MUSICIANS, CLUBS STRUGGLE TO SURVIVE.
Like the rest of us, Pat Byrne doesn’t know what comes next, so he’s doing what he did before the pandemic, perhaps with greater frequency: writing songs.
After two years of slowly building an audience in Texas, some 4,500 miles away from his hometown in Ireland, Byrne has had to adapt to a music industry that remains in triage. Shows have been canceled and venues have closed. Then venues opened at a fraction of capacity before things got worse again. To look at any music venue in this city, or any other, is to see a whiteboard in which names and dates are erased, rewritten, and then erased again.
“I expect this show could cancel, but we’ll see,” Byrne says of a Saturday gig on the books at McGonigel’s Mucky Duck. Even if the show goes on, it’ll be in an empty room, with staff providing the live audience and a larger group of viewers watching online.
Like many other artists, Byrne’s hung up between wanting to operate in the safest possible way while also helping the matrix of people who have helped him grow a career in the states over a few years: managers, booking agents, venue owners, bartenders, soundboard operators.
“I miss having a microphone in front of me,” he says. “And I miss people like the Mucky Duck, who rely on music and fans. It’s just terrifying. It’s my livelihood, but it’s also a lot of other people’s livelihood. Maybe those places rely on me, but I definitely rely on them. I just pray these places make it through.”
His prayer is one fans of live music should all repeat.
Gene Watson — a country music hitmaker in the ’70s — has run a reliable touring business in the years since. But the backing band he refers to as “my bunch” count on his 150-plus shows a year. The band has been idle at a time they would have been doing regular work.
“The brakes got put on everything,” Watson says. “And look, we’re going to do what we got to do, but we’re also not going to take chances. We have a band to think about, but we also have fans to think about. It’s just a mess right now. There isn’t much room for wiggling. Right now, working performers are dead in the water.”
Walking a fine line
Watson’s comments underscore just how many people are required to put on a concert, be it at the listening room, club, large club, theater or arena level. A week ago, a Robert Earl Keen show appeared on the White Oak Music Hall site for July. The listing disappeared a day later. Everybody wants performances to return. Nobody knows when they can do so safely.
Venues have taken different approaches. The summer’s biggest shows at the Toyota Center, the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion and the Smart Financial Centre have all been postponed. But smaller venues have struggled to find a safe space between paying their bills and presenting music and also protecting patrons.
The Mucky Duck did shows for two weekends, with capacity reduced from 120 to 30. The venue had plans to celebrate its 30th anniversary this year, but instead has been rescheduling shows or doing them as livestreams. Last Friday, singer-songwriter Lisa Morales took the stage at the venue for such a show, and Shake Russell did the following night.
“It’s been pretty (bad),” says Teresa Andrews, who runs the venue with husband Rusty Andrews. “But despite our needs,
with our city in the situation it’s in, we need to be smart. We need to care more about others.”
The venue has been working with Feed the Frontline, taking donations from patrons and creating and delivering meals to some of the city’s medical community. They’ve also taken steps to improve the sound and video capabilities at the pub and increased their visibility with “Live From Norfolk Street,” a YouTube channel, where the performances are archived for those who can’t stream them live. All shows have links where listeners can contribute to the performer and the venue.
But when crowds can return remains uncertain. Shows that were postponed in March — like the Americana duo the Mastersons — and moved to late September still don’t feel secure.
The Heights Theater moved some of its April and May shows to 2021. It also pushed all of its July shows off the calendar. August includes some bookings, but they appear headed for postponement.
The struggle is particularly acute in Houston’s hip-hop scene, where venues are usually standing room only, eliminating the ability to cordon off seats. “With rap, people are closer together,” says rapper K-Rino. “It’s more interactive, it’s more about this hype between the artist and the listener. I’ve seen people do things online, but it’s not the same. I’ve also seen videos of people doing shows where nobody is wearing masks. I’m not going to play with that now. I wanted to put that all on hold.”
Using down time to improve
Plenty of artists have sustained themselves by doing livestreams and putting out a virtual tip jar. Austin-based songwriter Monte Warden started building a fan base in the ’80s with his band the Wagoneers. He went on to write hits for acts like George Strait. Warden decided to release a new album of torchy jazz country mid-pandemic, and his weekly livestreams have been a viable way to make some money when venues are largely empty.
Byrne says he still gets about 50 to 100 people tuning into his Wednesday night livestreams. And while they sustain his art, they don’t buoy the infrastructure that previously put on shows.
Byrne had planned to record an album to be released this summer. But when the pandemic sent people indoors, he stopped his plans to record. He may still head to Nashville to do some sessions next month. But a proper album won’t surface for a while. And he’s OK with that.
“I had 11 songs written for a 10-song album,” he says. “But if there’s a silver lining to this, it’s that I’ve written more. And I think the record will be better for it. Now I have 21 songs written. I’m happier choosing 10 from that group.”
Amy Annelle, another Austinbased songwriter, has written a song about our times: “Stay Away, Stay Alive.” She also knows that “the community is hurting because there’s this interconnective thing between artists and the people who work at the venues.” But she admits, “I consider myself lucky as an introvert. I’ve been productive during this time. Music is my way of working through the uncertainty.”
Whether or not he gets to record, Byrne has found temporary sanctuary in his Live Streaming Wednesdays, which have a sweet time signature that represents his homes old and new: “5 p.m. CST/11 p.m. Irish.”
While such performances don’t help venues and their staffs, they have been a way for artists to keep afloat in an era when live performance was a primary reve
nue stream.
“The first time I did one of these was after my tour got canceled,” says singersongwriter Todd Snider, who spent part of his youth in the Spring area.
Before settling in Nashville, Snider cut his teeth as a young songwriter in Hill Country venues. “I didn’t ask questions, I just did it, and then I heard that 10,000 people saw it. So the next week I tried to do it again but not get stoned. But that was no fun.”
Like others, Snider (scheduled to play The Heights Theater in late September) has found a particular rhythm for his streamed shows — he enjoys playing it loose and casual. He sings some of his own songs, but unlike a show — where a visceral ebb and flow exists between performer and listener — a stream lets him take more liberties. He threads through covers aplenty, like Bob Dylan’s “Visions of Johanna,” which he says, “Is just about a perfect song.”
“Now I just wing ’em,” he says “And people seem to like that. It’s just me and my buddy, Mark. We smoke some weed and play whatever song I want to play, and it’s easy and I can ramble on. It’s like an old radio show.”