Socially distant concerts signal a reopening for live music

The last time bassist Jon Jones played a concert with his country group Eli Young Band was March 8. He hopes to hit the stage again in June to launch a new drivein concert series in his first return to live music with fans since the devastating coronavirus.

“This is going to be a surreal kind of setting,” Jones said of plans to play acoustically to 400 cars full of people at the new Texas Rangers stadium in Arlington, Texas.George Couri, of artist management company Triple 8 Management, teamed up with the Rangers to put on the four-night concert series called Concert in Your Car starting June 4.

Drive-in concerts aren’t new, but in the wake of the pandemic, the idea hit in Europe and now the United States. Country star Keith Urban played a drive-in theater in Tennessee last week with scaled back production and crew, but he said that he thinks the concert industry in the near future will pivot to a drive-in style, but with larger capacity.

“The stage is going to be coming out to the parking lot and people will be staying in their cars,” said Urban. “It will be an endless tailgate party.”

Melissa Carbone, the CEO of Tailgate Fest, said there are a lot of changes coming to the festival this year because of the coronavirus, including removing a general admission pit area and a VIP pool party.

The World Health Organization has guidance and risk assessments for mass gatherings during the COVID-19 outbreak, said Lucia Mullen, an analyst at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and part of the WHO’s expert cell for mass gatherings and COVID-19.

For most bands, touring is a large majority of their income, well above what they get for releasing albums. But Couri said this initial launch of drive-in concerts at the Texas stadium won’t be a huge moneymaking endeavor early on.