With the situation changing every day, it’s really hard to gauge what the effects will be on our beloved bars and venues and bands both in the North East and across the world.
Whilst most of us stay at home, some with an income and some without, you can’t ignore that most of the owners of our favourite haunts are really suffering. The owners of small independent venues are just that – small and independent – and are not supported by big business and a lot of the time working week to week and month to month on incredibly small budgets with very low-profit margins.
The reason these venues are so important is that they do the things the big chains won’t do because they aren’t necessarily profitable and in doing this, they support parts of our music industry that otherwise wouldn’t have a platform.
Musicians are struggling too. In this day of digital downloads where artists get next to nothing financially when people listen to their recordings, gigs are the place where bands get most of their income, not just from the punters paying on the door to watch them play, but the vital lifeline of merchandise sales such as T-shirts and CDs. It could be a very long time before things return to normal for even well-established artists in terms of income. Will some bands disappear forever? I think it’s terribly sad but inevitable.
One of the leading lights of the North East music scene are Newcastle-based electro band Twist Helix. I spoke with singer Bea about the effect the current crisis is having on them: “The biggest impact on us right now is we’ve had to cancel flights and studio time in Spain. We’re working on a new album so we’re trying to do what we can here and bounce everything digitally to the team in Madrid. We’ve obviously lost a load of tour dates and festival slots too which, with a new single to promote, is far from ideal. This was our first release in two years and, yeah… best-laid plans of mice and men! How can people support us in the meantime? Streaming. Follows on Spotify really help and we’ve got merch and physical CDs on musicglue.com/twisthelix.”
Sunderland-based rock outfit Thieves Of Liberty have made huge in-roads into the North East music scene of late and now, like all of us, face an uncertain future. The band told me: “With all gigs being cancelled that takes away a large chunk of our revenue. We make most of the band money through playing live music so with that being out the window for an unknown length of time, we have to put a pin in everything for now. That includes our upcoming EP which will have to be delayed until we can afford all the costs associated with it, so it could be a long time before we can get any new music out to the world, which is every upcoming band’s worst nightmare”.
It’s going to be a tough few months for smaller bands and artists and unfortunately, it’s likely that some may be unable to make it through – and we could see a lot of great talent sadly disappear through no fault of their own. The best way people can support their local artists at the moment would be by streaming or buying their songs and buying any merch they might have, but money is going to be tight for everybody so even this is a lot to ask. Thieves of Liberty are having a 25% off sale on their site to make it a little easier for anyone who wants to help them get through this.
Thieves of Liberty added: “Local venues are going to really struggle too since they’ve been forced to close, and especially places like Little Buildings and The Peacock that have just started up again. With all that being said, we aren’t going to give up or go away just because we can’t make much progress right now. We hope to see everyone out there at all the local gigs as soon as they start back up.”
The really difficult part of all this is how we, as a community, can support our bars and venues that are forced to close for an unknown length of time. I would suggest you reach out to them in the first instance and see if you can help as, in these tough times, it could really make a difference to independent traders who may have nobody to turn to. Some venues have been selling beer and food to take away and as this is stock that would perish and money that is going to be potentially lost, please try to support them before you head to the supermarket.
As this situation pans out, we’ll need to support each other more and more – and I hope if any good comes out of this, maybe by keeping apart we will grow closer together.
