Party on Porches: Midtown neighborhood hosts annual 'Porchfest'

TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — From porch to porch, and even in a backyard, music could be heard all throughout the Garden District in Midtown on Sunday.

Glen and Imelda Lyon live in the neighborhood and hosted a band featuring their family friend. Their front yard was surrounded by people they knew and people from all over Tucson who were enjoying Porchfest.

“Music brings people together all the time. I think that’s as simple as it gets,” Glen Lyon said. “We were up on Mount Lemmon the other day and a couple up there told us that they come by here. We just ran into them.”

Laurel Bellante and her partner Kiri Escalante live in the Garden District and play in the band Aztral Folk, just one of the fifteen bands the festival featured. They’ve been playing together for 18 years and were a part of the first Porchfest back in 2014.

Since then, they have been in about 5 of the festivals, playing songs that range from Mexican folk to gypsy jazz.

“All of us bring our own kind of unique ingredients to round out the music,” Bellante said.

For them, playing music is about connecting with neighbors and playing for new people.

“Playing our music out in a public venue like this, you always get new ears to listen,” Bellante said. “People always come up curious afterwards and we love to share what we do with the world, so it’s a treat for us.”

Some people like Jackson Morris have been coming for years. He lives in a nearby neighborhood and wishes other neighborhoods also had something similar.

“A public event that draws so many groups of people, and I think that’s pretty cool,” Morris said. “I hope that they can get spread out more, more visible.”