Kathryn Golden rallies PorchFestKC 2016 in a new neighborhood

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There was a brief period when Kathryn Golden thought that PorchFestKC — the sprawling, free, daytime acoustic-music festival she organized in 2014 and 2015, which took over the porches of West Plaza homeowners — might not have a future. Last September, the West Plaza Neighborhood Association voted against sponsoring PorchFestKC for another year. Golden was disappointed, but she understood the objection. But would other parts of town share the same concerns and also turn her away?

The short answer: no.

The Valentine neighborhood — a patch just north of Westport, encompassing about a dozen blocks between Southwest Trafficway and Broadway — has offered its porches to Golden and her PorchFestKC followers, winning the day over a couple of other eager bidders. This year’s iteration takes place Saturday, October 8. I chatted with Golden about what the new location means and what to expect this fall.

The Pitch: What was it about the Valentine neighborhood that appealed to your needs?

Golden: It was definitely difficult to make a decision. Part of it was looking at people who had the best physical space. One of the challenges with the West Plaza was figuring out where to put larger bands. Valentine seems to have larger porches, so that will save me time and frustration.

They also have larger yards [in Valentine], so the distance from the porch to the street was greater. Another one of the challenges with West Plaza was getting people [audience members] out of the street, and making sure there was a clear way for other people to drive through. But then again, it seems like there’s significantly less people that drive through the streets [in Valentine], and so many people have driveways and garages that street parking also isn’t that prominent, so that was a positive, as well. And the streets were also physically wider. It all made sense.

So many of the challenges in West Plaza were physical ones: People parked illegally. Traffic wasn’t flowing. Valentine won’t be perfect, but it certainly has the making for solving some of those problems.

They actually did the initial outreach with their neighborhood. They sent out questionnaires to their neighborhood, trying to gauge whether or not they wanted PorchFestKC to come there, and they had a really positive, speedy response rate — 100 percent of people [who responded] said yes. And I was impressed by the foresight they had in asking people that before they even reached out to me. And they went ahead and formed a committee of neighbors, and they structured a way to go about bringing it in. And they were very willing to help fundraise — and nobody wants to do that, including me. But they have some people in the neighborhood who are comfortable doing that and want to do that, and on a personal level, that was huge.

There are probably actually not a lot of changes. I don’t necessarily want to get bigger. I want to fix some of the problems — things that I thought would work and didn’t.

For instance, I had this idea that I didn’t want to have a ton of food trucks because I wanted them all to have a successful day, and that was dumb on my part because then they all ran out of food. Another thing I tried both years was this expectation that, because it was all acoustic sets, people could trade on and off the porches more quickly, because there wasn’t a lot of setup and takedown. But people took longer to get off the porches than I thought, and things ran way behind. I tried telling bands to pull off to the side when they were done playing so that the next act could start setting up right away, that way you can also maintain an audience for the next band — you don’t want people to wander off because they’re waiting too long — but that request fell on deaf ears. So this year, I’m going to build in bigger gaps between sets, and ultimately that might mean there are fewer bands that can perform.

Overall, I’m still wanting to keep the same structure in terms of how people register. I want to keep the same type of music. I’ve been very happy with the integrity of the event in terms of how it feels — very noncommercial and friendly. There’s not a lot of commercial to it — no beer gardens or commercial signs. I don’t want huge sponsors — I don’t want it to look like every other festival. And Valentine is very interested in helping, but also keeping the tone that I’m trying to keep. I appreciate that they’re OK with keeping the organic, natural, low-intensity design that looks like you just stumbled on something. I like those things about it, so I’m going to keep that going.

I think the first year, I just thought it would be neat to see if I could pull it off. I’d been to one and thought it was cool, and said, “Hey, let me see if I can do that.” It was just sort of an experiment, and I didn’t expect it to be so popular. I was blown away the first year, and the West Plaza neighborhood was as well.

Then I just kind of had to do it again — and part of that draw was just fixing things I didn’t think through the first time. I misjudged the crowd [the first year], and there weren’t enough toilets. With the next year, I solved that problem, and then it became a traffic problem. So initially, it was just boredom and seeing if I could pull it off, and then it took on a life of its own. And it seemed a shame to not continue it.

This year, I did take a bit of time once we learned that it wasn’t going to return to the West Plaza. PorchFestKC is hundreds and hundreds of hours of my time, and I thought, “Is this a good way to go, going out on top? What would it be like to have a life over the summer? Maybe that’s a good idea.” But ultimately, it’s cool thing, and I decided to give it one more shot and see what happens.