Somerville Porchfest 2026

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! youtube (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 frie