Episode 17: Maine Music Alliance

Welcome back! This month we are joined by Peter McLaughlin and Scott Mohler of the Maine Music Alliance. They explain how local musicians in Portland, Maine successfully stopped Live Nation from opening a 3300-cap venue in their town. It is a truly inspiring story involving musicians organizing to save local spaces during the COVID-19 lockdown, and eventually turning that network out in massive numbers—building a broad coalition, showing up to city council meetings, and convincing local government to modify city building codes that ultimately stopped the development. “It was a good day for the little guys,” they told us. Peter and Scott get into the weeds with us to explain how and why it all went down, and advice for other artists who want to organize against Live Nation in their towns. Learn more about their org at mainemusicalliance.com (https://mainemusicalliance.com/). And if you enjoy this episode please consider becoming a paid subscriber at patreon.com/criticallistening so we can keep interviewing artist-organizers about pushing back against corporate power in music!