Tucson country singer Drew Cooper sang into a mic in a darkened corner of Sentinel Peakβs dining room last Friday afternoon as a handful of customers popped in to pick up to-go orders.
Later Friday evening, Olivia Reardon and her band, Miss Olivia & the Interlopers, played to empty seats at St. Charles Tavern while a couple hundred people tuned in to the bandβs virtual concert on YouTube.
And for the last week, pianist Khris Dodge, who curates and coordinates Khris Dodge Entertainment, has accompanied a handful of Tucson vocalists from Crystal Stark to the duo of Chach Snook and Jodi Darling as part of his daily βAt Home Concert Series,β one-song performances intended to βmake our world a happier place.β
With every theater, club, bar and restaurant closed, Tucson musicians of all genres, from rockers Zero Miles to Empty to cumbia rocker/singer-songwriter Gabriel Sullivan and beyond, are reinventing themselves on Facebook and YouTube as a way to keep connected with their audiences.
βWeβre all going to figure out what weβre capable of doing,β said singer-songwriter Brian Lopez, who splits his music career between his solo work and his role in the popular cumbia rock band XIXA with Sullivan.
Many of the artists have set up links for fans to donate tips through PayPal and Venmo to offset some of the income they lost due to canceled gigs. A few are directing donations to the GoFundMe Tucson Musicians Relief Fund, launched on March 15 with a goal of raising $25,000 to help musicians pay rent, utilities, food and other life expenses.
The GoFundMe campaign, spearheaded by Ben Nisbet, Katie Haverly and Hannah Levin, had raised more than $16,000 toward its $25,000 goal as of Monday morning. Nisbet, in a Facebook video, said that musicians have told them through an online survey that they have lost more than $70,000 in wages since the shutdown.
βEverybody is kind of just feeling their way through this,β said Greg Haver, who with his wife Kelly McLear owns Monterey Court, a cafe and concert venue on Miracle Mile.
Even Startup Tucson, which advocates for small businesses and entrepreneurs, has jumped briefly into the concert business. The nonprofit is hosting βLive from Startup Studios,β a weeklong digital concert series. From noon to 1 p.m. daily through Friday, March 27, the nonprofit has invited local artists to perform. Proceeds from donations will benefit the Musicians Relief Fund.
βIt was really just born out of wanting to respond to what artists are going through right now and give them the space to play where they could otherwise not play with all the canceled gigs,β said Sophia Gonzalez, Startup Tucsonβs community and events coordinator.
The series opened Monday, March 23, with Gabi Montoya and included performances by Andrea and Pete Connolly of Birds and Arrows on Tuesday, March 24; Adam Townsend on Wednesday, March 25; Seanloui Dumas on Thursday, March 26; and Cameron Hood of Ryanhood on Friday.
βItβs not to say that weβre going to get into digital concert streaming by any means, but itβs just to bring a little awareness of whatβs happening,β Gonzalez said.
Monterey Court also is hosting concerts on its patio and Haver said heβs turned the speakers up so that the people getting to-go orders can hear the music from the parking lot. What he would love to see is people eating in their cars in the parking lot with their windows down. But Haver said his takeout business so far has been slow, largely because Monterey Court is known as a concert venue that serves food and alcohol, not a restaurant that features music.
βLuckily, we had a very robust January and February so we do have a little bit of money in reserve,β he said. βWeβre going to bump along as best as we can as long as we can.β
The Monterey series, which is live-streamed on Facebook, kicked off with Heather Hardy last Friday, The Monty on Saturday and Davey & The Midnights Sunday. This weekβs lineup includes the bluegrass band The Titan Valley Warheads at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, March 26, and Giant Blue at 7 p.m. Friday, March 27.
βMost of the artists are on board,β Haver said. βItβs going to hopefully shake out.β
Just before 2 p.m. last Friday, Jake Sullivan and his Wooden Tooth Records partner Kellen Fortier were testing the waters on a plan to provide performance space for artists to stream live concerts. Their guinea pig: Sullivanβs ethereal voiced brother Gabriel, who has an active career as a solo artist and member of XIXA.
As Gabriel set up, the Sullivansβ younger brother Joe showed up for support and Fortier worked the storeβs website, where customers were still buying records from the store at 426 E. Seventh St.
βEven though the store is not open we are still in business,β Jake Sullivan said Friday. βThe prospect of closing the doors was super scary, but the community has totally rallied around this.β
They also rallied around Gabriel Sullivan, tuning in to his performance on Wooden Toothβs Instagram (@woodentoothrecords).
βIf we get a good response from the community and a decent amount of people watch it and of course if the artists are interested,β Wooden Tooth would continue, Jake said.
For Gabriel, who last September released his latest solo album βBlack Crow,β the performance was his way of making the best of an impossible situation. Sullivan said he and his band XIXA lost one of their biggest career dates when SXSW was canceled in early March. The band was set to be part of the University of Arizonaβs big βWonder Houseβ exhibit designed to be a hub for arts, music, food, immersive drama and talks by some of the UAβs noteworthy faculty. For the first time in all the years Sullivan and Lopez had been part of SXSW, βwe were going to make some pretty decent money,β Sullivan said.
Couple that with a string of lost solo and band gigs, he added.
βItβs been total chaos, but todayβs kind of the first day that Iβve felt settled in a little and finding creative solutions,β he said not long before his Friday afternoon record store concert. βFor me Iβve always very much loved non-traditional means of presenting music. This is fun especially in a time when we are all so isolated. I get to hang with my brothers and be in a record store and hopefully connect with people even if itβs a digital screen.β
Cooperβs Sentinel Peak gig was the second in what he is calling his βCarry Out Concert Series,β which he debuted March 19 with a show at the Cow Pony Bar on East Tanque Verde Road. His idea is to go to bars and restaurants where he has long-time standing gigs and relationships and pay it forward in a way. Heβs asking for tips to be sent through PayPal and Venmo, and at the end of the night, he splits the proceeds with employees at the businesses.
In his first two events, Cooper collected $2,000 in tips and sold $300 in T-shirts; $5 from every shirt sold also will be donated to affected bar and restaurant employees, he said.
Cooper, who is a regular at bars and restaurants around Tucson and has played the main stage of Country Thunder several times in recent years, says his Carry Out shows remind him of when he first started his music career about 10 years ago.
βNo one was in the bar and no one was tipping me,β he said with a laugh.
But over time, he started building an audience and relationships with the staffs and owners at the venues
βEvery time I play somewhere the staff is great to me,β he said, which is why heβs splitting the tips from his Carry Out Concerts with the servers and bartenders. βThis is me returning that kind of favor. Itβs soul-satisfying.β
