Reflections on My 48-hour Songwriting Residency
Performing at Harrison Center’s First Friday (September 2026)
The thing that struck me most while spending time at the Harrison Center and the neighborhoods nearby was the social infrastructure of the porches and alleyways. Porch culture, I call it in my mind - a friendliness and openness to running into people that is produced because of how the houses are placed and built. I also met a resident at the Jazz concert at Foundry the night before, and she had talked about getting to know her neighbors in good times and bad times. It struck me that the humans involved had built on the physical infrastructure by using routines like porch gatherings on Sundays. When bad stuff happens, we need that emotional infrastructure to be in place.
Porches seem to hold people together around here. It's not that we don't have porches in western NC where I am from, but they're not really social porches in the same way. And we don't have back alleyways there either. To me the alleyways are a novelty to wander, hoping to see beautiful flowers and run into all the neighborhood cats!
I've been thinking about how it's easier and more socially acceptable to walk up to someone's porch or holler at them from the sidewalk. This is far easier than knocking on someone's door or visiting them in their house. But stronger ties can develop from these so-called weak ties.
I was also struck by how much the neighborhood had changed since I came to do the residency back in 2015. Back then the song I wrote (City Song) was almost pleading with people to stay, not avoid downtown, not run to the suburbs, and love their city, investing deeply in their fellow residents. But 11 years later, I can see that who stays and what stays have contributed to gentrification. And I don't understand all the forces at work, so I decided this time to zoom in and write about the porches of this neighborhood.
In this new song "Front Porch Scheming," I mostly talk about the physical landscape I explored during my time in Indy. I hope my lines "I almost didn't see you there, I was caught up in my daydreaming" call for the listener to be awake so we can actually see each other as we change and grow. To "listen to the whole thing now," to be an honest witness to complications and pain, and continue building the social infrastructure so that people can show up on each other's porches when we need to. Because - we will need to. Take it from someone who's recently been through a hurricane recovery: we really, really need each other.
I want to end with a note of thanks. In the short-term, songwriting at the Harrison Center has given me an ideal pressure cooker to create and perform new work. At the same time, the long-term effects of doing this residency 11 years ago can be seen all over my catalog of songs. Coming to Indy convinced me once and for all that place-based songwriting is worth pursuing, both to celebrate triumphs and to witness struggles in the places we love.
Thank you to the team at the Harrison Center, for nurturing a place where we can make art, make new friends, and take part in big, complicated conversations.
