Front Burner - Live music is back, but touring is risky

Episode Date: May 2, 2022

Touring is often an essential aspect of a musician's career — perhaps now more than ever. Some bands rely on performance income because streaming plays net fractional pay, while for others it might be the only way they grow their audience. And while many COVID-19 restrictions have ended and music fans are flocking to stages, the virus is still making this very exposed way of life even more challenging. Today on Front Burner, producer Derek Vanderwyk speaks to independent musicians — including Charlotte Cornfield, Daniel Monkman and Zack Mykula — about the challenges of going on tour in 2022.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. I see my light come shine Hey, I'm Derek Vanderwyk. I'm one of the producers at FrontBurner, and I'm in for Jamie Poisson. At the end of Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz,

a 1978 concert film about the legendary group The Band's last show, indigenous and Canadian guitarist Robbie Robertson has this to say about why they're done touring. No, you can press your luck. The road has taken a lot of the great ones. It's a goddamn impossible way of life. But 40 years later, touring has only become more important for artists. Some bands rely on performance income because streaming only pays

fractions of a cent per play. For others, it's the essential way they grow their audience. And even as years of COVID lockdowns let up and music fans flock to stages, the virus is still making this very exposed way of life even more impossible. This is Jeff Rosenstock in England, performing with just one member of his band after COVID stripped the three others away. And think of all the artists who have had to delay or cancel shows entirely because of cases. Doja Cat, Elton John, Lil Nas X. Those are some of the biggest names in music.

But for independent artists who have to put down a lot of their own money for tour expenses, a single COVID case can make that cash evaporate. Today, we're talking about the physical and financial risk some bands are taking to entertain us and how COVID continues to break this already fractured business. It feels so good to play music again in front of people. It feels so good to connect with audiences, and it's been very emotional. I've talked to a lot of people who have experienced being on stage and crying just because we're connecting to what it was that we were missing. Charlotte Cornfield is an artist and songwriter based in Toronto. Her songs get a lot of acclaim from sites like Rolling Stone.

Music is my bread and butter. Not much bread and not much butter But Charlotte told me people get the wrong idea about what quote-unquote success can mean for artists. There is this misconception amongst a lot of people who aren't in music that like, okay, once you're on the radio, once you're playing big shows, once your name is in the paper, you're making a lot of money. Charlotte even says, depending on the type of tour she's going on, she can expect all that work to leave a hole in her pocket. Like sometimes we go on a tour and I know it's going to be an investment. Like we're going to open for a band in the U.S.

and we want to build our following in the U.S. and I know it's going to cost us money or it's going to cost me money. And then just entering the U.S. can cost a band thousands of dollars in visas. And on top of that, for the expenses Charlotte has to book in advance, COVID could mean she has little to show for it and little way to get the cash back. It's it's scary. I mean, it's really scary. I've put down a lot of money for this tour that I have in the U.S. in May. And yeah, it's scary to think that if one of the members of the headlining band that we're going on tour with tests positive or they have to cancel any dates, like that means we don't have those shows either.

Oh, it's just like, we're on tour right now and every day I wake up with stress, expecting someone in the crew to get COVID and then have to cancel and go home. Daniel Monkman knows this current risk of touring firsthand. He's based in Toronto and performs as Zune or Zune Gadiowin. And his projects are often described as moccasin gays for blending the shoegaze genre with First Nations influences. Daniel just went on a tour in the prairies that was risky for multiple reasons.

There was a huge snowstorm that went through the prairies last week and we almost canceled because of it, but the band got upset that we were going to cancel. canceled because of it but the band got upset that we were gonna cancel so i was like okay so i bought all the four flights and spent thousands of dollars flew out um we did three shows with them and they got covid and uh they canceled the rest of the tour daniel actually went out with a stripped down band because of the covid. But this is still a serious loss for him. You know, I put a lot of money into booking hotels. And because I don't have, like, proper credit system, it's, like, it's hard for me to get travel insurance. So everything is out of pocket.

And to give you a sense of how almost universal this experience is, Charlotte's band has been hit by COVID too. They were involved in what some groups are semi-jokingly calling a super spreader event. For me, that was just like, OK, we're not over this thing. We can't look at it through rose colored glasses anymore. This is affecting now everyone's livelihood. So I think it was a big... Charlotte went to South by Southwest in March. It's this huge and storied festival in Texas, which is crawling with industry people who can boost your career. Sometimes Drake shows up for a surprise set. If you ready to have some fun tonight, I want to see everybody jumping up. You ready?

I was running through the six with my brother. Or Lady Gaga gets puked on while riding a mechanical bull. I won't play by your f***ing rules. Or, and I'm being serious here, Prince once played a six-encore show for just over a thousand people. Charlotte didn't expect to make money at South By, but since it was important to growing and making connections in the U.S., she made the decision to go. It was really a conversation that I had with my band where we were all, we were going into it knowing that there was a risk that we would get COVID and we were all okay with that. It was on the way home that one of Charlotte's bandmates got held up in Texas by a positive test

and it cascaded from there. Like I got home and then tested positive when I got home. And then just, I felt like every people were sort of dropping like flies. And the common thread was that everyone had been at South By. Everyone in Charlotte's band ended up getting COVID. Charlotte went into South By knowing she had over a week's break before her next shows, but a bunch of the artists there weren't so lucky. There were a lot of bands who got COVID there who then just had to cancel a week's worth of shows or more because they had shows happening right

after South By. So how do artists minimize this risk when so much is at stake? Some bands are asking venues to enforce masks, vaccines, and negative tests to keep themselves and fans safe. My whole thing is like at this stage, especially when like capitalism is not going to allow us to slow down, as many layers of prophylaxis as possible, I think is the right idea in order to keep people safe. I talked to Zach McCullough with Pup, the Toronto punk band he plays drums in. He just finished soundcheck in Dallas. He and guitarist Steve have amazing basketball takes,

but the music is just as good. And Zach has seen resistance to COVID protocols for multiple reasons, the first being political. We're like, we asked where we can to have that requirement. But of course, there are places like Texas and Florida that actually made it illegal to mandate those things. But Pup and their friends' bands have also been getting some pretty demanding messages

about dropping these restrictions. We just got, you know, fans saying, like, if you were a real punk band, you wouldn't be listening to The Man, just the hackneyed stuff like that. And yeah, they're just telling us, like, not to do that, because they don't want to miss a show. Zach actually put a number on how much could be lost from canceled shows. I mean, just to start, like tens of thousands of dollars lost revenue. Like to even open the door to play a show costs thousands of dollars,

like forgetting the money lost in guarantees and merch sales. He also pointed out that it's not just the band that takes a hit from cancellations. We have a crew. We have people we're employing. It means shutting down an economy for almost certainly a week, probably more. I also don't want to lose this year. Getting COVID is, of course, a health risk, not just a financial one. And Zach really cares about his fans being safe. I think it's the bare

minimum of what we should be doing. It's like, you just have to show humanity to people and understand that you're putting people at risk. And I think that's been my biggest frustration throughout the pandemic is that people just flatly don't seem to care.

So Zach is quick to point out how selfish those demanding messages are. They're asking to skip COVID protocols to see a show while risking future shows for everyone else. Like, you have people say in one breath, like, I demand that I be able to see your show. You have to honor my ticket. I don't care if I don't test or I don't want to test. And in the same breath, I'll say,

if you don't like the music industry during COVID, you should quit. And they don't recognize the hypocrisy of that statement. Like, yeah, I don't know. I work very hard not to fall into a bit of despair about it. It's very, it's difficult. Finally, I feel like I not to fall into a bit of despair about it. It's very, it's difficult. Finally, I feel like I gotta say, Pup sort of wrote the anthem for how much touring can suck.

If this tour doesn't kill you, then I will. I hate ear guts and it makes me ill. See in your face every morning. See you in your face every morning. through Angel Investment and Industry Connections. income. That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. So even beyond COVID, there's a bit of a reckoning happening now about the conditions artists tour under. There's this pretty sizable band called Wednesday, who are also at South by Southwest. In March, Wednesday tweeted the finances for their whole tour through the southern U.S. The band says they played seven shows around South by and only got paid for one, ultimately ending up almost a hundred bucks in the red.

It seems like everyone in music has seen those tweets and most of them support the band. But I added in some stuff that we obviously struggle with. But I think the more that we can kind of be honest about our financial realities, the better understanding there will be kind of like collectively that things need to change. But bands on Twitter also responded with some pretty shocking ways they make ends meet. The band The Stone Eye said, y'all got to do some DoorDash slash Instacart on your days off. So like, delivering for food apps while they're on the road. And in a piece for the music site Stereogum, writer Zach Schoenfeld highlighted some people essentially shaming Wednesday for complaining.

Some cried foul over the band renting an Airbnb. Others said to sleep in the van and quote, being in a band is supposed to be a slog. I asked Charlotte Cornfield what she thought about that attitude, that this is the toll for doing what you love. Oh yeah, I'm calling BS on that. And I'm gonna safely say that the people who tweeted those things aren't steadily touring people and aren't in a position to really fully know or understand what it means to be on tour. Charlotte and Daniel Monkman are both solo artists, so they hire musicians to tour with them. Daniel says it's a huge expense. The minimum I'll pay them is $150 per show and then $30 plus premiums. If I have five of them traveling with me plus a driver,

I'm looking at like thousands of dollars every day that I have to just like, just to keep the lights on and going. And it's funny, both Charlotte and Daniel talk like they're trying to be great bosses. Like they've experienced touring at its back of the van worst. So they want to do the best they can for their bandmates. For the first like many years of touring, I was, you know, sleeping on floors, eating the cheapest food, whatever. And now I'm in my 30s and I'm an adult and I have certain like standards and, you know, I pay my my bandmates properly and make sure everyone is is taken care of. Now I'm trying to like set like a new standard of playing music where it's

like everyone in my group gets paid and they get paid a fair wage. For Daniel, a better tour is actually something he's been preparing for for years now. Like I'm very lucky that during the pandemic, my album did really well and I didn't have to do a lot of touring. So I was able to save all my royalty money and all my album sales and did a lot of live streams, which I did out of my living room. And I was very fortunate that all the things happened. But before all of that, it was nearly impossible to tour.

And although it's clear Charlotte loves playing music, she's serious about keeping everyone healthy and fit to play. It's just as much a career as a dream. And she's really working at it. Because like this is our job. Like this isn't like I'm 18. I want to like just see the world and go on tour and party. This is not that anymore. And it never was that for me personally

this is like I take it really seriously I really want to take care of my bandmates and crew and so to anyone who's like just sleep in the van I say absolutely not like that's ridiculous A lot of artists say the reason they can't afford to take a hit on tour is because streaming revenues can be so small. A musician's union actually protested Spotify around the world in March. world in March. A lot of estimates put the royalties Spotify pays per stream at less than half a cent. And although Spotify's share price has cratered since last year, they're doing all right. The company says its revenue jumped almost 25 percent last quarter. CEO Daniel Ek positioned Spotify as an economic driver of music. So we paid out more than $30 billion to the music industry and it's over a quarter of the entire music business globally overall. So I feel really good about where we are and that we're a material income source for many artists around the world. But Spotify's data also suggests 97% of artists didn't make more than $1,000 in 2020.

So a lot of the money probably goes to the biggest artists or labels. Bands have actually started gaming the system in protest. in protest. A UK group called The Pocket Gods put out an album this year called 1000x30 Nobody Makes Money Anymore. Like it says on the tin, it's 1030

second songs, because that's the minimum length to earn royalties for a Spotify stream. Anyway, major music festivals and promoters seem to be doing great too, operating at back-to-normal volumes. You probably saw the raging photos from Coachella, which dropped all COVID protocols. Let's go, girls.

Live Nation also said they'd sold 50 million concert tickets by mid-March, making it hard to imagine COVID cancellations could sink them. But while these businesses flourish, independent bands are taking on the COVID risks we've outlined while often seeing little monetary reward. Just use South By as an example. A band playing a showcase can get either $250 US or access around the festival. So most just take the access and don't get a cent to cover their costs. We've talked mostly about growing independent artists today. And it must be said, the paths to a career in music can look drastically different.

But it can be hard not to get a bleak picture of this space in the industry. One that often says the way to get success is to already be successful. You need a certain amount of money to be funded through those early stages.

It's like the great filter or something where like a lot of bands want to and they try to but they all lose so much money and they're not funded so It's like the great filter or something where like a lot of bands want to and they try to but they all lose so much money and they're not funded so it's like they just lose hope in it. Canadian acts sometimes have one advantage over their U.S. counterparts. Our public and private sectors fund hundreds of millions of dollars in arts and culture grants yearly and both Daniel and Charlotte told me these funds have helped them to varying degrees.

Not everybody gets funding, and I think that's another thing to remember. But there are a lot of programs for bands who are kind of trying to build their following outside of Canada to access them. Without Star Maker and grant system, I definitely would not be able to do what I'm doing. Or I would be funneling all of my royalty and grant system, I definitely would not be able to do what I'm doing,

or I would be funneling all of my royalty into a sinking ship. But Daniel says he's seen bands who had advantages that he didn't. But then bands who grew up in the suburbs or have family, have trust fund or something, they're able to take out loans, and then that's how they keep floating until their music finally hits, like catches a wave and then they ride it. Daniel told me he's from Selkirk, Manitoba, and called it, quote, one of the roughest places to live. You can hear in his voice how much this journey has taken out of him.

I'm definitely an anomaly where i've come from the ghetto and somehow have lucked out and have well a lot of hard work now we're able to like tour and actually make money on a tour and you know that's unheard of by every band that I know. And trying to keep up with that is really exhausting. It's funny, he told me this cuts to what a PR campaign really is, projecting success before you have it. You're convincing the public that you're maybe something that you're not, or maybe that you're somewhere when you're actually not there yet. And keeping that facade up can like be really exhausting. If you can forgive the cliche, it's about faking it until you can make it. But small streaming and performance income can mean

the notoriety you need to make it and live comfortably keeps getting higher. And the COVID dagger hanging over tour expenses means the bands you love who are faking it could be one case away from disappearing. I get the sense from Daniel and Charlotte that they care too much about their craft to ever quit. It's not going to stop me from doing this. I'm very much a lifer, but I do have friends and peers who are like, I can't do this anymore because I can't, I can't justify taking on this risk. So yeah. So that's been kind of like heartbreaking to

see as people being like, I, you know, this just isn't going to work anymore. Before we go today, a big thank you to my guy on the other side of the glass here, Mackenzie Cameron, who acted as our musical advisor for this one. And I'll leave you with two last notes from the artists. Charlotte says this is how you can support musicians that you want to succeed. For people who love music, it's a great time to buy merch on Bandcamp, to go to a show if you feel comfortable wearing a mask and being at a show.

But if not, just kind of like be there for the musicians that you love, because chances are they're going through kind of like a stressful financial time. And Zach from Pup wants you to keep this in mind as you head back out to concerts. You're going to show think about the musicians and think about the other audience members and this is a community and a family and we're all trying to work together to keep afloat after two very difficult years for performance. I think the connection is so important, and we can't have that if people are going rogue on COVID protocols.

I'm Derek Vanderwyk, in for Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening to FrontBurner. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.