These are photos from the 9th Annual Vankleek Hill PorchFest and, I think, this was the largest of the bunch — twenty-something bands, each with an hour to entertain whatever crowds they can muscle up, scattered across 18 venues, and taking place over six hours (the Press Release [link] said 25 bands over 20 venues, but I counted 20 over 18. I was suffering from heat stroke most of the day, so believe who you believe).

I don’t know if this is an original Vankleek Hill Event idea, but the first time I heard the expression ‘PorchFest’ was when we had our inaugural one. Now it seems like every town in Eastern Ontario with a porch has one.

This was my first time covering VKH’s version of PorchFest (The Review [link] published several of my shots), and also my fist time attending it, and I can say that, as a spectator, this is a weird Event.

I’ve covered, and taken a lot of shots of concerts, both big and small — Britney Spears, Lilith Fair, three or four years of Beau’s Oktoberfest [link to some of them], and about 200 Punk shows in Toronto for example. Once I even took photos of Constable Brennan, Vankleek Hill’s most successful band [link to their Biography], at a Toronto venue with six people watching and three of them wanted to do me serious harm.

All that to say, I’ve been around.

But covering a concert venue scattered across an entire town is a new experience for me.

The first band of the day was Vankleek Hill’s own ’50 Proof’ — who play mostly acoustic versions of classic rock [link to their website]. They’re a staple at Events around here. They had the largest crowd of the day, with maybe 100 people attending their show. At least they were kind of attending the show… there was basically a large field between the band and the crowd, which made it impossible to take a decent photo.

It was something of a trend that day. Most of the music was folk and/or classic rock. There was one Punk band, but I missed them… mostly because I didn’t know there was a Punk band playing this thing. Most of the bands were lucky to have ten people in their audience. But the bands all seemed to have a good time, and whatever crowd they managed to corral enjoyed themselves. However, the only band to actively encourage dancing, that I know of, was The Steve Gravel Band [link to their page].

I think they had the oldest crowd of the day, but their audience got up and took over Bertha Street. I don’t remember seeing very many “young” people in the crowds — like, under 45-years old. I think the youngest were some friends of mine. And, really, we’re old.

Regardless. I did mostly enjoy this event, except for the running around and the heat stroke. So… click on a photo to get the carousel going. Or not. No pressure.