The Global Media Site for Entertainment.
Menu
It is now October 28th, 2020. Aside from unemployment benefits, I have had no income at all since my last show on March 7th, 2020. The amount I get from Pandemic Unemployment Assistance has fallen to $235 a week before taxes – not even enough to cover my rent, let alone food and other living expenses, and it looks like no further economic stimulus is on the way. Many of my old coworkers have taken grocery store jobs or are driving for delivery services to make ends meet. I myself am about to start a temporary part-time job. It barely covers my expenses, but after eight months of nonstop job applications, I have to take what I can get. Some of the event workers, especially those of us who are less established, are starting to doubt whether we will be able to return to our jobs when live performances finally return.
Full-time audio engineering is something I have worked eight years for. Finally finished with my electrical engineering degree, I had planned to spend this year pursuing audio engineering full-time and prove to myself that I really could make a living with it. Until the pandemic hit, it looked like I would succeed.
Unfortunately, when discussing my situation with people, the reactions I have gotten are not exactly sensitive. Variations of “Wow, must be nice, I wish I could be on vacation like that” and “Well, now you can go and get a ‘real’ job instead of chasing your hobbies” have been a constant refrain since the pandemic began. I’d like to give these statements some perspective.
To start: we have not been on vacation. We have not been coasting. Sure, having the time off was a welcome change for a couple of weeks, but nobody I know has been treating eight months of unemployment and an unknown return-to-work date that moves farther back every day as a vacation. We have been worrying about how to pay our rents, mortgages, utilities, find health insurance, protect ourselves and our loved ones, and still put food on the table somehow. We have been grieving the sudden loss of the careers we have spent years and maybe even decades in. We have been applying to jobs for months without success or have had heavy discussions with our family and roommates weighing making money against the risk of catching and bringing home COVID-19.
More importantly, our jobs are not hobbies. We are highly skilled professionals who have worked hard to get where we are, and most of our jobs cannot be done seriously on the side. Working days that tend to fall anywhere between 10 and 18 hours, usually in a row, is not a hobby. Living with minimal health insurance, or none at all is not a hobby. Managing mental health on the road is not a hobby.
Many of my music-loving friends are itching to go to concerts again. But I think what they don’t realize is the extent of the damage that the pandemic is doing to the entire entertainment industry. It’s not just independent music venues that are at risk of closing – they are just one small part. It’s the whole ecosystem that inspires people to get onstage and allows artists to go from playing house shows to playing local, regional, national and international stages that are about to collapse. This includes the production companies that rent audio and lighting equipment out for tours and festivals. This includes the bus companies and drivers that make bigger tours literally go. This includes the bookers, promoters and artist management organizations that set touring schedules and keep talent circulating. The small amount of economic stimulus that was doled out to these sectors at the beginning of the pandemic ran out long ago, and the entire event ecosystem is struggling. Many closures have already happened.
One of the last shows I worked on came at the end of February. It was a sold-out three-night run of Death Cab For Cutie hosted by The Showbox, one of Seattle’s most iconic music venues. It was incredibly impactful to see a homegrown Pacific Northwest band come back to play three intimate shows in a city that has gentrified immensely since they first shot to fame. It felt like a piece of old Seattle had been resurrected, if only for a few hours. But it also felt bittersweet. The land the Showbox sits on was recently sold to a developer intent on replacing it with luxury apartments. The possibility that this kind of homecoming might never happen again in that venue, that maybe six months later the Showbox might just be another construction site downtown, hung over the room. This is the same future many venues around the country now find themselves trying to avoid. Without help, the structure that allowed a night like this to happen and the pathways that led this band full circle will no longer exist.
This is where you come in. Write your local, state, and federal officials demanding relief for the arts, and keep writing. Participate in social media campaigns and use whatever platforms you have to speak out. If you know a band or artist that might use their platform to speak out, ask them! Buy music and merch from bands — with shows gone, that is the only source of income for a lot of musicians right now. If you have the means, donate to relief funds and the organizations that are fighting to keep our stages lit. We need you.
National:
Washington State:
Article by SoundGirl: Sydney Bolton
Another great article by SoundGirls: I Went Back to Work for 12 Hours
Follow SoundGirls on Instagram, Twitter
The mission of SoundGirls.org is to inspire and empower the next generation of women in audio. Our mission is to create a supportive community for women in audio and music production, providing the tools, knowledge, and support to further their careers. SoundGirls.Org was formed in 2013 by veteran live sound engineers Karrie Keyes and Michelle Sabolchick Pettinato and operates under the Fiscal Sponsorship of The California Women’s Music Festival, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. In 2012, Karrie and Michelle participated in the “Women of Professional Concert Sound” panel at the AES Conference in San Francisco. The panel was hosted by the Women’s Audio Mission (WAM) and moderated by WAM founder Terri Winston. Terri brought together five women working in live and broadcast audio. The groundbreaking panel (which also included Jeri Palumbo, Claudia Engelhart and Deanne Franklin), provided young women and men a glimpse into life on the road, tips and advice, and a Q & A with the panelists. More importantly though, was how incredibly powerful the experience was for the panelists. We had all been in the business for 20 years or more, yet most of us had never met before that day and within minutes we bonded like long-lost sisters. We were struck by how similar our experiences, work ethics, and passions were and wondered why our paths had never crossed and how our careers would have been different had we been there to support each other through the years. Each of us are strong on our own, but together we were even stronger and a powerful force. We were empowered. Each of us had been asked hundreds of times in our careers: Are there other women doing sound? How did you get into sound? How would a young woman go about getting into sound? Through creating SoundGirls.Org, we hope to establish a place for women working in professional audio to come for support and advice, to share our success and failures, our joys and frustrations, and for empowerment and inspiration.
Read Full Profile
© 2021 TheatreArtLife. All rights reserved.
Thank you so much for reading, but you have now reached your free article limit for this month.
Our contributors are currently writing more articles for you to enjoy.
To keep reading, all you have to do is become a subscriber and then you can read unlimited articles anytime.
Your investment will help us continue to ignite connections across the globe in live entertainment and build this community for industry professionals.
