On the porch, two long sets of concrete steps up from the street, Jim Palmour and Steve O'Neil harmonize on the song "Angel from Montgomery."
On the lawn below the porch, Carolyn Insler brings her flute to the music while Dan Walker provides percussion on a set of drums. Among others, they run through "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window," "Sweet Melissa" and "Cover of the Rolling Stone."
On Vine Street at the bottom of the steps, people are dancing, singing along, sipping adult beverages and chatting. Despite the fact that everyone - including the musicians - is at least 6 feet apart, the sense of community is tight from porch to street.
That's always been the way it has felt in Fort Wood, where the porch-bound concert is being performed, but the feeling is even stronger now, says resident Dianna Davies.
"This community is very tight; we've done things like this before, but right now I think it's bringing people who might not already have come out," she says.
As COVID-19 concerns and precautions swept through the Greater Chattanooga community, causing many to shelter-in-place, music has been a way for people to feel less stuck-in-place; whether it's live music from the porch or backyard, live music streamed over the internet, music lessons through Zoom.
Palmour says many of his neighbors have expressed thanks for the jam sessions he has helped coordinate over the past few weeks.
"I've always been of the philosophy that, when words aren't enough or words aren't available, music can speak to you," he says.
Amid the pandemic, some nationally known musicians have turned to the internet to stream live performances, including Melissa Etheridge, Sarah Evans, Christian McBride, Brandi Carlile, Alice Cooper, the Zac Brown Band, even the New York Metropolitan Opera.
In short, music has lifted communities around the world.
In Italy, flash mobs of singers leaned out of windows in several quarantined neighborhoods. In London, England, the Camden Voices group got together on the internet to sing Cyndi Lauper's "True Colors."
Without club gigs or concerts available, local musicians have streamed live shows over the internet, keeping in touch with their fans. SoundCorps' Sidewalk Stages, which features Chattanooga-area musicians giving two-hour acoustic concerts at various spots around the city, moved online, too.
Carolyn Insler plays the flute on her front porch. / Staff Photo by Robin RuddMatt Downer, who has performed on Sidewalk Stages, didn't know so many of his North Chattanooga neighbors played instruments until everyone had to stay at home.
"I go out and play some in my backyard and I hear several people playing or singing [now]. Normally, I would not hear that," says Downer, who plays old-time music on banjo, fiddle and guitar.
For him, the sense of community brought together by music extends beyond Chattanooga. Co-founder of the Great Southern Old Time Fiddler's Convention, which he calls "a family reunion for me," Downer had to move this year's event online in mid-March. Even so, it attracted more than 100 players from as far away as Michigan and California, maintaining its sense of community over thousands of miles.
"That was pretty cool," he says.
Kevin Aslinger, a resident of Ridgeside, has pulled out his guitar to play a couple of front-yard concerts, attracting others in the small town on the northern side of Missionary Ridge. A science teacher at Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences high school, he says that in frightening times like these, music and other art forms touch people's hearts more deeply than they have in a while.
"We're realizing that those are the things that make us human, the things that bring us together," Aslinger says. "They help relieve our burdens, and we're all feeling pretty burdened right now."
Walker, an epidemiologist for the Hamilton County Health Department, says there is something special about music being played live and in-person.
"I think we can all admit that a live music event - not Facebook or live streaming, but musicians actually playing together - is an unusual and welcomed distraction at this time," he says.
People in a neighborhood, when they hear live music, tend to migrate toward it "to take in a few minutes of something we can all relate to, a good tune," says Walker, who adds that, in a secondary benefit for him, "it does help to beat the hell out of drums when I'm stressed."
Downer says the lure of music and its ability to bring people together "is something that is almost ethereal and very, very hard to put into words."
"As a performer, I've seen the power that music has to connect people immediately and very decisively cut through barriers we tend to put up racially, socially and culturally," he says.