It’s impossible to talk about Old Town’s Backyard Jam, the Pompano Beach summer concert series kicking off Friday, June 20, without first backtracking to Old Town Untapped, the city’s monthly street festival. At least it is for Ty Tabing.
“Old Town Untapped is really kind of where the conversation starts,” says Tabing, who has been the director of the city’s Cultural Affairs Department for the past three years.
For almost a decade now, Untapped has drawn as many as 2,000 people to Old Town on the first Friday of the month, typically the largest crowds to visit the city’s emerging entertainment district, according to Tabing.
“The festival has become a fixture of Old Town,” Tabing says of the neighborhood that’s home to the city’s oldest buildings. “It’s very much something that’s ingrained in the community’s mind. People know that there’s something going on in Old Town.”
And invariably whatever’s going on involves Bailey Contemporary Arts Center, which Tabing’s department programs.
“BACA is at the center of Old Town Untapped,” he says of the center housed in a 102-year-old building. “It has really been the anchor that’s kept that neighborhood alive for upwards of 10 years. As part of the street festival, we always have an exhibit opening there, which often showcases our artists-in-residence program.”
From July to September, however, Untapped taps out for a summer break.
“And we’ve actually found that during the heat and the rain, often people show up anyway,” says Tabing. “They’re like, ‘Oh, wait, you guys are taking a break for the summer?’ They’re just kind of accustomed to their ritual on the first Friday of the month.”
Enter Old Town’s Backyard Jam.
“During the summer when Untapped takes a break, the Backyard Jam keeps the music going and the vibe flowing in Old Town, as we kind of move to a smaller, more scaled-down version of Untapped,” Tabing says.
The concert series premiered last summer. Held on the third Friday of the month, it typically draws a couple of hundred people to the Old Town Backyard. The off-street, hybrid space located behind BACA is a publicly funded concert venue combined with an intimate outdoor area shared by adjacent bars and restaurants.
“The businesses have become reliant on us to generate foot traffic during the slower months,” says Tabing. “We’re really contributing to the economic development of Old Town by continuing to do this through the summer when the crowds might be a little lighter.”
The primary draw is largely a particular category of Florida-based entertainment. “We try to periodically bring in different types of music related to the time of year,” says the director. “But generally speaking, the crowd really likes a cover band.”
The Thursday, June 20 concert offers an exceptional case in point. The Flyers is a Broward-Palm Beach power trio steeped in blues and classic rock and fronted by a virtuoso guitarist and vocalist who’s something of a local legend. Patrick Farinas has been playing South Florida stages for all but the first seven of his 41 years.
“I started playing professionally on drums when I was only 7 or 8,” says the Delray Beach resident. “My dad, Tony Farinas, is a Juilliard-trained musician. So I started doing gigs with him. And then at 13 I picked up the guitar and that’s when I started my career for real.”
The band’s drummer, Joe Beard, is also the son of a professional musician. “I was playing almost as soon as he could start me on piano, probably since I’m 5 or 6 years old,” says the Fort Lauderdale musician. “I started playing drums when I was about 9 or 10.”
Multi-instrumentalists who’ve been playing together for the past 15 years, Farinas and Beard will typically trade instruments during a set. A more recent addition, Austin Smilen, from Boynton Beach, rounds out the trio on bass.
Beard says the dynamics of a power trio playing an intimate venue such as the Backyard won’t be an issue.
“We’re pretty adaptable, and we read the crowd pretty well,” he says. “The backyard environment, that’s our specialty. We do a lot of house parties and stuff like that. So we fit in pretty good in an intimate situation, for sure. It’s some version of what we always do, just with different levels of intensity. We’ll probably kind of sneak in a little bit easy and then test the waters with something a little harder. And stretch the limits of the decibel range.”
In addition to the band and the advertised “delicious southern bites, craft cocktails, and laid-back vibes,” the June Backyard Jam comes with a bonus: the official unveiling and dedication of a mural by one of Taylor Swift’s favorite artists. Internationally known for her large-scale, interactive street murals, Kelsey Montague’s career took off after a selfie taken by the megastar with the artist’s angel wing mural went viral in 2014. Swift later anonymously commissioned a Montague mural featuring a butterfly and rainbow theme, and then surprised the muralist with a personal appearance at the piece’s formal unveiling in Nasvhille.
For Old Town’s Backyard, Montague created a custom set of wings filled with images that reflect the area, including honey bees, ocean life and an ode to shipwreck diving off the Pompano Beach coast.
Both Old Town events are benefitting from a $50,000 grant via Broward County’s new Arts and Cultural Festival and Special Event Sponsorship Program. In October, the Backyard Jam expanded to a year-round, third-Friday complement to Untapped. And during the festival’s summer break this year, there’ll be an additional concert on the first Friday in August. (There would’ve been one in July and September as well if the Independence and Labor Day holidays didn’t fall on those first Fridays).
“The grant really allows us to wrap up our fiscal year with a big bang with lots of programming for Old Town Untapped and Backyard Jam,” says Tabing.
That “big bang” includes Backyard Jam concerts by boundary-breaking quartet Mun (July 18), high-voltage rockers Jeff Lloyd Band (Aug. 1), Romanian-born performer Simona Electra (Aug. 15) and poly-genre party band Relentless (Sept. 19).
IF YOU GO
WHAT: Old Town’s Backyard Jam Concert Series
WHEN: 6 to 9 p.m., Friday, June 20 (and year-round on the third Friday of the month).
COST: Free
WHERE: Behind Bailey Contemporary Arts Center, 41 NE First St., Pompano Beach. INFORMATION: pompanobeachfl.gov/events/backyard-jam
