Josh Harty and his band performed a live-streamed concert on March 14.
Karin Wolf, arts program administrator for the city of Madison, learned a new term last week: force majeure. French for “superior force,” it refers to a clause that appears on most performance contracts that removes liability in the event of an unavoidable catastrophe. Like, say, a pandemic.
“I’m embarrassed that I was never aware of that clause before,” Wolf says. “But now we’re having to figure out how to respond to all these cancellations in a way that’s fair to everybody.”
By the time Public Health Madison & Dane County announced, on March 15, a ban on gatherings of more than 50 people and slashed occupancy limits of restaurants and bars in half, Madison had largely gone quiet. Virtually all large-scale music events had already been canceled or postponed. Smaller venues were still holding out hope that some of their scheduled shows would happen, but the health department proclamation put the kibosh on most of those as well. Meanwhile, Illinois and a few other states have announced the shutdown of all bars and restaurants for dine-in, so it’s not out of the question that Wisconsin could follow suit. Pres. Trump on March 16 recommended limiting gatherings to 10 people. Either way, measures to thwart the spread of the coronavirus have been devastating for local musicians and the venues they perform in.
Classical musicians were among the first to feel the pain inflicted by the cascade of cancellations, with the Overture Center announcing late last week that it was going dark. That decision put major organizations like the Madison Symphony Orchestra and the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra on ice for the next several weeks. Brian Whitty, president of the American Federation of Musicians Local 166 (also known as the Madison Area Musicians’ Association), notes that for musicians who play in both groups, it amounts to a full-time job.
“You’ve got 150 musicians who are out of work,” Whitty says. “You can’t work from home, and there’s no sick leave.” Whitty says the union is exploring options for helping musicians weather the shutdowns. Members of those orchestras may have some relief in the form of unemployment benefits, and there are special rules in place to streamline eligibility for those put out of work due to venue closures during the pandemic.
But for self-employed gigging musicians cobbling together a living playing jazz, rock and all other genres, the outlook is bleak. Whitty, a trombonist, has lost multiple jobs, including the Madison Jazz Orchestra’s scheduled performance at The Brink Lounge and a few salsa gigs. Tubist David Spies says the timing for him was particularly bad.
“I’ve lost at least six significant gigs over the next six weeks,” Spies says. “I was going to judge a high school concert band festival. Several Neophonic Jazz Orchestra gigs. The Racine Symphony. This was going to be a pretty lively period.”
The timing was even worse for musicians who specialize in Irish music, who typically cram several lucrative gigs into the few days around St. Patrick’s Day. Bagpipe ace Sean Michael Dargan had a dozen lined up. None of them happened.
“This is my busiest time of the whole year and I lost every single gig I had,” Dargan says. “The big ones were the Shamrock Shuffle, a big fundraiser race [benefiting the Boys & Girls Club of Dane County] which was supposed to happen on Saturday. And the big parade that was supposed to take place Sunday. And then I had a handful of what I call drop-ins, where I just drop in and play for 30 or 45 minutes.”
As late as Saturday, some smaller venues were still hoping their St. Paddy’s events would take place. That day, Lacee Blair, a bartender at the Harmony Bar, and Daithi Wolfe of The Currach Irish Trio, both indicated they planned to go ahead with their scheduled celebration on Tuesday. By Sunday night, that was no longer an option.
Other small and medium-sized venues were taking an event-by-event approach as of last weekend. “We’re talking to artists and trying to make mutual decisions that make sense,” Brink Lounge general manager Ada Hays said on Saturday. “We don’t want to waste anybody’s time, either staff or artists, but we’re trying to go ahead where possible.”
Rather than playing a show at Bowl-a-Vard on March 14, VO5 opted for a "Saturday Night Fever" live-stream from a renovated garage studio.
A day later, that approach was out the window. Among the Brink events postponed was the Madison Area Music Awards Finalists Party scheduled for March 16. MAMAs founder Rick Tvedt is optimistic that while the awards process will be delayed, there will be minimal long-term financial impact.
“We’ll likely have to push back the awards show itself, which is scheduled for May 31, because we still have to fit in that last round of voting,” Tvedt says. “The finalist party itself is a fundraiser for us, so it doesn’t make sense to go ahead and announce the finalists before we can reschedule the party. But thanks to our sponsors, we should be okay financially.”
Another factor is that the awards event has been tied to the Between the Waves festival and conference organized by Roy Elkins, founder and CEO of Broadjam. Elkins says Between the Waves will likely be rescheduled for the fall. He was expecting 300 to 400 attendees from around the country this year, a significant jump from last year’s conference. “We made the formal announcement that we were postponing on Friday, but I’d been thinking about it for a couple weeks,” Elkins says. “I kept thinking, ‘What if we have this conference and somebody gets sick, then it spreads to other people and it was 100 percent preventable?’”
With no in-person outlets for their music, some artists are doing what creative types do — creating their own. A number of musicians have begun streaming performances. Disco purveyors VO5 (including Isthmus’ Catherine Capellaro) live-streamed a “Saturday Night Fever” concert on March 14 to replace a planned show at Bowl-a-Vard. With very little notice and just social media outreach, 1,700 entertainment-starved shut-ins tuned in for at least part of the performance; it’s now past 4,000 views. Josh Harty and his band also replaced a live show with a live-streamed one. Wendy Schneider of Coney Island Studios has set up a Facebook group to support musicians’ efforts to set up and execute streaming events.
And while it won’t keep the rent check from bouncing, musicians rendered inactive by majeure forces have received one priceless gift: time to concentrate on their art.
“There’s a lot of fear right now, and what I tell the musicians I talk to is to try to use this as an opportunity to create,” Elkins says. “It’s not going to pay the bills, at least not right away, but writing about what we’re experiencing helps us confront our fears.”
[Editor's note: Developments relating to COVID-19 are evolving quickly. Please note that any information in this article is subject to change.]
