Pandemic Days
It’s been a mighty strange year already, and we’re only halfway into 2020. For music performers and fans, though, it’s been like giving up an essential food – or at least having to figure out a new way to get the nourishment you need.
The clubs, bars and theaters where music was played either are still silent or are trying to make ends meet with social-distancing requirements that cut capacity by half. Music festivals have been postponed until late summer or fall or, in many cases, scrapped altogether until at least 2021. Musicians are scrambling, trying to make ends meet and keep fans.
But artists are creating and getting creative in getting the music to fans. Local band Stonefish had to scrap a planned CD release show, but that morphed into the BLANK-sponsored Sofa Soiree, which featured an entire day of artists streaming music from their homes. A week later, a livestreamed benefit featuring many of the same acts was held for beloved music store Raven Records & Rarities.
Many local artists have made livestreamed performances weekly events. Brandon Fulson, for one, began livestreaming shows on Fridays and now has switched to 10 p.m. on Saturdays.
“It’s been way better than I ever expected,” says Fulson. “I’ve been keeping the regulars, but it’s been growing. And, honestly, as far as the virtual tip jar goes, I’m making more than I made in the clubs – considering how much I spent on gas and the bar tab!”
While his number of weekly viewers ranges between 15 to 20, Fulson regularly pulls in 50 to 60 viewers at times during his typically two-hour streams. He says that getting used to reading comments from listeners and responding while keeping his head in the music has been a little difficult. However, viewers enjoy the interaction, and it’s helped to develop a community as fans get to know each other.
“If I was at a bar, there would be a bunch of people just talking,” says Fulson. “But this brings all the people who really want to pay attention together. Still, I think we all miss the live aspect of shows and playing with a group.”
Trisha Gene Brady was just planning a big tour after having some time off to woodshed. She jumped into livestreaming in mid-March when her annual appearance at Farragut Primary School was canceled due to COVID-19. The yearly visit is at the request of a friend who is a teacher there, and the children listen to Brady’s music through the year and then sing some of it back to her when she appears. The teacher asked Brady if she’d simply livestream for the students so that they wouldn’t miss out entirely.
“So I did an experiment [for a Facebook audience] before that to see if it would work, and it went really well,” says Brady. “Then I did it twice a week in April.”
With Venmo and PayPal accounts listed for a virtual tip jar, Brady was surprised at how much she made.
“It was pretty lucrative. It definitely helped me pay my bills!”
She also did a couple of individual song performances by request and put up several “Mountain Mama” videos with gardening tricks and survival-skills tips.
“Mostly stuff to keep me from being bored!” says Brady.
The number of artists doing livestreams, though, means competition is fierce.
“Some very big folks are out there doing them,” says Brady. “Are they going to watch me or Bruce Springsteen or Annie Lennox?”
Brady herself tunes in to the weekly Saturday livestream from Kevin Russell, best known for playing with Shinyribs and The Gourds. Russell recently held a drive-in concert where the audience sat in their cars where they could see Russell and listened to the audio over their car stereos. There are rumblings that there are plans for artists to conduct some similar shows in Knoxville.
Adeem Bingham, who performs as Adeem the Artist, began doing Facebook live performances on Mondays, the day he typically performed as his covers act Captain Redbeard at Senor Taco. However, in a more surprising route, Bingham came up with the idea for “The Yard Tour,” in which, for $10 per request, he travels to fans’ homes and sings their requested song from at least six feet away.
The first one went so well that Bingham decided to schedule more – sometimes combined with deliveries for Crafty Bastard Brewery, sometimes featuring only music.
“In a lot of ways, I’d rather play one song in people’s yards rather than three hours at a restaurant interrupting people’s dinner,” says Bingham.
He’s found that normally social people who are self-quarantining have very different reactions.
“Mostly it cheers people up, but I’ve been surprised that some people cry,” says Bingham.
His most requested song is “Pandemic Days,” a catchy tune written early in the quarantine that gained a following on Facebook and sums up a lot of what people were feeling:
“Day drinking, night blinking to a tiger documentary, I’m in maze of pandemic days that slip away from me.”
“The Yard Tour” has already inspired at least one artist, Florida-based Kasondra Rose, to do her own yard tour.
As far as inspiration goes, the pandemic has spurred the creativity of many artists and had the opposite effect on others. Bingham and Brady say they have written and created less during the time. Fulson, though, has been inspired and says he’s seen the effect on many artists, including his sometime collaborator producer/songwriter John Baker. Many Knoxville stalwarts seem to be on writing binges.
Maybe the most prolific local artist during the pandemic, though, is Wil Wright of acts Senryu, Peak Physique and LiL iFFy and who has more recently become a classical and film-score composer. Since the quarantine began, Wright has released a new song with Peak Physique (“Stay as Close as You Can”), a composition with violist Erin Archer (“A Prayer to Whoever Is Out There”), a collaborative album with Knoxville oud player Laith Keilany, a symphony called “The King Wave” and new music with Jack Rentfro. Wright also started a new internet radio show, “Dork Shadows,” and has a stack of other projects in the works.
“When I don’t know what to do about something, I write music,” says Wright.
Wright’s great aunt, who helped raise him and for whom he in turn was the primary caregiver, died just before the pandemic began.
“When this started to fall, I felt like I was just really starting to grieve,” says Wright. “And when the virus happened, it just kind of got balled up with that. That first month, it felt like the world was falling apart. There was darkness pushing from the inside and the outside, and it just turned into all this work. Luckily, I have a great wife and kid to help me keep feeling the good things. But, yeah, I had one personal death and 100,000 existential deaths. Each felt so enormous, the only way to process it was breaking this stuff open.”
The quarantine meant that three premieres of some of Wright’s recent work had to be postponed or canceled, but it made Wright realize that he needed to work with artists with whom he wanted to collaborate before something bad befell either him or them.
“I’d always wanted to work with Laith [who is a cancer survivor], and I realized that one of us could die and this record might never happen. We could use this as a way to lift people up. As musicians, this is what we give to the world. And I didn’t want to leave this earth without having made this record with Laith.”
Some artists are chancing interaction at recording studios to get their music completed. However, at others, including Knoxville’s Famous London Recording Studio, it’s mostly a long-distance arrangement.
“It’s sort of pushing things in a direction they were already going in: folks sending us files,” says Famous London’s Fred Kelly. “We’ve been mixing Marina Orchestra tracks they recorded in New Orleans. We’ve been working on a Jodie Manross song mix and mixing this Redd Daughtry song … so, it’s like, we’re working but still not seeing anyone. So for Tellios, a band we’re recording [in the studio], the sessions have ground to a halt for now.”
For at least one Knoxville musician, things have been especially distant.
Just before the quarantines began, Stirling Walsh, bandleader of the Colonel Williams House Band and bassist for at least eight different Knoxville acts, went ahead with plans for a three-week vacation in Asia with his former college roommate. While initially planning to go to India, Walsh was laying over in Thailand when that country’s quarantine went into effect. He’s been in Bangkok since March 9. His former roommate, who has an apartment in Bangkok, where Walsh is now staying, is stuck in China.
“I wasn’t even supposed to be in Thailand,” says Walsh. “We were going to travel around India and Japan. … Everything in Thailand that I would want to do is shut down [beaches, museums, temples, bars, music, pools, etc.]. Other than prisoners, hermits or hikers, I can’t imagine why anyone would be alone for this long. I do have some friends here, but everyone in Thailand has taken this whole situation very seriously. There’s still a military-enforced curfew in effect. There was an alcohol ban for 23 days. I’m on a first-name basis with the girls that work at 7-Eleven even though I have no idea what they are saying most of the time. None of them can pronounce my name so they call me khun sah-tur-ling [Mister Stirling].”
While Walsh says things are pretty boring overall, there are a few good things.
“Grocery delivery is pretty awesome. I got a ukulele, but I don’t play it much because it’s too happy-sounding and I’m just not in the mood! I have learned to cook some good Thai food.”
He still has no idea when it will be safe to make the journey back to the United States. And even if he did, he wouldn’t be returning to the music scene he knew before leaving.
Brady says she doesn’t expect to be performing for live audiences for a long while.
“I’m not willing to risk it,” she says. “I could be a carrier or I could get it and have it ruin my voice forever. And singers push a lot of air. I think they call us ‘super spreaders.’ I think it’s our responsibility to lead by example.”
Fulson says he has a gig scheduled for June 24, but he isn’t promoting it because he’s doubtful that it won’t be canceled. More immediately, he’s concentrating on the livestreams and a new radio show he’s been hosting on internet-radio website Real Knoxville Music, recently started by young music enthusiast Chris Lamb.
Bingham was planning a multi-state tour, but it’s on hold indefinitely.
“I have no ambition for touring right now,” he says. “I call it a big question mark. My concern is things going back to normal with people acting like it’s over. I drove to Gatlinburg, and people were all walking around without masks.”
Brady wonders that audiences might lose their taste for paying for expensive concerts when they’ve had more intimate experiences with artists by way of computer.
Bingham sees a future for artists and promoters who know how to be flexible:
“We might lose venues. Musicians were trying to get house shows before the pandemic. Now, what is the point of paying a guarantee to a band if limit for a club is half capacity? Those who survive this are going to be very creative people who create new ways to get music out.”
