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The smell of wood-fired pizza and beer floats through the air along with the sounds of laughter and the strums of an acoustic guitar. A band plays in the center of the festivities, and the audience revels in the authentic folk music.

“We really try to be like the backyard party of Syracuse,” said Michael Greene, the owner of Harvey’s Garden. “It’s a casual space that’s good for large events. And we’d like to bring in different community groups that want to host their event at Harvey’s.”

Syracuse radio station WAER FM 88.3 hosted their inaugural Last Day of Summer Folk Festival on Sunday at Harvey’s Garden. Local artists Harmonic Dirt, The Bog Brothers and Beautiful Losers performed under the September sun while various vendors sold jewelry, pet goods, art and more.

NPR, the parent company of WAER, presented the event. Christine Pinnelli, who ran a booth for her jewelry company Recovery Creations, said she saw the festival as a way to support NPR, especially after recent federal funding cuts. She said she went out of her comfort zone to support the organization.

“Folk music, support NPR, yes please!” Pinnellii said. “I love that. I was very adamant about supporting that.”

Victoria and Sam Farr, first time Harvey’s vendors, were at the festival representing their local business Crazy Little Idea Studio. Their business reuses and reclaims wood and other salvaged goods to make into furniture. They say they found out about Harvey’s after seeing the event on NPR.

“It just seemed like a really good fit, good crowd and good people,” Victoria said.

Greene, who’s also a Syracuse native, agrees. When he converted the former vacant heating, ventilation and air conditioning storeplace into Harvey’s Garden in December 2022, this is exactly how he hoped the space would be used: a functional, food truck-filled venue for the community.

The indoor and outdoor space the venue provides boasts a flexible event area, with domestic beer on tap and football games airing on the TVs. Locals mill from vendor to vendor, with artisan jewelers, portrait artists and used booksellers featured in the tents along the back of the garden.

Folk bands performed their original songs on the main patio, surrounded by families playing yard games. The twangy music filled the outdoor space while couples swayed to the sound of the bass and children and dogs ran in the grass.

Claire Bobrycki, a 72-year-old recently retired social worker, has lived in Syracuse for over 40 years. She said she was drawn to the event because of her own love for folk music.

“I play in a little group,” she said. “Jam and Bread. Because we jam and eat afterwards.”

Bobrycki, who plays violin and ukulele, said she has an affinity for folk music because of her love of music from the 1960s and ‘70s — music that’s “easy to understand.”

Folk is unifying, she said, a type of music that has the power to create a community. Bobrycki added that there’s a strong community around folk music in Syracuse. Typically, folk music draws a more mature crowd, but this festival is different.

“There’s a lot of young people here,” Bobrycki said. “This is nice, like a different generation. The younger people that are into it, it’s nice to see.”

This is the venue’s first-ever folk festival, Greene said. And the community showed up. A multi-generational gathering is what Greene imagined when he opened the space — it’s a place where the community can meet and enjoy themselves. He aimed to create a space for everyone to enjoy and honor the community, like at Sunday’s end-of-summer celebration.

“It provides a space for there to be social interaction in a way that didn’t exist before,” Greene said.

Published on September 21, 2025 at 10:05 pm