CNY musicians miss live music, unsure when it will go back to normal

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While playing a gig in downtown Syracuse about a decade ago, Colin Aberdeen met a woman named Diana, who had terminal cancer. Given a few months to live, she was there to check an item off her bucket list: see Aberdeen’s roots and blues band, Los Blancos, play Shifty’s Bar and Grill.

She returned several more times and became fast friends with Aberdeen, giving him a greater sense of purpose in his band and an understanding of the community that live music creates.

“When people think that playing music at a little local corner bar is insignificant or has no meaning, I would challenge that to the core of my being,” Aberdeen said.

It’s moments like that, Aberdeen said, that have taught him the value of live music. And it’s the social connection of performing that musicians like Aberdeen have missed most since New York state prohibited live music performances in March due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Although venues with liquor licenses can provide live music under phase four, they must reduce building capacity by half of the maximum and follow social distancing guidelines. The venues also cannot sell tickets to performances, leaving musicians uncertain of when live music will fully return.

“It is like being amputated from a form of unbelievably moving group therapy,” Aberdeen said. “It’s way more than just the loss of gainful employment.”

Byron Cage was shocked when he learned in March that performing would be suspended indefinitely. As a drummer for a variety of musicians and groups around central New York, Cage had been playing at least five nights a week and would sometimes tour overseas. But when the pandemic struck, months of performing were postponed or cancelled.

With performances temporarily on hold, musicians now lack the ability to do what they’ve dedicated much of their lives to. When you want to perform every day, you miss it even when you take a week or weekend off, not to mention months, Cage said.

“At first, it was really tough just imagining a world or time period where I’m not doing what I believe I’m made to do, what I’m built for. I am a musician. That’s me to the core,” he said. “So, for me to not be able to do that — it was really hurtful, man.”

Musicians still found ways to express themselves virtually when they were unable to perform in person earlier in the pandemic.

Aberdeen had always thought of cameras as a way to capture the world around him, not himself. But that changed when his neighbors asked him to play an online gig for them last spring over Facebook Live. Aberdeen said he wasn’t “hip to that,” and he was skeptical of playing online.

“I would never think to set up my phone and blast myself out to the universe playing a gig prior,” he said. “I very much thought of that as kind of, maybe, slightly, overly narcissistic.”

Without any other options, and reminded by a friend that the “hallmark of species that survive is adaptation,” Aberdeen gave it a try.

He has since performed a weekly virtual show. He hasn’t gotten rich from it, and it’s not the same as playing in person, he said. But the performances allow him to stay afloat through PayPal and Venmo tips.

For singer-songwriter and instrumentalist Jess Novak, performing virtually has cultivated a new audience and kept her practicing.

“Anyone who’s a musician knows you can’t just stop playing and then start back up in six months. It doesn’t work like that,” she said. “You have to keep working at it every day.”

Novak, who leads the Jess Novak Band and also plays solo gigs, has been streaming solo shows on Twitch nearly every day. Compared to the “small market” in Syracuse and the limited reach of playing in the Northeast, her Twitch performances have attracted a larger audience, she said. And although the shows are free, she has a sponsorship from a company and receives donations.

As New York state has continued to reopen, musicians have slowly picked up performing in person again. Novak, Aberdeen and other musicians have been playing small, socially distanced gigs outdoors with their bands.

Although she’s had “some time of semi-normalcy,” Novak said her weather-dependent gigs will likely end once it gets cold again, and she expects to be back on full unemployment. This summer, her busiest time of the year, the pandemic cut at least half of her income.

Looking forward, many musicians are still unsure of when, or if, live music will return to what it was before the pandemic.

“I really have a hard time seeing 1,500 people being able to stand next to each other any time too soon,” said Charley Orlando, a singer-songwriter and talent buyer for Funk n’ Waffles.

What venues can do in the meantime, though, is use streaming as a supplement to performances until they can return to full capacity, he said. If people want to engage in shows but can’t be there in person, venues need to stream the performances and sell tickets.

Eventually, when all COVID-19 restrictions are lifted from live music, many musicians will be ready.

Fred Kuepper is a guitarist and vocalist for Full Sail, an acoustic classic rock cover band that has played around central New York for 22 years. Performing isn’t his full time job, but he’s wary of how the lack of concerts could be devastating for full-time musicians.

“As soon as they say it’s OK to go to bars or restaurants and listen to music and have dinner and have drinks again, I want to be the band that’s playing that week,” he said. “Could you imagine the crowds? Wow.”