COVID-19 and the Starving Artist: Performance Arts in the Midst of a Pandemic

So, who’s tired of COVID yet? I for one am, but I (like many others across many fields) am blessed with the fact that my profession and passion can easily be done from the safety of quarantine. For me and others in my position the disease feels more like a massive inconvenience that, while professionally life-changing, isn’t professionally life-threatening. Others are not so lucky. With schools reopening in the coming weeks for students across the country, and the sheer fact that we are now six months into this being classified as a pandemic, pressure on those whose jobs rely on in person contact has only grown greater as the months have gone by.

One of the groups most primarily affected by this are performing artists, both local and traveling. The unfortunate reality of a world in which we must all stay six feet apart is that most musical venues and thus opportunities for these artists are closing down or making drastic changes that don’t involve said artists, the same people who rely on these venues to keep the lights on. There’s always been the concept and/or stereotype of the starving artist, the person who puts their life into their individual artwork at the cost of something as basic as food and other living necessities. With COVID, and with their primary sources of income closing down, the starving artist is on the rise. Due to this many of these artists have been finding work-arounds to keep at their passions while also supporting themselves during these tough times. I had the pleasure of sitting down (electronically, of course) with two Vermont artists from different walks of life in the industry, to get a better understanding of how different artists are coping with the changing professional climate.

The first artist I met with was Cooie Defrancesco, better known on stage and online by the name Cooie Sings. Cooie is in a unique position professionally for this pandemic to have hit. She, unlike any other artist I’ve been able to speak to, solely sings for the elderly. Her performances range from nursing homes, retirement homes, rehabs and more, bringing the sound of song to the ears of those who otherwise couldn’t make it to a concert venue. Of course, the unique position this puts her in is that her target audience is the most at risk for the disease. Her workaround for this problem, as many artists have come to adopt, is to bring her music to her audience entirely virtually. I asked her to what extent COVID has truly changed her profession, to which she replied:

“In my particular situation, my husband and I work diligently starting in August or September every year to block-book my schedule for the following year. And we really got it down for 2020, just in time for January to happen. So I went from four hundred and seventy gigs at about seventy different locations down to absolutely nothing on the calendar. And so what we did very early on was to jump to video, invest in the equipment and the knowledge and how to perform to a camera.”

The silver lining is that Cooie got used to the camera rather quickly. She told me that it had taken her a whole forty one years to get over her stage fright, and to muster the ability and confidence to sing into a microphone, but that it’s taken her a “much shorter time to make friends with the lens.” The positive to yield from this is that converting to electronic performances is perhaps less stressful than some would think, if only for the reason that it’s less nerve-racking to sing to a camera than it is to a crowd. But truly that is a question of the individual artist and their strengths. The biggest concern with live singers and performers in venues is simply how far the virus can spread through song. It sounds kind of cheesy when put like that, but think about it for a second. If COVID is contagious enough that we must keep six feet away from each other due to it being transmitted by droplets expelled when merely talking, then imagine the shotgun-like blast radius of someone with COVID singing to a crowd in a local venue space. And even with masks and socially distanced tables, these local venues aren’t generating enough revenue to stay afloat in these times. And if they do manage, bringing in artists to perform just adds more problems to take into account and work around. All of this leaves artists nowadays with very limited options when it comes to performances. Unless you’re a megastar who performs on a stage the size of several school buses, where the audience can be a safe distance from both you and one other, your options have been more than cut in half.

The other artist I managed to speak with on this same topic was Tod Moses, known nowadays for owning Boarding Gate Studio in Bennington, VT. Tod has been around the music scene for years, having now retired to a producer role while still working on music as a passion-fueled hobby. He’s been working on a new album for some now, with the pandemic offering ample time to dedicate himself to such a project. When I asked him the same question as I did Cooie about how this has affected his professional life, his response was both very much the same and very much different:

“Basically not at all,” he had said to me, to my somewhat surprise. “and there’s two reasons. Literally as the pandemic started I had a client come in ready to start production. We had already done pre-production, and that has been put on hold because he’s particularly concerned about infection. I don’t blame him, he has a family to be concerned about. It’s only great in a way because it put me back to work on this album. It’s taken me six years to do this album, if I don’t set a goal it doesn’t get done. I’m the eternal procrastinator. So this has given me the time for that.”

Ultimately what you see here, or at least what I saw here, is a clear divide between performing artists and artists working on the side. As far as the music itself goes, if your usual gig is to go in search of a stage and perform live, you’ll have a hard time nowadays. But if you work from home, well acquainted with technology and not concerned with putting on a show, then you’ll manage to keep the wheels turning to a degree. Because while people like Tod are definitely fortunate in this situation, that doesn't mean they’re immune. As Tod said, he already lost a client to the pandemic, not for any reason professionally other than the frightfully understandable fear of contracting or spreading the disease. The same is undoubtedly true for other local studios across Vermont, who have had to either close their doors for the meantime or take drastic precautions with letting people in to record. It’s a challenging time for in-person musicians in almost every way, whether you’re on a stage or in a booth.

In a summary of the issues currently at large and those to come, Tod came out bluntly and said: “There’s very few gigs. And that’s not gonna get better, not for a long time. One of the reasons its not gonna get better is because so many places have closed down. And I suspect that when places start opening back up they’ll realize they never really did need the live entertainment. So if we don’t use this as an opportunity to reassess our priorities as an arts community, because this isn’t just music it’s all kinds of arts, my concerns are the same as they always were in the last ten years just worse. Because now you have even less places to play.”

So the one question that rises from this unfortunate time is how do we continue to support our local artists while they can’t perform for us live? Watching a concert on a computer screen is undoubtedly a much different experience to being there in person, but is that simply all we can do to help? Yes and no.

One of the key issues to keep in mind when discussing this topic at any length is that of artist grants and resources. For the uninitiated, an artist grant is money that an Arts Council gives out to artists in various fields that apply to earn them. They go through the process of applying for a grant, and if they are successful that money can be used to help further their individual art without the fear of having to pay that money back. That’s how it all worked pre-COVID. But nowadays, when such grants and resources are in the highest demand by local artists of every kind, the money is simply needed elsewhere. That is not to say the money has been completely diminished, but rather that in uncertain times such funds simply need to be managed with greater care and versatility. It’s understandable and true that in times like these such resources need to be allocated towards where they are most necessary, but the negative is that artists who rely on (or at least are greatly aided by) such means to fund their work can no longer rely on them as much.

I brought up this very point to Cooie, who had this to say: “Part of the problem is the budgetary aspect of it, where entertainment budgets have been wiped out and taken for other purposes. To a certain extent I’ll say that I protest against it because the profitability of elder care facilities is still way up there. So it seems to be a failure of elder care facilities to serve their residents by taking them beyond a solitary confinement situation, being closed in their rooms, not going to common dining rooms to eat, having no contact. So that for me is the biggest thing.

“The activities directors who are cognizant that their people are starving for contactual music that is something that isn’t just played on the TV screen, something that is really somebody who’s relating to them with their music, that’s what I consider the biggest challenge.”

She has an undeniable point, across the board. Cooie is someone very passionate about caring for the elderly and keeping them safe and sound at a time where they are most vulnerable, and her passion for such a cause flows through the entirety of what she says about these recent topics. Perhaps what I find the most true and resonant of all is the simple notion of “contactual music.” Because let’s be honest, everyone at this point has heard about live streamed concerts and various other in-person events gone virtual, and everyone had that little thought in the back of their head that said: “Oh, well that could be cool, but it won’t be as good.” And there’s no way around that. At times, nothing can feel more separating than a computer screen. Watching your favorite artist perform live online feels almost the same as if you were watching a pre-recorded video of them doing the same; there’s very little that can make it any different. Nothing beats being there in the flesh, hearing the music through the speakers into your own ears. No internet connection to worry about, no lag, no screen, just you and the music.

But we’re not quite there yet. Yes, quarantine concerts are a thing now and they are absolutely in the right direction, but smaller artists simply can’t afford to put on a show as extravagant and large as that unless they are either being featured or are part of a larger ensemble. The only viable way forward for these artists, from now until whenever the world rights itself again, is to support them through whatever means they can find. Suffice to say, if your favorite local artist, musical or not, is being forced by their unfortunate situation to adopt technology as their means of sharing their art, then support it.

The only way to keep the local arts alive in these times is to continue to show your support for them, whether that’s showing up for a stream, sharing some of their promotion online, donating to a cause they are in turn supporting, or just voicing your opinion on the matter. Continuing to support our arts can only prove how important and necessary they are to our communities. We as humans are defined by our arts, for at its most raw form art of all kinds is an expression of the human condition. And we are entering a time where that art is facing threats and changes unparalleled by anything to come before it in our contemporary history. So support your local artists, show up for a live stream, buy a t-shirt, listen to their album, show them that what they do matters. If we all do that, then there isn’t a single doubt in my mind that local artists will not just continue their work in these times, but evolve with them and make their art all the better for it.