Here is the whole pitch. Live music. Local bands. Seven spots around St. Augustine. Free.

Not “free with a two-drink minimum and a surprise fee at the door.” Free. Sing Out Loud has been doing this for ten years now, and Weekend Two runs Friday through Sunday, Sept. 11 to 13, with showcases spread across bars and brewhouses you can actually walk between if you plan the night right.

Where the shows are

The lineup lives at seven venues: Hornski’s Brewing Co., Colonial Oak Music Park, Dog Rose Brewing Co., Spinster Abbott’s, Shanghai Nobby’s, Sarbez, and Ragga Surf Cafe. That is a brewery crawl and a concert at the same time, which is the correct way to spend a Friday when rent already took your paycheck.

Colonial Oak sits right in the middle of the old city, so that is your anchor if you want to post up somewhere and let the night come to you. Sarbez and Shanghai Nobby’s are the move if you want the room a little sweatier and the band a little louder. Dog Rose and Hornski’s if you want to actually hear yourself think between sets and put a decent beer in your hand.

How to do it right

Go early to one, find the band you didn’t know you needed, then chase the schedule to the next room. The festival posts set times on its site and they shift by venue, so check before you leave the house and screenshot it, because service on St. George Street on a Friday night is a rumor.

Bring cash for the bands. The show is free, but the tip jar and the merch table are how a local act pays for the gas to play the next town, and a twenty in the right hand this weekend is how you end up saying you saw them first.

Why this is the one

The Amp is great when your favorite band from high school rolls through and you have ninety dollars to feel that way about it. This is the other thing entirely. This is a hundred artists you can discover for the price of the beer you were going to buy anyway, in rooms small enough that you are ten feet from the stage and the guitarist can hear you yell for one more.

If you do one thing in this town this weekend, do this. And if songwriter stuff is more your speed, the St. Augustine Songwriters Festival runs the following weekend, Sept. 25 and 26. Same idea. Real people, real rooms, no arena markup.