There isn’t a single part of the music industry that won’t be affected by the coronavirus outbreak. The most obvious are the high profile festival cancellations like Glastonbury and Coachella, and the big stars who are having to postpone tours. But beneath them there is an entire infrastructure of aspiring musicians, session players, sound engineers, booking agents, record shop owners, DJs, labels, tour managers, event staff and more whose livelihoods are at risk with venues closing their doors, and with Boris Johnson saying venues can stay open but advising people to stay away, fear in the industry quickly turned to anger. We spoke to a few people whose lives have been turned upside down in less than a week.
‘People said: we’ll come to the show, it’s fine! But it’s not fine’
Grace Carter, singer-songwriter
I’ve been on tour in Europe. At the shows, there was this weird unity. Everyone was a bit scared, but there was this feeling of: we’re all going to be in a room together and we’re going to enjoy being out. The thing I really struggled with was not being able to interact physically with my fans. My music is very emotional and honest and comes from a deep place, and the people listening to it have maybe had those experiences, too. So I’ve always wanted to hug people and hear their stories.
My band are freelance musicians and my techs will not get paid if the shows don’t happen. I didn’t want to let anyone down. But every show was packed out. I got loads of messages from people saying: we’re still going to come, it’s fine. And it’s actually not fine. I had to take it into my hands, be responsible, and reschedule them so people aren’t put at risk. There should have been an overruling thing saying: there will be no large-scale events happening. But the only thing to do was to make the decision for ourselves.
I’m using this time now to be creative and get my feelings out. We’re all going through the same thing and, knowing we’re all in it together, I think there’s a lot of peace in that.
‘The government is shafting us’
Ben Lewis, head booker at Super Friendz, which runs Belgrave Music Hall and Headrow House in Leeds
Midway through last week we were saying: maybe this’ll all blow over? We toyed with ideas like: what if you put on Shaun of the Dead every night a gig was cancelled? But very quickly it was: no, that’s not funny. By last Friday, the bars were notably quieter. Then, over the weekend, everything was rammed – like people were getting a last weekend out before they have to stay indoors.
From bar staff to directors, everyone is saying the government is shafting us. We wanted to be told what to do – if we were told we had to close, no one can argue with it. But we watched Boris’s press conference, and the general feeling was that the government’s a complete disgrace – it’s a total cop out. We have staff at the bars, we have DJs who are all self-employed, and we feel a responsibility to keep those people in work for as long as possible. But if we stay open, does that put the public in danger? We’ve been given this decision that’s completely impossible.
A big thing we want is government relief for casual workers. Every business like ours is going through hell. Tour managers, engineers, are going: I’ve got absolutely nothing for the next few months now. I don’t know what they’re going to do.
In this industry, people are known for not treating each other the best. Everyone’s constantly stressed. If you’re doing arts in the UK, since the Tories got back, it’s every man for himself. But everyone’s being super-lovely to each other. You have natural rivalries and you butt heads, but I don’t want to see another promoter go under so I can pick up their shows. I just want to see them all OK.
‘I can only compare it to 9/11’
Chris Forsyth, musician and venue owner in Philadelphia
The only thing I can compare this to in my lifetime is being in New York on 9/11, and this is affecting way more people. That was a scary and devastating thing, but the scale of the economic devastation we’re about to see is much larger. The government is going to have to take steps for people to keep shelter, and food on their plates. They’re talking about bailing out the airlines, but regular people are going to need a bailout from this. This [US] administration is rudderless – Trump is all about creating crisis, but we’ve come across a crisis you can’t spin away. I’m trying to keep the panic level down and take it hour by hour.
I had a big tour coming up, 18 shows supporting White Denim. Here in Philadelphia, where I live, meanwhile, I have a place called Jerry’s on Front, with a little storefront where we do shows – if everyone was to practise social distancing you’d get maybe five people in there – and six rehearsal studios. Many of the tenants are full-time touring musicians who have watched three to six months of gigs evaporate. We might have to let people defer some payments for a while.
I also have an album out on Friday, which I’m self-releasing. Ironically enough it’s a live album, which somehow seems more novel and meaningful now. When I was planning to make this, some people were like, oh, live records are a lesser product. And now I feel I have this document of something we can’t even do right now: commune around some music.
A lot of fans don’t realise how low the margin for error is for a lot of musicians you see in the media – they are often making the same amount of money as a bartender. People have asked me about putting things up on Bandcamp, or starting a Patreon [crowdfunding] page – basically busking for money. People are saying they’ll shift live performances to video screenings, and then you can pay to tune in to watch them. I’m ambivalent about that too, because that just feels like more of the current model with streaming, a tech-mediated thing. I’m not judging, though. People need to do what they have to do. I think it’s important for people to come together and to connect in some way. If we’re drowning, let’s see if we can hold each other up.
‘I feel like I’m living in a movie’
Twinnie, British country singer and actor
Last Thursday night, we were still waiting to see if the Country 2 Country festival I was playing would go ahead. It got cancelled, but everyone pulled together, with BBC Radio 2 putting a one-off show together to lift everybody’s spirits – I got to sing my set live on national radio for 20 minutes.
I felt conflicted about touring. I wanted to honour people who had paid for tickets. But there were lots of other countries that are doing things differently and that was playing on my mind. I want to do my bit, but sometimes you just don’t know what the right decision is. There’s people in my band that have got babies; they were playing for a lot of other artists at C2C, too, so they’ve lost so much money. I feel pretty gutted about it all, if I’m honest. I feel like I’m living in a movie – like the world is just ceasing.
But the most important thing is to remain positive and keep people’s spirits high, and music does that for people. You only have to look at the scenes in Italy, where people are singing on their balconies. I’m sure there’ll be a lot of livestreamed concerts, and chatting to fans online, rather than putting the fear of God into people and making people feel stressed and panicked. I’m trying to meditate and stay calm, laugh a lot and spread joy and be peaceful, because, like all things, this will pass.
‘The shop can only survive with government help’
Mandy Kemp is the proprietor of Jam Records and Coffee in Falmouth, Cornwall
We’ve been here 17 years. CDs have died, so it’s mostly vinyl. The cafe and records feed off each other. It’s such a small town that I need both for it to make enough money. Record Store Day being postponed until June was a massive relief. There was a suggestion that it could have gone partially online, which would have been a disaster: competing with Rough Trade, Resident, record shops with really good online facilities. RSD is basically a month’s worth of sales in one day, so if you’re doing it it has to work.
We could probably last a month without me having to put some money in, and I don’t want to put money into a failing business. The shop can only survive with big financial help from the government. The difference between Boris and Macron’s responses was worlds apart. In France, they said no business will go under and we’ll put €45bn into supporting them. That’s the scale of what has to happen. And it can’t be loans.
The shop has always paid me less than minimum wage – it feels like the triumph is to pay your way. It’s a community of people who come here, from the customer in his 70s who has coffee every day to the tourists who come back every year. I’d be bereft if it couldn’t carry on, but what can you do?
‘Even if we went ahead, we wouldn’t have had any artists’
Alasdair Campbell is the head of Counterflows, an experimental music festival in Glasgow
Our festival has 300 people at each event, smaller than the size of the Scottish government recommendation to cancel events over 500 people. But the artists we had were on tour in Europe, which was closing down very quick. Even if we wanted to go ahead, we wouldn’t have had any artists.
We have public funding and we’re paying cancellations fees to all artists. Other promoters have complained to me about this, because they say: oh, you’re setting a precedent. But it’s not a competition to see who can be the most morally high – we’ve got the support of Creative Scotland to go ahead with those payments. I’ve also got £10,000-worth of flights to try and get refunds for. That’s a lot of money for my size of festival. With the accommodation, I’ve been offered a 50% reduction on my booking and I think I’ve got to go with that.
It’s devastating up to a point, but there’s a lot of people facing a lot of hardship and I feel a bit lucky, actually. My close friends who run venues are all really struggling; a festival is a one-off thing we can cancel and move forward. The plan is to do the next year’s programme with the artists we’ve got now, plus extra. This year was the first time we’d attempted to bring a Jamaican artist to the UK, I Jahbar, with hard work around getting him a visa. His attitude has been amazing – he was like: we’ve done it once, we can do it again. So we’ve got to keep plugging away at it.
