Benghiat, but they wanted to see a
pilot before committing to a series.
So Benghiat, 52, and Graff, 57,
decided they’d have to start from
the ground up and got moving. They
secured approvals from Ferndale’s
City Council in January, got spon-
sorship from Faygo and the Kramer
Restaurant Group (which owns sev-
eral restaurants in Ferndale) and the
Front Porch came together quickly.
Residents offered their porches,
musicians offered to play for free
and the partners got a few sponsors
to underwrite some of the expenses.
The event takes place from noon to 6
p.m. in an area west of Woodward and
(mostly) south of 9 Mile to Marshall
on the south and Central to the west.
Everybody is welcome.
“Given the personality and DNA of
this event, Ferndale is perfect,” says
Benghiat, who lives in Southfield.
“And let’s face it, Ferndale has great
porches.”
The city asked them to keep the
concert area small enough so it will
be manageable. But it did temporar-
ily amend Ferndale’s noise ordinance
from noon to 6 p.m. should the strum-
ming and harmonizing get too loud.
As noted above, many of the per-
formers are in the indie folk/rock vein,
such as the Luddites (who bill them-
selves as the Loudest Acoustic Band
on Earth), singer/songwriter Anthony
Retka, surf rockers Nova Wyse, coun-
try/cowpunk band the Briscoe County
Vultures, the all-woman R&B/soul
outfit Sandy Mulligan & Her Band of
Gypsies, and Brother Hallow, a roots/
soul act. All are local.
Detroit gospel singer Carl B.
Phillips, a Detroit Music Awards nom-
inee, and the Whiskey Charmers, a
Detroit Music Awards winner, are part
of the lineup. The Polish Muslims, a
staple of Detroit’s music scene, will
deliver a pared-down version of their
“polka rock,” and singer/songwriter Jill
Jack will take to a porch to pour out
her honeyed voice.
“Normally they’re playing in a club;
this time they’ll do a hootenanny,”
Graff says. “It’s them with their instru-
ments, picking and grinning.” Each
performance will run for a half hour,
with not a lot of overlap so that every-
one can hear as much as they’d like.
“We will also do our best to help
make sure there aren’t homes or porch-
es too close to one another,” Benghiat
says. The residents who’ve offered up
their stoops had to get their adjacent
neighbors’ approval in writing and
agree to provide power, to be a good
host and to be home that day.

Graff and Benghiat plan to build the
first episode around Front Porch with
interviews and live performances.
Dream Monster, a Detroit production
company, will put it together, with
Graff, 57, playing host.
“Our end goal in this is to circle
back … to produce a pilot for the
show so we can get a time slot,”
Benghiat says.
“We’ll have them play live on a
front-porch setting, maybe an actual
front porch, and I’ll do the James
Lipton thing — talk about their music
and songs,” says Graff, a longtime
Adat Shalom member (and usher)
and resident of Beverly Hills. “We’ll all
sit around and kick back. It’ll have a
casual, intimate kind of feel.”
Benghiat and Graff met 25 years
ago, when Benghiat was working in
sports marketing at Olympia. Graff
was writing for the Free Press at the
time. A few years after that, they
became re-acquainted playing in a
floor hockey league. Both are trans-
plants who’ve made Detroit their
home. Graff grew up in Pittsburgh,
where his father ran a kosher super-
market.
Benghiat moved here from New
York with his family as a teenager,
finishing high school at Southfield
High. His wife (Marcy Cohen) and kids
were active at Temple Emanu-El. He
worked at the Jewish Federation of
Metropolitan Detroit as an associate
campaign director, did a few market-
ing stints with the Parade Company
and, last June, he relaunched
Optimum Marketing, a branding/mar-
keting business development firm.
Graff, who has published books
about Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young
and Bob Seger, is the music critic for
Digital First Media, which produces
The Oakland Press and The Macomb
Daily. Graff also writes for Billboard
and other magazines.
If the Front Porch is successful, the
partners plan to do it annually.
“Festivals are a work in progress
until they’re finished,” Graff says.
“Things can happen on the day where
you have to make adjustments. But so
far it’s going smoothly. The artists are
excited, the people with porches are
excited. We could have filled the city
three times over, but we’re starting
small to get our bearings.” •

TOP: A concert on an Ithaca, N.Y., porch. CENTER:
Rabbit Ears is a three-piece instrumental garage-
rock band. BOTTOM: The Metro Times has called
15-year-old singer-songwriter Emma Guzman a
“song-writing prodigy.”

jn

June 15 • 2017

39

