Closures could mute city’s music scene
‘THIS IS DEVASTATING’: Venues, staff and artists facing long-term hit
Last weekend, Rusty Andrews sat on a rocking chair outside McGonigel’s Mucky Duck as he’s done for nearly 30 years. Guests come to the Upper Kirby pub and songwriter’s haven to hear live music, so he checks their name off a list, takes them inside and shows them to their seats.
Andrews noticed a truck parked across the street but didn’t think anything of it. When he took a guest inside, the driver jumped out and grabbed the Duck’s giant tub of hand sanitizer and drove off toward Kirby.
“Can you believe it?” asked his wife and coowner of the Duck, Teresa Andrews. “That wasn’t there for us, it was there for our guests. We’re doing our best here, but something like that … ”
The venue was taking all the steps it could to remain open as the corona
virus pandemic erodes a live entertainment industry. And even the best intentions sometimes set up small venues as prey.
When Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo announced Monday that the county would be shutting down bars and clubs in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19, the 30-year-old Mucky Duck was hit particularly hard.
Though only a 120-seat venue inside, each St. Patrick’s Day the club tents its parking lot for a daylong celebration with live music, food and drinks. The tent was installed last week before concerns over the novel coronavirus peaked — at a cost of $14,000 that the venue can’t recoup.
Around the city, on St. Patrick’s eve, bar and club owners lamented the closure and the long-term effect it will have on the venues and their workers with no money coming in, potentially for weeks.
“The effect of a closure on a little place like this is devastating,” said Teresa Andrews.
The Houston St. Patrick’s Parade Commission had complied with the city’s request to cancel the downtown parade. But some pubs and bars — including Mucky Duck and the downtown and west side locations of Lucky’s — hoped to remain open for St. Patrick’s Day, a day beloved for celebratory drinking.
“There’s been no cohesiveness in any of the messages about this,” Andrews said. “Somebody says things are OK, then they tell you to shut everything down.”
Over at Irish Pub Kenneally’s, owner Sheila Flowers was equally disheartened. “The situation is grim,” she said. “St. Patrick’s Day pays my rent for six months. I’m not belittling the virus, but the press has been negligent. They’ve whipped this into a panic. We won’t even know the impact for six or seven months. It’s going to take that long for people to get back on their feet. It’s a ripple effect. It’s really severe.”
Jon Smith, the manager of Midtown bar Belle Station, considers the closure part of the country’s “mass hysteria.”
“Houston has some of the most restaurants per square block in any city. You’re talking a mass amount of employees,” Smith said. “Who’s going to pay their bills? The small mom and pops may never reopen. At the end of the day, where is the evidence to support this movement? It’s not showing, other than mass hysteria. If you look at the numbers, it just doesn’t add up. My heart bleeds for the young adults. This is the way they make their living, and they may be out of a job.”
Charles Armstrong, owner of JR’s in Montrose, likened the measure to hurricane closings in the past. “(It’s) just like the city of Houston’s mandatory closure of all businesses at a specific time during the hurricanes of past. We will follow their guidance … for the common good of our guests in the city of Houston,” he said. “The health and survival of all of us during this global pandemic is our priority.”
The city’s shutdown was a definitive act after several days in which smaller entertainment venues took a wait-and-see approach. Live Nation and AEG — two of the biggest concert promoters in the country — last week postponed all their events for March. Houston’s decision followed a similar one in New York City that shut down entertainment venues, restaurants and bars.
Venues nationwide will clearly take a financial hit, and it will trickle down to a web of staff — kitchen, bartenders, booking agents, sound engineers and so on — who also lose their work for the foreseeable future. Local artists and entertainers will also go unpaid as a gig economy is frozen.
“If things in the city shut down for a couple of weeks, we’re in big trouble,” Andrews said. “Even four days was devastating to us.”
The four days she referred to a dark period of power outages caused by Hurricane Ike in 2008. The venue employs 20 people. Many smaller venues continued to operate through the weekend, while big events such as the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo and Austin’s South by Southwest festival canceled. But gradually, artists began to step back from their tour dates.
Singer-songwriter James McMurtry has a show scheduled for the Heights Theater in April and Coffee House Live in May. Both remain on the books for now, but he canceled his March shows, which he called “the only ethical choice at this time” in an op-ed published by Rolling Stone.
Two weeks ago, the duo the Mastersons had hoped to keep their Texas dates — including a show next week at the Mucky Duck — on the books. But the Houston native and guitarist/ singer Chris Masterson over the weekend said the group had decided to head back to Los Angeles where they’re based. “The responsible thing to do is stay home,” he said.
McMurtry acknowledged that musicians are taking a “financial hit” but added that PayPal donations, online downloads and online merchandise orders can offset some small part of the loss of income.
Kevin Murphy, who plays in the Celtic and bluegrass group the Traveling Murphys with his wife and two daughters, decided over the weekend to pull the plug on a St. Patrick’s show with the group at the Phoenix on Westheimer.
“It just seemed the sensible thing to do,” he said. He mentioned a friend who is a sound engineer in Dallas and who had weeks of work canceled. “He’s going to set something up in his garage, have people over and start a quarantine band,” Murphy said. “I think a lot of people will be streaming music.”
The service industry, though, will feel the pinch.
Some venues, such as McGonigel’s Mucky Duck, are asking their regular patrons to buy a venue gift card or merchandise online in hopes of generating some money so they can keep paying their staff.
“These are the people who have supported us all along,” Andrews said. “And we’re so grateful, but I don’t know how it can offset the hit we’re going to take. I don’t know if anything can do that.”