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l’ Front Porch has been going on annually for over a decade. One year it rained (and rained). One year was a near miss from a hurricane. Folks still came out, performers still performed, and festival endured.

For 2025, Mom Nature was kind. It was sunny and near 80 both days. The festival is free to attend, so there are no official attendance numbers. That said, it looked and felt like a record crowd, both days.

Ol’ Front Porch President Marjorie Dufek writes in:

The Ol’ Front Porch Music Festival is grateful to this community for helping us make the 11th Festival one to remember. Thank you to the many, many volunteers who performed jobs big and small.

Thanks to the generosity of this community, we raised $1,021 for Western North Carolina Disaster Recovery.

Thank you to the Festival sponsors and to all who made financial contributions to help us keep the festival free this year and every year. Thanks to Chris Daniels and Conner Daniels for making each band on the Riverfront Stage sound so good. Thanks to the volunteers from all the non-profit organizations that provided food for festival-goers, and to the local restaurants that partnered with them. Thanks to the craft vendors for giving folks the opportunity to do a little shopping while enjoying the music. Thanks to Keith Smith at TownDock for reminding the community what was happening each day, and keeping the OFPMF website up to date as schedules changed. Thanks to Hiram Lupton for posting his Festival photos to Facebook.

Thanks to the businesses and homeowners all over town for hosting performers on their porches and putting up with people parking on their lawns. Thanks to Master Chief Dave Matthews and the cadets of the Navy JROTC at Pamlico County High School, and deputies from the Sheriff’s office, for helping with traffic control. Thanks to the Town of Oriental staff who hung our street banner, spruced up the park, and provided traffic barriers, water and electricity (and probably did lots of other things we were not even aware of!). Thanks to Ernie Glass, Gina Gilgo, Ned Ferris, Katherine Hudson, Bruce Cheny and Kate Rogers who provided electricity for overnight golf cart charging.

We are grateful to the Oriental Tourism Board for supporting the festival through their media partnerships, and to Croakerfest for lending us their bins that we used for selling merchandise. Thanks to the Inland Waterway Provision Company and the First Citizens Bank, who sold OFPMF merchandise in advance of festival weekend. Thanks to Oriental United Methodist Church who allowed us to use their labyrinth lot, their parking lot and almost every room in the church for the festival. Thanks to St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Oriental First Baptist Church, the Old Theater and the Oriental Women’s Club for providing their facilities for performances and severe weather locations (which we thankfully did not need!).

Please share your feedback about the festival here: https://olfrontporch.org/survey

Mark your calendar for next year’s Festival: October 2 and 3, 2026. If you want to be part of the volunteer team that makes it all happen, send an email with your contact information to info@olfrontporch.org.