Creating a music community on the isthmus with “Evan’s style”

In nearly every local arts scene, a handful of people are vital to its existence and invaluable to its success. They are not gatekeepers or kingmakers, simply people with an intense passion for their craft who help others navigate the turbulence that local waters may contain. In Madison, Evan Fernandez is one of those crucial keystones. He can be described as a man who wears many hats: bandleader, songwriter, high school track coach, carpenter, and—most importantly for the Madison music scene—practice-space organizer. 

Since 2023, Fernandez has been hosting a DIY practice space for bands on Madison’s near North Side, lovingly referred to as “HQ” by all of its shared members. The space itself is a hodgepodge of aspirations and endeavors. When you enter, you are greeted by piles of scrap wood and metal lain lovingly against the walls, an old jet ski that has only ever dreamed of water, roaming herds of amps and drum kit pieces, a jumble of other tools, and electronics that make the space feel more like your grandparents’ basement than a critical community resource.

Nestled within the curios is a nightly rotation of different bands, plying their trade and dreaming of being on stage. What began as a personal practice space for his band, The Porch Flowers, has become one of the few remaining rehearsal areas on the isthmus that’s open for bands trying to find a place to play.

Currently, nine bands call the warehouse building home, including my own, Quokka, who would likely not be able to function at all without the space. As covered by Tone co-founder Scott Gordon in a 2023 article, rehearsal spaces are an often forgotten element of maintaining a local arts scene and sadly in decline as Madison continues to more densely develop the isthmus. If you are a group looking for a place to play, a quick search on Google or the Madison subreddit reveals just one location on the isthmus, which carries a significant monthly fee, and the only session-based practice space in Madison Music Foundry being pushed to the peripheries in Fitchburg.

According to HQ co-founder and alewives frontman Gunnar Schmitz, there is nowhere for bands to gel, develop, or even exist without a rehearsal space. “I don’t think the average non-musician realizes how important having a space to get loud without fear of consequence is,” he says. “Madison loves to claim pride in acts like Nirvana, Garbage, etc. but you can’t write and perfect music like that in a small apartment—at least not for long. I’m so glad to have an egalitarian space like this where we can all come together, get loud, hang out in passing, and still try to keep a bit of the bohemian dream alive.”

When you first meet Evan Fernandez, a couple things become immediately apparent: he is the spitting image of a young Jerry Garcia, and his gregariousness makes you feel as if you’ve known him for a decade. His band, The Porch Flowers, is a reflection of his own easygoing nature and a grassroots campaign in itself. They organically built their following from a group of devoted individuals who met at house shows and backyard jams. Each and every show is filled with a circle of people carelessly dancing around with friends and strangers alike. They are not playing the algorithms or planning marketing campaigns. And they are the only band I know to have played the High Noon Saloon eight times without having officially released any music.

That is set to change this summer as they prep the release of their first album, a live album, comprised of songs recorded at different Porch Flowers shows across the city. It’s full of the energy and original songs they have honed in their years of playing together. As someone who has seen them on multiple occasions, their music blurs the lines between Americana, classic rock, as well as folk and psych rock, without ever leaning too far into one camp or another. 

Schmitz, a former member himself and producer of the upcoming live album, also hones in on what makes The Porch Flowers tick. “The Porch Flowers are a total reset to the jam-act world: an earnest nod to the scene’s humble origins, blending a roots-rock style with all shades of Americana and more,” Schmitz says. “Guitars flutter as much as they may scream, the songs wander as the band collectively explores where they’d like to take us. It really does feel like some kind of family reunion every time. There’s folks I probably only ever get to talk to when The Porch Flowers have a show.”

In addition to hosting the rehearsal space, Fernandez and Schmitz also took it upon themselves to continue their acts of community building by trying their hand at an off-the-grid outdoor concert at Schmitz’s idyllic family farm near Tomah last August. The descriptively named Coles Valley Hog Roast and Music Festival was their first foray into larger-scale event-planning complete with a music lineup of their friends (and The Porch Flowers headlining), camping, and of course, a pig roast. Though the Fest only lasted one day and the guest list was semi-private, it offered a window into what could be possible beyond the rehearsal space when they activate their community of artists, provide an open space for interaction (and lunch), and give it to the world.

In March, I spoke at length with Fernandez to dig deeper into his history as a convener of musicians, the changing dynamic of rehearsal spaces in Madison, and his own band, The Porch Flowers.

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Tone Madison: To kick it off, I’d like to talk a little bit about HQ. How did you originally come to the warehouse building and how did you start using it as a practice space? 

Evan Fernandez: About three years ago, when my band started playing, we used to live in a house with a basement and no other units, so we practiced there and didn’t have to worry about neighbors and noise. When we got out of that house, we were practicing wherever we could [and had to] move gear between friends houses, basements. It wasn’t great. So my friend Gunnar Schmitz and I started talking about this idea of a shared rehearsal, mixed-use space that multiple bands could use for practicing, storing stuff, projects and anything, just a big space where we could do whatever we want.

Two weeks after we started talking about that, we found this spot on Craigslist. We looked a little bit, but not that much, and pretty much everything we found was either not very close to downtown Madison or really expensive. We were the first people to message, thankfully, because he said there were people that were already ready to sign that didn’t even care about touring, just because that’s how good of a deal it was. It’s lucky that we were the first people to message him and did let us still tour. So we signed, started rehearsing, and started telling everybody about it. Gradually, over the past three years, we got more and more bands joining in and had to get more organized, creating a Discord server for communication in there and a Google calendar for signing up for slots.

Tone Madison: What was the decision like to open up the space to other people versus keeping it as your own practice area? 

Evan Fernandez: Honestly, I mean, there’s a few facts to that, but that was the idea from the beginning. I know a lot of people need a place, and there’s some spots in Madison that do this, you know, more officially. There’s Madison Music Foundry and some others, but some friends of mine there didn’t like the pricing, and just overall didn’t love the feel, so it became a better deal for a few reasons. From the beginning, it was meant to be space to share, but there’s always the logic of sharing the cost, too, which is kind of a big factor.

Tone Madison: When you walk through the space, it’s an explosion of interests. It’s full of scrapwood and tools, assorted instruments, a ski waxing station, and even a jet ski. How would you describe the general style going on in the space you’ve created? 

Evan Fernandez: That’s, you know—what a great question. Style is probably, you could just say “Evan’s style,” and what that means is taking on too many things at once and hanging on to things with the idea of “Oh, I could use that for something.” You never know when you’re gonna need some random thing, like scrap wood or scrap metal or, you know, a water pump from a hot tub that I took out of a job at someone’s house. So I guess that’s my style: not being organized and doing too much.

And I’ve always said, I gotta organize this better, I gotta do this, I gotta do that. And it’s hard just not having time for all that. But hey, this is a space for whatever. Bands and friends need storage, too. And beyond music, if you need a place to store stuff permanently or temporarily, it’s there. I have friends that stored stuff while they were moving in between apartments during that buffer time in between leases so they don’t have to get like a storage unit for a month that they only need for a day. I’ve also had friends use the fridge for research projects, for their degrees, putting living organisms in the fridge to track growth. I don’t really understand it, but they needed a fridge. And I was like, “Yeah, we got one.” Overall it’s just, “Hey, if you need a place for doing something, we can probably make it work.”

Tone Madison: I didn’t know about the science experiment part, that’s so interesting. I feel like most life in the fridge is created by accident, good on you for doing it on purpose. In the three years it’s been operating, how many bands do you think have come through this space? 

Evan Fernandez: Well, right now, those who use it pretty regularly are, I’d say eight or nine bands at the moment. But also, there have been plenty of bands that were just a conglomeration of people that were playing one show or some special occasion together and needed to practice being a group before that or something. A lot of people in those bands have moved away to Chicago and stuff so the numbers change, but I bet it’s been around 30 groups and projects.

Tone Madison: I don’t know if I’ve told you this, but a friend of mine used it for a day to do a group rehearsal. A friend of his was getting married and planning to play a compilation of songs for his new wife at the wedding, but didn’t know where he could rehearse a full group in private. 

Evan Fernandez: That’s awesome. I love that. Exactly that.

Tone Madison: In the three years or so now that you have been running this, how many other practice spaces do you know of around town like it and how has the landscape changed since? 

Evan Fernandez: I know there’s Madison Music Foundry, and I think there’s at least one or two other places that have spaces in the Madison proper area. I don’t really know much about those, to be honest. There’s more warehouse-type units, too, kind of like ours. But other than that, I guess I haven’t really talked to anyone that has something going on the same kind of open way. Usually I just hear from someone that they need a place to rehearse. And I’m like, “Okay, we got a place.”

Tone Madison: With any space, noise restrictions are imposed based on the neighbors in the area or surrounding building types. HQ has the benefit currently of being in a more warehousey, removed area, away from residential zones. Has your area changed much since you first moved in and how do you see continued development on the isthmus affecting having spaces to host bands? 

Evan Fernandez: It’s definitely changed. We’re over by where the old Trucker’s Atlas / Central Transport DIY venue used to be, and I know that got shut down. I don’t know the specifics of why, but I assume it had to do something with noise or having too many people around or too many complaints. [Editor’s note: The closure was ultimately related to a failed fire inspection.] Whatever it was, it got shut down, which is kind of a real fear of mine. Not something that drives me too much, but definitely something I think about in the back of my mind. We have a good thing going, and I want to make sure we can hold on to it because a lot of people kind of rely on it now.

We’re kind of tucked away. It’s away from a lot of other things in its own isolated place, so we don’t have to worry too much about what we’re doing there. Not like we’re doing anything crazy, but we have still gotten a noise complaint before. And now over the last year or so, they’ve been building some apartments pretty close to where HQ is and redid the road to connect it through to other areas. So now there’s a little bit more traffic and soon people are moving in nearby, and I’m just like, “What’s [it] gonna be like when those people live there?” You know? It’s caused me a little bit of stress, we just gotta continue to be courteous as much as we can with noise.  

Tone Madison: With all the bands that have come through the space for rehearsal, there are also ones that have used it as a recording area like alewives and Dicot. Did you intend for it to be a recording space as well, and are you planning to continue building out in that direction? 

Evan Fernandez: That was kind of always on the table, but at the start we didn’t really know what recording looked like or how to do that, you know? And so, in three years, we’ve learned a lot about setups and recording and how this all works. Now some bands have used it and created setups the best they can with temporary soundproofing and whatnot. Like I said, with Evan’s style, whatever that means, the space is usually a wreck. There’s been a lot of talk in the last year of building it out to create some real recording areas that more bands could use, just have to start putting the work in. We also talked about using it as a venue and doing small shows there, but noise [and] extra-people considerations could come up against our ability to hold onto this. Once someone complains about something, then you get more eyes on you and the prospect of being shut down gets real. 

Tone Madison: Switching gears, I want to talk to you about your own band that prompted all of this, The Porch Flowers. How did you come to form the idea of the band? 

Evan Fernandez: That goes back to seven years ago, right before COVID-19 when me and two friends of mine, Tommy Zalewski and Michael Makowski, had started to jam together. We were all so bad, but we were having fun playing around and decided to enter a battle of the bands show through the University [of Wisconsin–Madison].

We got selected, but then the pandemic happened and the show got cancelled. With that newfound time that we had after the smoke cleared, we started jamming together a lot in that basement I mentioned. Did that for a year and things started clicking a little bit, and we thought, “Oh, we could maybe do something more with this.” Tommy was always a big push to say, “Let’s play a show, let’s be a band.” And so finally we did our first show in that basement on  graduation night in 2021.

Then, that summer, we started playing shows in backyards and basements and got my other friends Sam Favour, Max Loescher, and Luis Acosta Jr. to join, and we ended up as a full band. At that point, we were playing college houses. When we’d finish, someone else would come up and say, “Hey, can you play my backyard? Can you play my basement?” And we were taking everything. We just started playing a bunch, more people kept coming, and then bands started reaching out on Instagram to play bar shows together.

We just kept growing, and [we knew that] if we wanted to become a real band, we should change our name, which used to be called Half Past Dead after a line from “The Weight” by The Band, since it was already taken by a metal band. That’s a fun piece of lore, right? We were going over ideas for about six months in a band Discord chat, between talking about shows we’re playing and what somebody had for breakfast.

One day in May, we were playing a show for my graduation during a Flower Moon cycle, and it was a great time. We were always thinking of something with flowers, you know, something tender. Somebody suggested The Porch Flowers, because the night before every show, after we were done rehearsing at like, one or two in the morning, we’d go sit on the porch, smoke some cigs, drink some beers, and plan out setlists. That porch was pretty special to us. After that, things kept snowballing into 2023, 2024, where we were playing more regular gigs in Milwaukee at Linneman’s [Riverwest Inn] and then High Noon Saloon here, who kept having us back.

Tone Madison: The band started as a cover band initially before you started cycling originals more and more. How did that inform the way that you wrote those original songs or affect how you play live?

Evan Fernandez: I totally left that part out! When we started out as Half Past Dead, it was all covers because we didn’t know how to write a song. So it was a lot of Grateful Dead, Otis Redding, The Beatles, The Band, Bob Dylan. After about a year of playing, we started getting more inspired and influenced by those bands and started messing around with writing our own songs. We wrote our first couple songs that we would play, and then everything else was covers. All of our originals followed that ethos of those covers of ’60s, ’70s rock with folk and Americana influences. We kept writing more and more, and soon there was no more room for covers in the setlists. We still like to play covers, mix them in since they’re always fun. But we want to play our own stuff, because as The Porch Flowers, we[‘re] our own thing.

Tone Madison: A couple questions about the band specifically. You’ve had a rotating cast of members over the years, mostly due to folks leaving Madison as coming and goings happen. How do you keep the dynamic of a band consistent with new people? 

Evan Fernandez: It’s not easy, but it has gotten manageable since we’ve been doing this for so long. You have to have a core group of people and an identity, and that makes it easier to bring in people that are interested in adding their talents. The core of myself (guitar, vocals), Tommy Zalewski (guitar), Max Loescher (keys, vocals), Matt Gundy (bass), and Marin Danz (fiddle) has been together for at least three years. But even in that time, we’ve had probably like five people kind of come and go.

Before that, there was a lot of turnover, because people moved, and I think we’ve had to find a new drummer, I’d say, six or seven times. People leave the band, but they’re never really gone. We like to say “Once a flower, always a flower, always a flower.” You’re always still one of us, if you’re ever back around or wanted to sit with us, it’s just all love. My best friend Sam Favour was the bassist when we started out, and he lives five hours away now, but still plays with us every once in a while when we play nearby. Maybe that’s the way that it’s worked out—letting the dynamic be dynamic and just seeing where it takes us. And that’s in everything, you know? It’s about being very gradual. We’re not trying to fight the change, you know, we just let it grow in itself.

Tone Madison: Some of the most exciting bands in the city right now can trace roots to you in what I call the Porch Flowers Extended Universe, including three of the bands from the Madison Music Radar “Rising Artists Showcase” (Bloodroots, alewives, and Dicot) at Gamma Ray back in March. Why do you think that members of the band have been so successful in striking off on their own?

Evan Fernandez: I haven’t heard that term before. [Laughs] I don’t think it’s really something we did. We’ve provided a way for people to get together and make music. Sometimes they find that they really like making music with this other person in the band, and then go off to create something new, or sometimes while they’re still in the band and it then becomes their own new thing to concentrate on. I’m always sad when somebody who we’ve played with doesn’t join up as much, but there’s no hard feelings. People should just do what they want to do. That’s what music is, you know? It’s a shared thing, and, whatever makes you feel whole inside and makes your spirit feel excited, you should do. I don’t really want to take credit for what other people have done. We just created a community, I guess, where people can meet each other and take it up from there. I love that about the scene.

Tone Madison: Last year, you guys put together one of the best DIY concert ideas I think I’ve ever seen for a show in the Coles Valley Music Festival and Hog Roast. How did that come to be, and will there be another pig roast fest in the future? 

Evan Fernandez: I will be damned if that doesn’t happen again. We’re still trying to figure out if it’s going to be an annual thing or bi-annual. It’s a lot of work from a lot of other people, but it seemed to be a hit last year. Overall, just great energy, people being together, happiness, and love and joy. So, yeah, we want to do it again. There’s maybe like a 70% chance that happens this year and on Labor Day again. And we want to maybe make it a little bigger, maybe make it two days so we could have more bands up there.  But it was awesome. So many people had a good time and new people met each other. To do it again would just be, like, why not, right? Absolutely. 

Tone Madison: You mentioned the band was created to play a battle of the bands-type competition. The Porch Flowers recently played and won another one at the High Noon Saloon to win a slot at the Summer Camp Festival. What is your opinion on battle of the bands competitions, and did that feel like a full circle moment for you?

Evan Fernandez: It’s funny, because that was before COVID-19, and that feels like it was a whole different life in a lot of ways. Sometimes we forget that that’s how it started, you know, just messing around. I think in the last couple months, when we did the Summer Camp Festival battle-of-the-bands thing, it crossed my mind, but I didn’t really think about it until right now when you said that. And boy is that full circle. The first one was seven years ago, like pretty much seven years to the day. This time it actually happened and we won. That was cool to think about. I love that. 

Tone Madison: After three years as a gigging band, you have your first-ever release lined up for this summer. What made you want to make your first release a live album? 

Evan Fernandez: A live album is much more representative of how we approach the songs and what you would hear at a show. In a live setting, the songs come out different every time due to playing small changes or with a different rhythm entirely. So, because of that, we have multiple versions of songs that we want to release. Then also, it’s hard to get everybody together for studio time and studio time is expensive, so playing shows that are already on the calendar and getting them recorded proved to be a lot simpler.

Tone Madison: On top of organizing The Porch Flowers and the HQ practice space, you also work in construction and coach a high school track team, all of which fit under the category of (sometimes literal) community building. What would your advice be for somebody who’s looking to get more involved in the place where they live? 

Evan Fernandez: I think everybody’s kind of at a different point with that journey. If you’re new to Madison or don’t know a lot of people, just get out there and go. Go to shows, go volunteer, go meet people, get to talking, and likely you’ll find some connection. You just gotta go, and then continue showing up regularly.

Even if chatting’s not your strong suit, you’re going to get recognized if you show up regularly. And through that, you’re going to find connections and new ways to get involved in your community. And if you do have people or you have been around for a while, there’s nothing stopping you from getting your friends together and starting to do something new. A lot of the stuff that I’ve done or do is not my job—my job is in construction—coaching and HQ were just something I got asked to do by the people I got to know.

If you have a network, bring them together, then tell them to bring their friends. Have an open door, be inclusive, and you’re gonna end up just building something before your very eyes, before you even really know it. The hardest part is starting it, but that is the only part. That’s what you got to do. And then it’ll build itself from there. 

On Friday, April 3, Tone Madison will be saying goodbye. Losing such an active voice in all things local is a huge blow to the Madison arts scene and I will dearly miss their contribution to the city. Just like a tree falling in a forest, this loss also leaves space for new growth to occur. For anyone searching for ways to feel connected with the place that they live and the people they meet, I’d give four words of advice: Be like Evan Fernandez. Show up, then show up again. Figure out the things that drive you and invite others to join. Look for gaps in the hedgerows and plant yourself there. You’d be surprised what flowers may grow.