By Lauren Hermon
It’s not often neighbours drag their porch benches across the road, over the fence and onto your front lawn to hear the strum of your guitar as you sit relaxing with mates.
Then again, not everyone has neighbours like Sharni Honor.
It was the moment which led the 23-year-old Brighton girl to create The Porch Sessions where local and interstate bands perform live music on people’s front porches.
Sharni and her ‘Porch crew’ bring bands, bar, food, and even decor like fairy lights, Persian rugs and crochet blankets to sprawl across gardens.
From bringing music to people’s porches and now to Adelaide trams, Sharni Honor’s The Porch Sessions concept is growing
Four years later and the concept has become so popular Porch Sessions gigs are now set to headline in the unlikeliest of places – Adelaide trams.
The new project is part of next month’s Umbrella Festival, a new live Adelaide music festival presented by Music SA.
There’s also talk of The Porch Sessions taking four caravans and three families across three States for six live music shows.
After dropping out of uni when she was 19, Sharni’s idea to create The Porch Sessions came from a passion to pursue something she loved.
“Even though I didn’t quite know what that was,” she laughs.
Sharni recently shared her upcoming projects and success at the Startup Your Creativity presentation at Pulteney Street’s St. Paul’s Creative Centre during Entrepreneurs Week 2016.
“We now have more than 100 local and interstate bands with 6,000 punters attending events… it’s pretty cool,” she adds.
The Porch Sessions concept has been embraced by Adelaide
But it’s hard to believe it all began on her parents’ front porch.
“I got two bands together, a sound engineer, food van, liquor licence and about 150 people in my front yard. I had no idea how it would go or what I was doing,” she says.
“It’s amazing how the city has embraced the concept. About 97 per cent of the shows sell out before the artists even announce they have a show on.”
The Porch Sessions now has live music shows at Porchland, a new music festival in Hahndorf which Sharni and her team created just this year. It also has gigs at cellar doors, weddings and films local musicians as they road trip and perform in “wonderful, best kept secret” locations on the outskirts of Adelaide.
For Sharni, it’s all about “the thought that turns into an idea”.
“From there more ideas come until it grows and fabricates into amazing things,” she says.
And she believes Adelaide is the place where “amazing things” happen.
“Ten or even five years ago, many people had a pipe dream to move interstate, leaving behind the sweet town that is Adelaide. Right now the pipe dream for myself and many other creators is to stay right here,” she says.