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Milford Porch Fest is held Saturday, Oct. 2, 2021 in Milford, CT. The third annual PorchFest is set for Oct. 1, 2022.
Carol Kaliff / For Hearst Connecticut Media
MILFORD — Residents will once again be partying on their porches this fall.
The third annual Milford Porchfest is set for Oct. 1. PorchFest is an annual music event held across the country where bands perform on front porches in a community. The event started in Ithaca, N.Y., in 2007, as an attempt to bring local musicians and neighborhoods together and celebrate a sense of community.
Milford’s Porchfest is being organized by a volunteer committee in cooperation with the Milford Arts Council.
“Our Sept. 1 deadline is for our homeowners and bands to be locked in, so we are doing a lot of recruiting, mostly of bands,” said Jeff Einig, event spokesperson. “We partnered with the Arts Council to add structure to the event.”
Currently, 45 porches have been registered to date, and all have a band confirmed, he said.
The first Milford Porchfest was held in 2019. When it resumed in 2021 after a one-year hiatus, there were more than 60 households throughout the city that turned their porches into performance centers.
This year, Einig said, the planning committee has a new website and is encouraging people to visit to learn about the event and register their front porches.
The new website also includes links to purchase merchandise. Einig said merchandise sold out last year.
This year’s event will include five zones: Woodmont; Downtown; Fort Trumbull and Silver Sands; Walnut Beach, Point Beach and Bayview.
But the key component of Porchfest is that every homeowner has to be willing to host a live event.
“The whole event has to happen on private property,” said Einig. “The homeowner can go out and get a food truck or (porta potty) and as long as it is on their property that’s fine because we cannot block the streets. We do not have those kinds of permits in place and will not have those permits in place.”
Einig said the Milford Porchfest is a great way for the local community to walk or use their bikes to visit their neighbors and enjoy good music.
“A couple of the locations are near beaches, and parking is limited, so this would be a great time to bring strollers or push a wagon and visit your neighbors,” he said.