, with officers on foot, bikes, and motorcycles. They monitored crowds and aided the flow of traffic, which was lighter than usual in some areas (Hudson Street) and quite heavy in others (Highland Avenue).
(Left) A police officer on a bike patrols Porch Fest. (Right) Temporary trash cans supplied for the event. Credit: Bradley Babendir.
Where crowds spilled into the streets, officers issued warnings about the need to let traffic through. But SOME heard few complaints about the police or ambassador presence overall.
Greg Jenkins, executive director of the SAC, said there were about 40 police officers assigned to the event this year. “We had multiple prep meetings reviewing communications procedures,” he said. “There was a ton of more support from many departments in the city. It was great.”
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More bathrooms, less litter
Despite the city increasing this year’s supply of port-a-potties, lines still grew to intimidating lengths at most locations. How the conditions were inside, we know not, as SOME reporters stoically held their bladders.
The city also provided trash cans for the event, as it has in past years, and the receptacles seemed to do the trick. People reported less litter this year than last and the cans were not overflowing.
What else was of note
A rain date, or lack thereof
Though the SAC scheduled Sunday as a rain date, it made the call Friday afternoon to go ahead with the show for Saturday. In an announcement email it cited a lack of thunder or lightning in the forecast, as well as conflicts with Mother’s Day and the MoM’s Day Road Race, which blocked off several streets in the Davis Square area Sunday morning. “By sticking with the originally advertised Saturday date, we’re keeping things consistent for attendees, and helping ensure that all bands get the best possible turnout,” it wrote.
When the afternoon dawned cool and drizzly, many were disappointed in the call. A common sentiment passed around town questioned why the city scheduled the rain date for a day when it could not feasibly accommodate the festival. Likely as a result of the wet weather, the mood in some parts of the west zone was lower than in previous years, though crowds still gathered for acts. People carried umbrellas, donned umbrella hats, and danced in the rain.
Though a few people hypothesized that some west-zone bands may have canceled their acts, several musicians said they made do. One half of the band Paper Trails was optimistic about the outcome. “My bandmate and I were in the Western zone and thus had to setup and play in the rain,” he wrote on Reddit. “Despite this, I was happy to see a decent crowd turn out, which filled out as the day went on. By the time we were packing up, the sun was coming out and it felt like the event began in earnest.”
Protests, charities, and sales
Besides new rules and regulations, this year was marked by notable showings of support for political causes. Many bands used their stage as a platform to share pro-Palestinian messages, some displaying the tagline “Porch for Palestine,” promoted by the community group Somerville for Palestine. The organization provided an interactive map of bands that partnered with it and sent volunteers to those performance venues. There, they collected signatures for a ballot measure that would encourage the city to financially divest from companies supporting Israel and to raise money for families in Gaza and other community aid efforts.
Somerville’s young entrepreneurs took advantage of the day, as usual, to put a few dollars in their savings. With brick and mortars overrun, the best way for festival goers to fuel their travels was to keep their eyes and ears open for pop-up stands where youth were selling food and drink. Fiona, a Somerville middle schooler, teamed up with her younger brother to sell baked goods on Hudson Street. Though she said business was not quite as strong as last year, they had expanded their menu to include cake pops and the demo was a hit. “I made 30 and they sold out in like 15 minutes,” she said.
Looking forward
Overall, Somervillians said they enjoyed the event, rain or shine, rules and all. That’s a good thing, given the rules are likely here to stay. “I think the added structure really helped a lot,” said Jenkins. “It provided more ways to ensure everyone knew the rules and structure to hold each other accountable from City staff to musicians, to audience.” He said that the SAC will likely carry these methods forward to future years. It may seek even more volunteers in 2026 and could consider placing limitations on porches located at street corners, due to their impact on crowds, traffic flow, and bands coordinating timeslots. He noted that, as of May 11, the SAC had not yet met as a group to debrief, “So no specific changes as of yet.”