St. Pete Buildings Light Up Red In Support Of Live Music

ST. PETERSBURG, FL — St. Petersburg joined cities around the nation on Tuesday night to pressure Congress into funding the music industry that seems to have been forgotten during the coronavirus pandemic.

Red Alert RESTART is a nationwide event organized by We Make Events, a coalition of trade businesses, unions and live events workers that advocates a call to legislation to allow federal funding to help music industry workers who are suffering financially during the pandemic.

Many venues in St. Petersburg — such as The Palladium Theater, Mahaffey Theater, Jannus Live and Museum of Fine Arts — showed support to out-of-work musicians as they lit up their venues in red from 9 p.m. to midnight.

Jannus Live in downtown St. Pete had its last live music event on March 13.

Katie Talbert, a local musician, lit up the stage at Jannus in red to show her gratitude to the venue during these challenging times but also for her friends who are touring musicians, techs, audio, engineers, stage managers, etc.

"None of us have any idea when national acts will take the stage again, or what that will even look like when they do," Talbert told Patch. "I think this movement definitely helped to remind people that we are here. The music industry has very much been left in the dust since all this happened, even though people seem to always turn to music first in times of trouble."

Talbert feels that the music industry has been crippled.

"In reality, we are possibly the most essential 'non-essential' business there is," said Talbert. "I don't know if this has helped put enough pressure on Congress to actually do something about it or not, but I sure hope it got their attention."

The music industry employs more than 12 million people, said We Make Events.

Seventy-seven percent of music workers have lost all income, including 97 percent of independent contractors, according to the coalition. Thousands of music events have been canceled.

We Make Events said that live music contributes more than $1 trillion annually to the U.S. economy.

According to Congress, the RESTART Act bill extends the Paycheck Protection Program, established to support small businesses in response to COVID-19 (i.e., coronavirus disease 2019), for certain businesses, and it establishes a loan program whereby the Small Business Administration (SBA) shall guarantee loan amounts to certain businesses affected by COVID-19.

The Amalie Arena and Seminole Hard Rock also showed support for Red Alert RESTART.

Well known music acts such as Pearl Jam also showed their support for the movement on Twitter: