PorchRokr is ‘favorite holiday of the year’
By Amanda Garrett
Beacon Journal
Posted Aug 17, 2019 at 6:26 PM Updated Aug 17, 2019 at 7:26 PM
PorchRokr — the day when musicians, artists, dogs and the people who love them come out to frolic and celebrate in Akron’s Highland Square — has earned a special status at the Hopkins house.
Every January, the family of four waits impatiently for organizers to announce the date of the annual festival. The moment it happens, they block off that date, invite family and friends from out of town and then count down the days, like others might for Thanksgiving or New Year’s Eve.
“PorchRokr is now our favorite holiday of the year,” said Cheryl Hopkins, whose Morningside Drive porch Saturday hosted four bands, ranging from Miss Dreadful — which bills itself as “horror rock for the whole damn family” — to The Baker’s Basement, which described its latest album, “Seasonings,” as “rain, snow, sunshine, runny noses ... absent-mindedness, nostalgia, and sprinkles.”
By 10:30 a.m. Saturday, scores of people were finished with the PorchRokr 5K and a free outdoor yoga class when the smell of bacon from nearby food trucks floated across the northeast quadrant of Highland Square, which hosted the eighth PorchRokr Music and Art Festival.
When it began, PorchRokr was small and drew mostly neighborhood residents. This year, about 15,000 people were expected at the festival, which now boasts 170 bands.
“The cool thing is [PorchRokr] has never lost its grass-roots foundation,” said Jeff Klemm, a local musician who leads the pop rock group Diamond Kites.
“It still feels like punk rock because you’re on a porch, you have a hodgepodge system and you rock ‘n’ roll with it,” he said.
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PorchRokr is ‘favorite holiday of the yearʼ - News - Akron Beacon Journal - Akron, OH 1/19/20, 5)57 PM
The porches are exhilarating for bands, Klemm said, but PorchRokr also provides musicians another unusual opportunity — a chance to see their friends, other musicians, play.
“If you’re working like me, always gigging, you don’t see other bands,” Klemm said.
Diamond Kites played a porch on Kuder Avenue at 2 p.m, but Klemm planned to arrive at the festival earlier and stay into the night.
“If you’re new to PorchRokr, get a map, plan ahead, know what bands are playing, but don’t stick too closely to that schedule because I guarantee you, you’re going to turn a corner and hear a band that’s going to blow your mind,” Klemm said. “Akron is that talented. We have that much talent.”
But PorchRokr is more than music.
“What’s your dog’s name?” Maya Jones asked a man walking his golden retriever on Edgerton Avenue on Saturday morning.
“Max,” the man said, pausing so Maya, 11, could run her hands through his dog’s silky fur until Maya spotted a Great Dane and headed toward that dog, which was bigger than her.
“I like the music,” said Maya, whose uncle was playing in one of the bands. “But there are so many dogs, I want to pet them all.”
Several blocks away, Tiffany Jacobs was setting up her Blimp City Gifts booth at a vendor area on Merriman Road, where people were selling everything from soap and upcycled clothing to addiction recovery services and trampoline park passes.
Jacobs, who lives at Highland Square and teaches marching band at Ellet high school, makes and sells collages, ceramic tiles and jewelry made from the used guitar strings of Akron-area musicians.
The first year she sold her wares at PorchRokr, vendors were assigned to people’s yards, she said. Now, organizers have designated vendor areas with assigned spaces and maps so shoppers who visit PorchRokr know how to find what they’re looking for, including her Blimp City Gifts.
Everyone wants to find a blimp, said Jacobs, who grew up in Akron.
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PorchRokr is ‘favorite holiday of the yearʼ - News - Akron Beacon Journal - Akron, OH 1/19/20, 5)57 PM
“It doesn’t matter how many times you see the blimp fly overhead, you stop whatever you’re doing and look up,” she said.
Down the hill for the vendors, not far from Mount Peace Cemetery, the Hopkins’ family yard — a lush mix of hostas, ferns and shade garden plants — looked coiffed for a home magazine shoot.
Cheryl Hopkins said they spent the day before mulching and tidying up since Saturday was their first time hosting bands, an opportunity that comes only once every four years because PorchRokr rotates among Highland Square’s quadrants.
When PorchRokr started, it was in another part of Highland Square and Hopkins, husband Andy and their kids — Quinn and Kira — went, expecting to spend about an hour.
“But we stayed seven hours,” Cheryl Hopkins said. “It’s like a really big neighborhood meet-and- greet, including people you rarely see. It’s just the best.”
Since then, they’ve noticed the crowds have grown.
“But the vibe has remained the same,” Hopkins said. “It’s laughter. It’s safe. It’s fun. It’s just a chill day, our favorite holiday.”
Amanda Garrett can be reached at agarrett@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter @agarrettabj.
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Samantha Grace

Samantha Grace is a singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist with an amiable voice. Her Ukelele tune “Mon Petit Chou” is an easy song to not realize that you’ve listened to it three or four times in a row. Samantha is also one half of the duo Saint Joan with Hannelore Berken. Sam played at Hive Mind in February and is continuing to put work into her solo project. - The Devil Strip

Akron Recording Company (ARC) has just announced that it’ll release volume two of Where the Hell is Akron, OH?, a compilation of songs by musicians from Northeast Ohio, for Record Store Day on Saturday, April 13. The album will be available on all streaming services and for sale on CD at local record stores.

Eventually, it’ll come out on vinyl too.

The compilation features artists such as Curtains, the Beyonderers, King Buu, Leaf Borbie and the Family Tree, Lowsiders, Mollo Rilla, Oregon Space Trail of Doom, Peachcurls, Roid Rage, Swell Tides, Time Cat, Wesley Who and Samantha Grace. All of the songs were either recorded or produced at Akron Recording Company.


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The studio uses a combination of analog recording equipment and “industry standard” digital recording mediums. In June of last year, it moved to its current home, a historic factory building in Akron's North Side district. - Cleveland Scene