BY MATT KITE for WEEKLY VOLCANO 7/11/25 |
When Irina Rasputnis moved from Somerville, Massachusetts, to Tacoma before the pandemic, she brought her love of community and music with her. Somerville, a vibrant city of 81,000, whose neighborhood concerts inspired Irina to found and organize Tacoma Porchfest, now in its fourth year.
“One neighborhood did a Porchfest,” Irina says of Boston. “Then three neighborhoods did. Now there are Porchfests all summer long in Boston.” She didn’t invent the concept, but she saw her new hometown as perfectly suited for its own version.
“I was really charmed by how neighborly Tacoma is,” she explains. “I do a number of projects, Porchfest being the largest one, where my focus is on building community and empowering community connections. Porchfest is a really good vehicle for that, because there’s all this music playing all through the neighborhood, and everyone is excited to catch their favorite band or maybe discover one they hadn’t heard before. It forces people to walk into each other’s yards. That’s where those community connections start. And maybe they’ll run into each other again and again. Lots of connections like that will lead to neighbors caring for each other in a bigger way than they already do.”
This year’s Tacoma Porchfest, a two-day festival slated for this weekend and beginning on Saturday, July 12, promises to be bigger and better than ever before. In 2022, Porchfest’s inaugural year, 50 bands played 35 porch stages. The event doubled in size the following year and again in 2024, when thousands attended. This year’s most significant change is that the festival now encompasses two neighborhoods: one south of Sixth Avenue and one north of Sixth Avenue.
Irina says she had a hunch Tacoma would be receptive to Porchfest, but the level of excitement has surprised her. The City of Tacoma is a sponsor, several businesses and neighborhood councils have thrown their support behind the festival, and even elected officials and big-name bands have reached out to Irina to find out how they can get involved.
Irina’s focus on local neighborhoods and bands, however, promises to keep Tacoma Porchfest a uniquely local festival. Scheduled alongside top acts are amateur performers and teenage bands. There’s no main stage or official headliner. Instead, the event is decidedly democratic. Likewise, the music spans several genres, including jazz, opera, hip-hop, rap, punk, metal, bluegrass, and folk. Various stages will also feature poetry readings, improv comedy, and even pro wrestling.
“I want to include everyone,” Irina says. “That’s kind of my goal. That’s why it keeps growing. I haven’t said no to anyone yet.”
Roughly 110 porches will be hosting music this year. A porch, in this case, can vary from someone’s front stoop to a parking lot or bar for twenty-one-and-over performances. Coordinating all those porches and bands is no easy task, and unique challenges include locating Honey Buckets on quiet residential streets and connecting food-grade hoses to private faucets to supply water stations.
For those attending for the first time, Irina recommends wearing comfortable clothes, bringing sunscreen and a water bottle, and making room for a little spontaneity. Sure, find out which porch is hosting your favorite band, but be open to all the music you’ll hear as you walk from porch to porch. If you don’t like what you’re hearing from one porch, keep going. Another band is playing right around the corner. And don’t forget to bring a donation. Although Porchfest receives grant money from the city and funding from the city council, it relies heavily on individual donations to pay the musicians and other entertainers.
The first day of Porchfest coincides with this year’s Tacoma Pride Festival. In a show of solidarity, a bicycle parade will leave Porchfest at noon to join the Pride festivities before returning later in the day. Moreover, Pride and Porchfest will be sharing a stage for the first half of the Pride Festival. Locals are encouraged to attend both festivals.
Irina is determined to avoid a similar scheduling conflict in the future. “Pride is not only a celebration,” she says. “It’s also a protest. And we don’t want to stand in the way of that.”
More info: tacomaporchfest.org and tacomapride.org.
The music section of Weekly Volcano is now sponsored by:
