Daily online concerts become labor of love
Livestreaming gigs by David Gans have lifted artist and his fans over pandemic
The new normal is quickly going back to the old normal again, as entertainment venues fill their 2021 calendars with inperson performances, and virtual events feel increasingly like a part of ancient pandemic history.
But for David Gans, the streak continues. The Oakland singersongwriter has performed more than 450 (nearly) uninterrupted daily livestreamed performances on Facebook since the start of the pandemic, with no end in sight.
The digital gigs started mostly as a financial move to soften the blow from a canceled tour, but somewhere along the way, he started cherishing the online community that has formed around the shows, and the everydayat4 p.m. video concerts have become the most artistically rewarding part of his 50year performing career.
“I feel like in a way I’m doing this online piano bar for hippies,” Gans said, after a recent performance from his home near Lake Merritt. “I love these people. I’ve met some of them in person and look forward to meeting more. And look what they’ve done for me.”
Since the 1970s, Gans, 67, has worked as a music journalist, author and radio host, almost always in orbit of the Grateful Dead.
His oral history “This Is All a Dream We Dreamed” with coauthor Blair Jackson is an essential Deadhead read. Gans has hosted the nationally syndicated “The Grateful Dead Hour” since the 1980s, and cohosts the weekly “Tales of the Golden Road” on SiriusXM.
But for the last 20 years, Gans has been increasingly focused on his own music, recording albums including “Drop the Bone” in 2017, while increasing his touring schedule. He says 2020 was looking to be his most lucrative year ever, with April 2020 scheduled as his busiest travel month in years.
Instead, after a March 6, 2020, performance at the Point San Pablo Harbor Club in Richmond, it came to an abrupt halt. Gans knew about the large streaming sites that worked with stadium concerts and other huge acts, but he didn’t see an entry for a smaller solo artist.
“It just felt like a world that was not available to me,” Gans said, emphasizing that he first explored streaming shows as a matter of necessity. “I decided to just start playing every day to see what happens.”
From an attendance and PayPal tip jar standpoint, his first Facebook Live stream on April 4 was a modest success. He doesn’t remember how many showed up or how much money he made, except it was enough for him to try a second day. He was making in the beginning a few hundred dollars per week.
But artistically, it became a revelation. Gans, whose preshow practices once amounted to a sound check or a little noodling in a hotel, saw his technical prowess improve measurably. Better yet, he started exploring more of his own history — originals “The Town That Still Believes in Magic” (76 plays over the past 15 months) and “Blue Roses” (75 plays) have been played the most according to Gans’ data from midJuly. Next are “Box of Rain” (73) and “Terrapin Station” (69) from the Grateful Dead songbook. Occasionally, he’ll mix in songs he hasn’t played since his high school or college bands; “Please Please Me” by the Beatles and “Love Potion No. 9” made recent appearances.
“I’m actually doing a more responsible professional job of being a musician in these circumstances than I ever did when I was a touring musician,” Gans said, later adding, “What I do is not about perfection, it’s about doing it for real right now. I learned that from the Grateful Dead. An absolutely honest performance right now rather than an attempt to replicate something before.”
Gans estimates he has missed about 12 days total over the past 15½ months, sometimes playing daily streaks that last for months.
“I missed five or six days last September because my wife and I went on a camping trip,” he said. “I missed a day for a colonoscopy. I missed a couple of days for technical difficulties here and there.”
Pollstar tracks his number of total stream watchers. Most days he’s below a thousand — 1,500 on July 5 is his high mark for the month — but the dayafterday cumulative effect keeps him on the same chart as Lil Nas X. There have been months, his bookkeeper says, when the livestream tips have matched his touring take, after road expenses are factored in.
But the core is a group of followers he calls the “green room” crew; a few dozen regulars who send Gans requests, can quote lyrics from more obscure songs or might notice a new chord change on one
of his originals. They communicate, cheerfully and endlessly, in the Facebook messages about the live stream.
Gans showed up to a recent Zoom surprise birthday celebration for a green room superfan and den mother who goes by the pseudonym Jill Swellville and who, like many of the regulars, lives out of state.
The group asked about each other’s children, complimented trippy Zoom backgrounds, and told each other what the online community has meant as a place of comfort.
Reached later, Swellville said Gans has been a “silver lining of the pandemic.” She’s been dealing with nonCOVID health scares during the past year and recently listened to Gans at the hospital on an IV while waiting for some invasive
tests.
“No matter how bad and how dark my life was getting, so impossibly dark, I found that every time I got in that room, my day completely transformed,” she said. “And it was in a completely genuine joyful way . ... I didn’t go into Gans looking for friends, but I found some of the most dear friends that I think I have right now.”
Before a recent live stream at his home office, Gans settles into what looks like a full concert setup: There are nine pedals, several mikes and an amp, all wired to a Mac laptop on his desk. Gans is known for his live looping techniques — recording chords, repeating them midsong, then playing over them in real time — which have become noticeably tighter over several hundred performances.
He takes an Eagles request — rarely a seasoned performer’s favorite band to cover — but doesn’t seem to mind, because the green room member who requested it, Jesse, is a mensch. One of his diehard followers has been putting in requests for the Lovin’ Spoonful. He’s working on his third song by that band.
Even as Gans eases back into the live performance scene (his first live gig was June 23 at the Junction in Mill Valley), there is no end date for the virtual shows at the moment.
“I’m going to keep doing the live stream for as long as it makes sense to do it,” Gans said. “The criteria are: Am I enjoying it, are people watching and are a few dollars dribbling in?”
At least three more inperson shows are on the horizon, including Thursday, July 22, at the Cannery Kitchen & Tap in Castro Valley and Aug. 7 at the Days in Between festival in Laytonville. But don’t worry about the green room crowd. Gans plans to take his video rig on the road and hook up the live stream to any venue that will allow it.
“I have never felt more heard and appreciated and loved as a performer than I am right now,” Gans said. “That thing about having people quote my songs in their lives. That’s why I came to this planet, to tell stories, to make something. It’s not that I think I’m all that important or anything, but it turns out that my mission in life was to write songs and sing them.”