Music fans expecting more magic from St. Petersburg's Et Cultura Festival (EtC) are going to have to wait just a little bit longer than expected.
On Tuesday organizers announced that the third edition of the interactive, music, film and art festival is set for February 13-17, 2019. The new dates are a departure from the November dates that EtC has been utilizing for the last two years.
The new dates mean that EtC is technically skipping 2018, but we're willing to endure a few extra months of waiting if it means that there's a chance of the festival getting close to duplicating the stacked music lineup it put together in 2017. Slowdive played its only Florida show at EtC last year, and other highlights on the 2017 lineup included Son Volt, Silver Apples' Simeon Coxe, Ought, Waxahatchee, Coathangers, Budos Band, William Tyler and more.
The new dates position EtC within a month of Austin, Texas' South by Southwest (SXSW), which is happening March 8-17, 2019, and Tampa's Gasparilla Music Festival (GMF), which will presumably happen during the second weekend of March (the 9th and 10th). Miami's iii Points Festival is happening on February 15-17, 2019 as well.
The cluster of festivals usually bodes well for music fans who'll get to see lots of great bands in the span of a few weeks.
The proximity to SXSW may also help in securing more big-name acts, but the calendar similarity with GMF and iii Points likely creates a situation where talent proximity clauses will mean that bigger performers considering festival or tour dates in that timeframe may have to pick between the three festivals. If you're unfamiliar with radius clauses, LA Weekly spelled it out nicely:
"A radius clause is a common component of the contracts artists sign when they agree to play a show, especially a major music festival," the alt-weekly wrote. "These clauses create restrictions on how long that artist must wait before and after that show to play in the same market, and how many miles outside of that market they must go to play another show within that time frame. "
We've reached out to EtC officials to get more insight on the date change, and we'll update the post as more information becomes available. In the meantime, follow @CL_music on Twitter.
"Music/bands are more readily available at that time of year and it is the time of year when [the city] and Pinellas county in general have their highest population," co-founder Lea Umberger wrote to CL," adding that the weekend isn't one where a bunch of overlapping events compete for attention. Umberger said that the extra planning time gives organizers a chance to further develop programming and that EtC will continue to tap Bay area promoter No Clubs for booking bands.
"[We] are shooting for another quality line up this year," she said.
