This afternoon Cecilia and I played for Somerville Porchfest, with Harris calling and Danner running sound. There was rain, but not enough keep us from playing, or to keep folks from dancing:

We were originally planning to be on Morrison Ave, where we've been for years. Two weeks out, though, I learned that it wouldn't be possible to close Morrison this year. [1] After lots of scrambling, talking to neighbors and the city, and some help from Lance Davis, we were able to get permission to close the dead-end section of Highland Rd instead:

This meant we didn't have my usual porch roof, and while dancers are reasonably water resistant my gear is not. Seeing rain a few days out I got a cheap canopy:

It was big enough for the two of us and our monitors, but not Harris. And he wouldn't have fit anyway, with his crowd-observation-ladder:

Being away from the house also meant we couldn't easily plug in for power. We probably could have made extension cord work, but Danner and I both have batteries. This worked well, and none of the batteries were below 70% at the end of the 2hr set.

I'm very glad we had a dedicated sound person this time: running sound for myself is never great, since I can't hear what we sound like, but this was a much more complex setup than we've done in the past. In addition to the usual mains and monitors we also ran a pair of delays halfway down the street and a subwoofer. Danner was fantastic, and I'm grateful for BIDA for providing gear and funding a sound person. Here's hoping a lot of people who gave contra a try will come out to one of the regular dances!

To keep the water off the equipment outside the canopy we used trash bags for the speakers and some 18x24 pieces of corrugated plastic for the mixer and batteries. Everything seems to have done ok!

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(If this looks like fun, TryContra lets you find nearby dances. And if you're not sold, Ben Kuhn has a great explanation of what makes contra dancing so wonderful.)

I tried to get neighbor friends to park up one side of the street and move cars just before, but this wasn't enough to get that side fully cleared out. It got us about five spaces, which was enough for more audience space, but the contra lines were limited to the ~18ft between the parked cars. This is enough for two lines, but at one point I counted four squished in there. Harris also had to abandon teaching one of his dances and switch to one that needed less space.

Last year Harris tried a format where he alternated between dances for anyone and ones for people who already know contra, and he used it again this year. It continues to work really well: the new dancers aren't up for dancing every dance and the experienced dancers get to do some more complex (but still not very complex!) material.

While Kingfisher is a bit weird as a contra dance band, I think this mostly translates pretty well to this kind of environment. Having drums and bass, even simple multitasked ones, seems to make fiddle-driven music more accessible to the general public:

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With so much gear to get out and back it was incredibly helpful that Al came early and volunteered to help set up, and of course we used the wagon.

The older kids made and sold lemonade. Nora held signs:

While people were overall super respectful (and joyful!) they did leave a lot left behind, mostly alcohol-related. I took the wagon around picking things up, and it was nearly full by the end:

Just as I was finishing the city workers came by to pick up the temporary street containers, which were also overflowing:

One of the workers helped me dump the wagon into their truck; very helpful!

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It was on the cold side for playing, and fingerless gloves were very important. Probably not a bad temperature for dancing, though!

Overall, it went really well, I'm glad Somerville hosts a Porchfest, and I'm glad I got to play for it and introduce a lot of folks to contra dancing.

Thinking about what to do differently next time, I think the big one is reaching out to the organizers ahead of time to figure out about closing streets. Both this year and last year there was a last-minute scramble for permission to close the street, and I don't think anyone prefers it that way! I'm going to plan to do this way early: probably in a few weeks once the organizers have had time to rest a bit.

[1] After all this, police ended up closing Morrison anyway. I asked about it, and they said it was a safety issue since people gather in the street.