Finding a captive audience
From their shelter to your place, local talent livestreams spiritlifting entertainment
Confined at home as the Bay Area continues to shelter in place amid the coronavirus pandemic, local musicians have taken to live streaming, reaching out through omnipresent screens to provide entertainment, comfort, community and even bliss. Thanks to Facebook, Instagram and other sites serving as public spaces for social connectivity, the musical offerings one encounters strolling around the ecommons have turned this plague season into a golden age for virtual flaneurs.
On any Monday night, one can drop in on “Parlour Shift,” a weekly livingroom broadcast by Foxtails Brigade, the Oakland duo of vocalistguitarist Laura Weinbach and violinist Anton Patzner. Seizing the opportunity to reach a vast potential audience created by the shelterinplace order, ebuskers like Foxtails Brigade have found a source of income in a landscape littered with canceled and aborted gigs. (Tipping is encouraged, with donation buttons and the like taking the place of physical tip jars.) Whether presenting their music independently or banding together online as part of virtual festivals, players in need of work are reaching audiences where they live.
“There’s this desire for event producers and communityminded folks to create something official to support the arts,” says singersongwriter Briget Boyle, who has participated in several recent livestreamed events, including last month’s I Need Space: A Live Stream Festival from Queers of the Bay. The allday festival featured a dozen artists, including Skip the Needle musician Vicki Randle, performing from home “with live captioning on every set,” Boyle says.
The broadcast garnered some 1,200 views, and the recording is still available on Facebook. It was such a success that planning immediately started for a second festival, now slated for April 18, and there’s talk that the event might continue after the shelterinplace order is lifted.
“We’re leaving the donation jar open for a month and we’ll split it after that, but we did really well financially,” Boyle reports. “It’s the coolest thing I’ve ever done. I watched all these other musicians, ate food in my kitchen, and there was no line for the bathroom.”
Boyle also recently played in a new daily broadcast known as the “Shelter in Place Music Series.” Launched by Pinole’s Beth Cloutier on March 27, the afternoon series presents halfhour live sets by six artists from around the country. The solo format favors singersongwriters who can accompany themselves, but casting a wide net enables Cloutier to present stylistically diverse lineups.
“I’m open to anyone who wants to stream,” says Cloutier, a filmmaker who designed the series both to showcase musicians and to offer diversion for overwhelmed health care workers. “But I’m still trying to figure certain things out, trying to be completely open to the situation at hand.”
Part of what makes watching a livestream performance an isolation-breaking experience is the ability to see who else is taking in the show. On Facebook broadcasts, the names of
viewers logging on pop up, and a steady stream of comments accompanies the music in real time. At Tammy Hall’s first Thursdaynight living room recital last week, she paused between tunes to give shoutouts to friends and colleagues in the audience and take requests. Singer Rhonda Benin asked for blues, and Hall responded with a simmering medley.
Organizations and presenters used to working in real life are also stepping up. Classical Revolution, spearheaded by San Francisco violist Charith Premawardhana, is presenting eighthour livestreamed festivals every Saturday featuring musicians performing at their homes in California, New Hampshire, Montreal, France and Germany.
San Jose Jazz is committed to regular streaming performances through May 1, with Oakland soul singer Lilan Kane up next on Thursday, April 9, at 7 p.m. After three decades of building an organization around presenting live music around the South Bay, San Jose Jazz is coming to terms with hosting music online. “I just think that this quarantine experience is going to take us lightyears towards comfort with virtual experiences,” says Massimo Chisessi, San Jose Jazz’s director of marketing.
While no longer open for customers, some venues are continuing to present live concerts online, too. Producer Carey Williams is hosting Spring Streaming at the Sound Room every Sunday, with guitaristvocalist Ian Faquini and trombonistvocalist Natalie Cressman up next on Sunday, April 12.
Bird & Beckett Books and Records presents the great Oakland saxophonist Phillip Greenlief playing two sets of Thelonious Monk compositions solo on Saturday, April 11. It’s material he has been developing for years but has never played in the Bay Area. Though grateful for the gig, he isn’t looking to be a regular streamer.
“There’s nothing like being in the room with the music, with your body experiencing the sound vibrations firsthand,” he says. “But then I wasn’t enthusiastic about CDs at first. You just adapt.
Mostly I’m thinking of this period as a residency at home.”
Musical couples are particularly well positioned to adapt to performing in captivity. Martinez guitarist Jeff Magidson and guitaristvocalist Isabelle Magidson perform as Duo Gadjo every night at 6 p.m., offering listeners a French music live stream with their dinner.
Vocalistguitarist Carmen Getit and keyboardist Steve Lucky have been livestreaming duets Saturday nights at 8. “We may change the time,” Getit says, “and we’ve been toying with bringing in other members from our sixpiece band through a combo of live and recorded performance that would be livestreamed.”
Despite the lockdown, some musicians just can’t get the road out of their blood. Another married duo, singer and banjo player Evie Ladin and body percussionist Keith Terry, present livestream concerts at 6 p.m. Sundays.
“We’re on tour in the house,” Ladin says. “We’ve played the office, the dining room and the kitchen. Who knows where the next show will be?”
No one seems to have taken to the format more joyfully than veteran jazz pianist Mike Greensill, an affable raconteur who performs from his living room in St. Helena weekday afternoons at 3 p.m.
With a bottomless trove of American Songbook standards and jazz tunes, he takes requests and tries to build his sets around loose themes, often pausing between songs to share a joke or a story or offer a little insight into harmony for nonmusicians.
“I had 1,200 views yesterday. It would take two years to get the same amount of people in to see me at Silo’s (in Napa),” he says, with wonder in his voice. “It’s been a revelation in a way. Maybe I don’t have to get in the car anymore and do a $60 jazz gig. I made more money last week than I normally make in a month. All in my jammy bottoms.”