Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams perform durign the 2024 Back Porch Festival.
Photo credit: David Molnar.
NORTHAMPTON — More than 60 artists will perform at 12 walkable venues in the city’s downtown during the 12th annual Back Porch Festival returns to Northampton from March 27-29.
The Back Porch Festival is a collaborative effort between Signature Sounds and the Parlor Room Collective.
Founded in 2014 as a one-day event at the Academy of Music Theater in Northampton, the event has since grown into a multi-venue celebration featuring the best in American roots music. Each year, the festival includes a live broadcast of the Back Porch radio show before a live audience, and this year’s will take place on March 29 at 9 a.m. at The Iron Horse.
Back Porch Radio host Jim Olsen has been on the airwaves of WRSI since 1984, serving as the station’s program and music director from 1985 to 1996. When the station moved to Northampton in 1996 and became 93.9 The River, the Back Porch came with it.
In the first year of the Back Porch Festival, Olsen and organizers were looking to put on a one-day concert for the community, and when their booked act canceled at the last minute, organizers improvised and turned the single show into split performances between three different artists.
The festival officially expanded to the format that is currently celebrated in 2023.
“In this day and age, when you book so many bands, it’s kind of inevitable that something will happen with someone and they can’t make it. We haven’t had one yet this year, but you never know,” said Olsen. “Part of putting on an event like this is just having the flexibility and the foresight to have a plan when problems arise.”
The lone multi-day winter musical festival in New England will kick off the festivities on March 27 with the first headliner show at the Academy of Music featuring BERTHA: Grateful Drag, the world’s first Grateful Dead Drag band. The show begins at 8 p.m. and includes an all-star collective of queer and allied East Nashville talent coming together in full force for a good cause, according to organizers.
Headlining the second day of the weekend is the Back Porch Bluegrass Spectacular featuring Peter Rowan and Sam Grisman Project playing music from Old & In The Way and more. Old & In The Way was a short-lived but groundbreaking bluegrass band featuring Jerry Garcia, David Grisman, Vassar Clements, John Kahn and Peter Rowan. The show will celebrate their influences and classic repertoire. It begins at 7 p.m. inside the Academy of Music.
I’m With Her, the harmony-rich, Grammy-winning supergroup of Aoife O’Donovan, Sarah Jarosz and Sara Watkins, will close the weekend as the final headliner with a performance inside the Academy of Music on March 29. Special guest Olive Klug will also be featured.
“The thought process in planning this is, let’s do this at a time of year where everyone could really use it. You never know in New England what you’re going to get with the weather. You can’t rule out a snowstorm during the last weekend of March,” Olsen said with a laugh. “I feel like March is just that month where it’s sort of no longer winter, but it’s also not really spring yet. So, it’s this long month where you’re kind of waiting to get back outside, and this is a little emphasis to get back outside and enjoy.”
Special to this year’s Back Porch Festival will be the debut of the new concert film, “You Got Gold: A Celebration of John Prine.” Playing March 29 at 11 a.m. at the Academy of Music, the tribute concert film captured in October 2022 at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium honors the legendary songwriter’s enduring legacy.
The film brings together family, friends and acclaimed artists like Bonnie Raitt, Brandi Carlile, Tyler Childers, Lucinda Williams, Dwight Yoakam, Jason Isbell and Bob Weir to celebrate Prine’s life and music on the iconic stage. The film screening is included with a Ramble Pass, which grants access to every show at the festival except for the evening headlining shows at the Academy.
“This film has been released this year, and they’re doing select premieres in certain markets, so we’re lucky here in Western Mass. to show this film at the Academy of Music,” Olsen said. “It’s a cool new wrinkle we have this year that we haven’t had in the past.”
Also new to this year’s festival is Secret Planet, a community-supported music group bringing borderless, underground artists to Western Mass. Olsen said the group gathers bands from all over the world to the region and that they will be featured on Saturday through a new
“Global Back Porch” performance at 33 Hawley St.
“We’re always looking for interesting ways to shake things up,” Olsen said.
When it comes to booking artists, Olsen explained that the festival’s lineup is filled with a good mixture of national touring and local acts. He said that around 4,000 tickets are typically sold for the event, which therefore brings additional business to downtown.
“The reason we do this is to give it more of a festival feeling. That idea that usually when you go to a music festival it’s an open field or somewhere where there’s a lot of things happening around the ground so we just use downtown Northampton as our festival grounds. It makes for a more social event because rather than sitting in a seat and watching a show, you’re up and moving around,” said Olsen. “You have so many choices of different things to go see. Having a walkable downtown in Northampton and having everything within walking distance just makes it so that not only do you go to different venues and see music, but you might stop at a café and get a coffee or stop at a restaurant for some food or check out a store. It really enlivens the whole city, which was the idea.”
Olsen said it is rewarding for him and fellow Back Porch Festival organizers to see the event’s growth over the years and what it has turned into most recently. He added they look forward to another great festival weekend.
“It means a lot because when we started this, it started very small and humbly, and we’ve been able to grow it a little bit every year. Now we’re getting recognition all around the U.S. for it and from artists that really want to come and play it. It’s just exciting,” said Olsen. “For many years, our group produced Green River Festival, which is and was a wonderful festival that has become a really big deal. It’s fun to get to sort of grow another festival with a totally different format and feel into something that’s exciting and that people are really enjoying, so it’s been great.”
For more information on this year’s Back Porch Festival, its schedule, full lists of performers and venues, or to purchase tickets or a ramble pass, visit backporchfest.com.
