The Catalyst Sessions w/ Bill DeYoung: Katie Talbert

Since mid-March, when the Covid curtain fell and sent full-time musicians home without any other means of support, Katie Talbert has livestreamed 97 hour-long concerts from her St. Petersburg home. In the beginning, she did it to give her erstwhile-gigging pals the opportunity to make a few bucks from virtual tips while plying their trade; eventually, her DTSP: Saved By Streaming became a life raft for dozens of music-makers she’d never met before.

Using professional lights, sound and cameras, Talbert became the bay area’s go-to concert producer. It wasn’t a job she necessarily wanted – she’s never charged anybody a dime – but after four months, she’s come to believe it’s something she was meant to do.

“I didn’t expect everything to shut down the way that it did,” Talbert, who makes her living as a booking agent, said Thursday on The Catalyst Sessions. “It was more of an instinctual, survival kind of reaction, I suppose. One venue after the other, the owners would call me and we were shut down.

“And without knowing how long it was going to be shut down, I had to make easily 80 phone calls, probably 150-plus dates (where) I knew for sure we wouldn’t be back.”

And she taught herself how to shoot, and edit, and livestream. “I bought a lot of the gear I bought that night,” she recalled. “I was like ‘Well, I guess I might as well buy this stuff while I have money, because I might not soon.’”
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