Flannel Weather in August: St. Pete Grungefest Returns to Jannus Live

Here is a beautifully stupid, deeply enjoyable idea: gather Florida's best Pearl Jam, Foo Fighters and Alice in Chains tribute bands, pack them under the circus-tent canopy of the region's most storied outdoor room, and charge people roughly the price of a movie ticket to scream along to 1994 in the August humidity. That's Grungefest, and its second annual edition lands at Jannus Live on Friday, August 7.

The particulars, for the planners: doors and music at 7 p.m., tickets a gloriously specific $10.25 (plus the usual fees), 21-and-up, standing room only — which at Jannus means the brick courtyard, open to the St. Pete sky. Elysian Space Dust IPA presents, which is either brand synergy or destiny depending on how many you've had; the Seattle brewery's flagship hazy propping up a Seattle-sound tribute night has a certain cosmic rightness.

Let's address the obvious objection. Tribute bands? At a paper that spends most of its ink evangelizing for original local music? Yes — and unapologetically, because Grungefest is exactly the kind of low-stakes, high-turnout community night a scene needs to stay healthy. Ten bucks gets a casual fan through the gate of a venue they might otherwise never visit; the beer flows, the rent gets paid, and the local musicians playing in these tribute acts get a packed house and a real stage. Tribute nights are the connective tissue between the arena crowd and the club crowd, and Jannus has always been shrewd about booking them alongside the buzzy touring acts and homegrown originals.

And the material holds up, which is the whole point. The mid-'90s Seattle canon — "Black," "Everlong," "Would?" — was built for exactly this: big rooms, big weather, a crowd that knows every syllable. There's a specific alchemy to hearing "Alive" go up under an open sky with a few hundred strangers, and Jannus, with its four decades of practice at turning heat and brick and dusk into transcendence, is the ideal delivery system. The room that hosted the actual Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1987 is more than qualified to host a loving forgery of their peers.

There's also a timing argument. Grungefest arrives days after Ybor's Crowbar went dark, in a summer when Tampa Bay is unusually conscious of how fragile its independent rooms are. A cheap, well-attended night at Jannus is a small act of civic maintenance — proof that the region will still turn out, in numbers, for a night of live music under its own power. Every ticket sold at a room like this is a vote for the room's survival.

So consider the assignment. Dig out the flannel you have no business wearing in a Florida August. Get to First Avenue North early enough to claim a decent patch of brick. Order the Space Dust because the marketing department clearly wants you to and, honestly, it's a fine beer. Then plant yourself in front of the stage and let three of the state's sharpest tribute acts walk you through the songbook that soundtracked a decade.

It won't be the real Eddie Vedder. It'll be something arguably better for a Friday in August: a couple hundred Tampa Bay lifers, a beloved 42-year-old venue doing what it does, and a ten-dollar ticket that reminds you exactly why these rooms are worth fighting for. Wear deodorant. Bring your voice. Grungefest doesn't require you to take it seriously — only to show up.

Sources: Elysian Space Dust presents the 2nd Annual St. Pete Grungefest — Jannus Live; Elysian Space Dust IPA Presents 2nd Annual St. Pete Grungefest! — 97X; Jannus Live — Wikipedia