How Clyne is keeping Circus Mexicus and hope alive
Roger Clyne is doing what he can to keep the spirit of his Circus Mexicus music festival alive in a year defined by social distancing.
It just won’t be in Mexico.
Or feature other bands.
Or have an audience that Clyne can see.
But the Tempe rocker and his Peacemakers will be together livestreaming a concert on what would have been day three of a four-day blowout in Puerto Penasco, Mexico, on Saturday, June 6, a year after marking the anniversary.
“We’re not letting Circus Mexicus just completely go into the dark,” he says. “We’re gonna keep that candle lit.”
Clyne launched the festival in 1999 with a rooftop performance for about 150 fans — a baptism of firewater Clyne recalls as both “a big mess” and “a ton of fun.”
In 2019, they drew closer to 5,000 revelers to see 24 bands on eight stages.
“Funny enough, our biggest event of the year is in another country and draws people from basically all 50 states,” he says.
Which made the thought of canceling
festival’s 20th especially disheartening.
“Having to not play Circus this year is financially very serious,” Clyne says.
“We’ve spent 20 years putting a lot of eggs in that basket. But right now, it would be really foolish of us to bring 4,000, 5,000 people down to Mexico even if we could go. It’s just not the time to do it. But that’s a pretty big income stream to have dry up.”
What canceling the band’s biggest show of the year means
It’s not the only income stream he’s seen dry up since early March, the last time he was able to perform a show before states started shutting down slow the spread of the coronavirus.
To get back to his normal touring schedule, Clyne would need some densely populated concert hubs to open up for it to make financial sense.
“The smaller cities don’t seem to be necessarily adhering to the same guidelines,” Clyne says. “But with Chicago, Minneapolis and New York City dropping out, there’s no way that Wapakoneta, Ohio, can underwrite a tour.”
No offense to the people of Wapakoneta. Clyne loves playing there.
“It’s just this little crossroads in the
to
middle of nowhere,” he says. “And this guy’s got a cool venue there. It’s an old school building with a 1982 PA that’s way too loud. He’s still got shag carpeting. I totally love it. But you know, it only holds 45 people so that’s not gonna make it work.”
Roughly 85% of the Peacemakers’ annual income is derived from playing concerts. Clyne did 170 shows last year.
“People think you have royalties coming in, but at this size we don’t,” he says. “Online merchandise is something of an income stream. But it’s certainly not enough to keep the band, the crew and their families going. Most of our income is tickets and T-shirts.”
He’s trying to be smart about eventually returning to the stage.
“As much as I want to get together with 2,000 people in a small place, sing at the top of our lungs and spill suds all over the floor,” he says, “until we know this thing’s gonna stop doing harm, we should be very cautious.”
At the moment, Clyne’s next live performances are in early July — a fourdate Arizona Highways Tour of smaller towns originally booked for March with drummer P.H. Naffah.
Clyne says he’s been talking to his friend who owns one of the venues on that tour, the Lion’s Den Bar & Grill in Pinetop.
“He’ll do music outside and spread lawn chairs out,” he says.
“And people aren’t supposed to gather in numbers or pile up at the bar. So he’s doing things slowly and I think that’s how it should be done. We’ve made this big investment in social distancing. I’m hoping that investment gets honored by everybody so that we can really kind of snuff this thing out.”
It’s been hard for Clyne to step away from live performances, which have in many ways defined his sense of selfworth since the ‘90s when his college band, as he calls it – the Refreshments – signed a major-label deal and scored a national modern rock radio breakthrough with “Banditos.”
Music has been what he does and, by association, who he is for more than 20 years
This time away from playing concerts has been “painful,” he says.
“I know I’m a songwriter and I record, but I feel like my life has the greatest professional impact from a stage. That’s really where my band and I have honed our chops. And it’s been really odd to have that affirmation evaporate for the moment.”
It took a while for Clyne to overcome his reservations about trying to recapture what he missed about those live performances in the form of a livestream.
“I was really reticent,” he says. “I don’t do so hot without feedback from an audience. Once a song is finished, there’s nothing happening between you and the screen. And I know some performers look at the Facebook comments. I’m not comfortable with it.”
What finally brought him around to streaming was the idea of restoring that connection to the fans whose decades of support have allowed him to sustain himself as a professional musician.
“So many people were doing it as a means to connect with a very distressed audience and community,” he says. “And that’s an important job for the artist.”
He’s also part of that distressed community.
“We’re not just walking around as artists with spiritual life preservers that help us stay afloat all the time,” he says. “I’m subject to the angst, ennui, anxiety that this thing has carried into our daily lives. So when I finally heeded the call, it was mostly to be an artist for the people.”
Having said that, he would also like to offset some small fraction of the revenue he’s lost since COVID-19 put a temporary end to live performances.
“We don’t have an income and who knows when we will?” he says.
He’s grateful to the internet, he says. “One, to be able to be an artist. And two, to be able to sort of humbly step up to the camera and say, here’s a ticket that will 100% go to supporting the entire band and our families.”
Most of Clyne’s performances have streamed at no charge to the viewer with a note that says your money would be gratefully accepted.
He only charges for the shows that have more overhead, like Circus Mexicus.
“That will be a ticketed event,” he says. “And people can elect to buy the ticket or not. I certainly hope they do. Because we’re investing in a stage and light and sound and renting a large bandwidth provider so as many people anywhere in the world can watch it live.”
Although a lot of what he’s streamed so far has been solo acoustic, live on his back patio, Circus Mexicus will be a fullband show with members of the Jons, one of Tucson’s most popular bands, adding horns and percussion.
They considered bringing in some other bands to try and replicate the Circus Mexicus experience with a second stage.
“But with all the camera switching, the technical problems that come with that and all the inexpertise we presently possess,” Clyne says, “we decided that it would be best for us to get up and perform a long, kickass show. We’re a rock band. Once we take the stage, our job is to leave nothing on it.”
As much as the pandemic has disrupted what he loves to do, the hardest part of getting through this temporary shutdown has been worrying about his friends and family.
“My daughter lives in New York,” he says. “And when this started, my son was in DC. So that was pretty spooky stuff to have them essentially locked in those hotspots.”
He’s also been dealing with certain financial anxieties while hoping we come out of this a more enlightened species.
“I hear voices of real sanity and empathy,” he says. “And I think that’s exactly what we need. So I’m hoping we get a residual of that, a compassion that we bring back to our regular daily waking lives that we didn’t necessarily have before,”
Not every voice he’s heard has been infused with empathy, he says. But he’s still hopeful we can learn from this experience.
“It’s in times of crisis that we grow,” he says.
“I’m hoping that we find the strength to give each other strength. I worry about the world we’re gonna wake up to when this is over. But I’m hoping it’s better because that’s what humans have the potential to do is become better. We’re not fixed in instinct or habit. We can grow and that’s what I’m hoping to do.”