#savethearts

As the late winter pandemic rolls on, bulldozing through spring and now midway through the summer season, we are seeing more small businesses roll up their welcome mats- not for a later time, when the pandemic is ‘over’, but for good. Everyone is being hit hard. Dance studios, yoga studios, restaurants, coffee shops, gyms, art studios. Retailers who can ship are able to, but have lost foot traffic sales. Restaurants who offer curbside are trying to survive at half capacity or less. Venues that are service-based haven’t had a lot of options. Particularly services that involve groups of people, sweating, in close quarters. Music venues are gradually slapping ‘for sale’ on the front door.. or, more likely, closing up quietly, because they were renting the space anyway.

So this #saveourstages hashtag has come out- it encourages people to remember the glorious days of showing up to a music venue and headbanging to their favorite touring band with their best friends, taking some selfies in the bathroom, then heading home to cut off that wristband a few days later and sport your latest band t-shirt. Remember those days, and then acknowledge that they’re not going to be back- for a long time. Longer and longer, as it seems.

The hashtag also has a Call to Action, which is to write to your legislators and push them to support venues and promoters financially, so that these venues can stay open until live music might be able to return. This is, obviously, important. But I’d like to expand the #saveourstages movement a bit, and encourage supporters to really think about what exactly those stages are for. Why are you having such a good time at live shows? I’ve spent many a night on stage- trying to play my drums as hard as possible to overcome the din of revelers below- wondering if it’s just the booze. But if it were just about the booze, there’d be a #saveourbars thing taking off. So… no. It’s the music. It’s the people, that make the music happen. And yes- the promoters, the bouncers, the managers- they all bring the music to each venue; but the music itself is made up of musicians. When I say musicians, I mean the whole band, including the sound engineers (whether they are hired by the band or the venue, they’ve got trained ears and are musicians).

Musicians, much like your plumber, your divorce attorney, or your website designer, are professionals. They likely have over twenty years of intensive training and unpaid learning, if not an expensive college degree, in a field of study that they are so passionate about that they’re willing to give up entire weekend days to drive to, set up for, sound check for, practice to perfection for, those shows you love. And then once those shows happen, they’re willing to perform at an extremely high level of professionalism in front of groups of people who *might be listening, but also might be yelling and spilling beer on them.

While good plumbers and divorce attorneys will charge you time and a half to show up and clean up your s*&t on a Saturday night, musicians will charge you the cost of a drink, and listen to you complain about that cost while waiting in line to buy four more drinks. And then musicians split that cost with the rest of the band, the opening bands, the doorman, and the sound engineer.

I am in FULL support of #saveourstages. I don’t know what a world without music venues would be like- lord knows I don’t want to spend my next tour playing in unfinished basements getting electrocuted by microphones- and particularly here in Maine, our venues have some of the greatest owners, managers, and staff in the universe. These people are like the Great Aunties to musicians, treating them to free snacks and lifting them up when it feels like the world is conspiring against them. But at the end of the day, the system we live in that forces musicians to struggle, constantly, to get by, to feed families, is a bad one. Since I was in elementary school, music programs have been first to be budget-chopped. It’s happening again now, and I understand that it’s a pandemic- of course choppings will happen. But if you really want to save the stages? Start saving the arts. If you really like live music? Start paying for art. If you spend a lot of time listening to those spotify playlists? Look up the bands you’re into- recognize that they’re real people with families- and buy their music. If you want music in the future: jingles for your superbowl ads, orchestral bands to play during your fireworks, wedding bands to deal with your cousin yelling, “play something we can dance to!”, or just that good old cover show you can go to …. realize that professionals made all of that art. And they’ve been studying their whole lives. So stop defunding music programs in schools, stop letting corporations take advantage of artists, and stop complaining about a $15 cover charge. Or you’re going to have a lot more hashtags and venue closures coming down the line.