Coronavirus pushes Nashville music toward an unknown future: ‘This is unprecedented for everyone’

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Bleak news greeted Sasha McVeigh as she celebrated her 26th birthday with family last weekend.

McVeigh sings at least five nights a week in bars, dance halls and honky-tonks on Nashville’s famed Lower Broadway entertainment district. The neon-doused tip jars need to bring this English native at least $600 a week for her and her 71-year-old mother to stay afloat.

But bar-hopping tourists and bachelorette parties won’t be filling McVeigh’s jar any time soon. Mayor John Cooper called last Sunday to close all Nashville bars, a move the city leader described as essential to “get us back to normal as soon as possible” in the wake of the novel coronavirus spreading in Music City and throughout the United States.

“It’s an incredible feeling to think you’re actually paying your bills doing something you dreamed of doing as a kid,” McVeigh said. “It’s very hard to see that taken away from you at no fault of your own.”

Lower Broadway players offer one piece in a jigsaw puzzle of Nashville’s music community — touring musicians, venue employees, independent labels and more — ripped apart by a need for “social distancing” to combat COVID-19.

Tours and festivals halted last week, leaving a working class backbone of the music business wondering when the next paycheck may come. Earlier this week, President Donald Trump advised no more than 10 to gather in a room at a time; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised against gatherings of more than 50 for at least eight weeks.

Federal and state officials promise incoming aid for unemployed workers, and industry nonprofits such as MusicCares begin to establish relief funds — but much remains uncertain for the artists and creative professionals fueling Nashville’s music ecosystem.

“This is unprecedented for everyone,” Nicki Ricci said. A freelance tour and show rep at Mercy Lounge, Ricci quit her full-time job two years ago to work in music.

“I’m just dealing with the big question mark of what I do in the meantime to pay my bills.”

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‘We’ll still make art’

As early as last weekend, digital concerts and calls for online fundraising began flooding social media. Local bedrock The 5 Spot closed for at least a month, but launched a GoFundMe in hopes of paying musicians billed on the canceled shows. Independent establishments Exit/In, Drkmttr and The East Room launched similar campaigns to help employees and aid expected hardship.

Touring could create anywhere from 50% to 100% of a musician’s income, per artists interviewed for this story. Additional funds come from merchandise typically sold on the road, noted Jonathon Childers, frontman of Nashville rock outfit Blank Range.

“It puts them in a precarious position,” Childers said. “(To be) paying rent or mortgage, and they can’t make any money.”

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Some come home to work a side gig — such as ride-sharing or bartending, the latter facing similar COVID-19 obstacles. Buying products — physical albums and merchandise — directly and quickly benefits artists, said Caroline Bowman, co-founder of local DIY label Cold Lunch Recordings.

“Touring musicians will have a tougher time,” Bowman said. “A lot of us are service industry workers, too. It’s gonna be tough to ask $5 to $10 from someone you know doesn’t have that. How do you get money going back in an environment that doesn't have any?”

Still, Heartstrings, a nonprofit co-launched by Bowman, began raising and disbursing funds for East Nashville musicians after deadly tornadoes ravaged the community earlier this month.

She plans to continue fundraising as the coronavirus puts some artistry on pause.

“We’ll still make art, and we’ll still have each other,” Bowman said. “That’s at least an optimistic view of the situation."

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Taking a show to fans

Patrick McAvinue, an award-winning fiddle player with Opry members Dailey and Vincent based in Spring Hill, lost about a month of work on the road as tours began postponing last week. He and the band drove home from South Carolina last weekend, leaving behind a weekend of gigs.

Online fiddle lessons and socially distanced session work could supplement some income, but McAvinue said he’s ultimately hoping COVID-19 comes under control before unpaid time off crushes his savings.

“I treat every day like the world’s gonna end,” he said with a laugh, later adding: “Musicians, they gotta know going into it that there are gonna be lean times.”

Others, such as East Nashville songwriter Ron Pope, took to the internet for a makeshift concert as his tour schedule dwindled to zero. Pope co-founded Nashville-based indie label Brooklyn Basement Records with his manager-wife, Blair Clark.

Pope released his latest studio effort, “Bone Structure,” days after a tornado struck his neighborhood. And, while postponed tours create a revenue gap the label still needs to navigate, bringing intimate and immediate performances serves a vital purpose, Pope said.

“Part of the service that musicians can play for society, for our community, is to help people not focus on the negative things surrounding them,” Pope said.

He joins a growing list of artists, including Willie Nelson and Keith Urban, to throw a show (or entire tour, in the case of Nashville songwriter Kalie Shorr) online.

“People are at home and they've been aggravated enough,” Clark said. “We’re going directly to them.”

Music fans could see similar efforts on Lower Broadway. This week, John Rich’s Redneck Riviera offered a space for musicians to broadcast online and play for digital tips.

The opportunity could provide interim aid for McVeigh, who lives with her aging mother and fears taking a job with substantial human interaction could put her at risk.

“I couldn’t put my mum at risk,” McVeigh said. “I’d go bankrupt before (that).”

And buying merch or tossing money in an online tip jar likely won’t supplement an entire postponed tour, but each dollar could be crucial to the future of music in Music City.

“The landscape’s gonna be really different on the other side of this,” Childers said. “I hope people can do whatever they can do to support local businesses now and musicians that make this town what it is — that make this town why everybody wants to move here.”

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Coronavirus closures hits Nashville musicians hard