Troubadour apocalypse

I’ve mused for a while that, at least in terms of the folk music world in mainland Britain, a change was likely. I understand anecdotally that the folk club model from the 1950s/60s is coming to a natural end as the generally older people who have kept those places going are stepping back and not enough younger people want to take on the responsibility. So be it. I understand something similar is happening at the grassroots end of jazz in Britain too. In short, the amateur pub/club infrastructure that has allowed some people to be professional performers is coming to a conclusion after a period of 60 or 70 years – a generation and a half, really.

This coincides with other significant changes in the music world – ill-paid Spotify plays replacing CD/download sales, the decline of record labels, the lesser importance of music in people’s lives, etc.

Being a musician with professional aspirations or actually having music as your main income hasn’t had a landscape that full of obstacles, I believe, in the whole of the ‘modern era’ – say, from Lonnie Donegan onward. And then Covid 19 arrives.

I don’t, in a very general sense, have a problem with music making becoming a spare-time / localised activity. I think that will happen in some fields of music. Irish traditional music, for instance, was essentially a local/community activity within Ireland during the 19th century, gradually becoming a commercial entity via the US vaudeville stages, wax cylinders and 78s in the early 20th century and then part of the wider ‘rock music’ world in the 70s and onwards as bands formed, hired PAs, got record deals and went on tour like any other music act. (Patsy Touhey, incidentally, a US-based uilleann piper practically invented the current artist-direct-to-audience sales template by advertising bespoke wax cylinder recordings of Irish tunes in the ‘New York Times’ from 1901 onwards.)

The people who want to create music and perform to people will, I think, post Covid 19, continue to do that, but on a localised / hobby / non-professional basis. ‘Popular music’ will, I think, start to occupy the territory that Irish traditional music occupied in the 19th century – a localised, community thing in your area and mine.

It’s always taken a certain kind of chutzpah to go out there and become a professional musician in the pop/rock/folk/jazz field, but I think that post-Covid 19, the odds will be stacked so heavily against people – both potential newcomers and those currently in the business – that it would take a brave or foolhardy soul, indeed, to think, ‘Yes, I can make a cottage-industry music career work’.

On a personal level, I feel very sorry for my friends whose main, or sole, income – fragile at the best of times – is currently based on performing music or activities related to that. The public platforms they depend on have been effectively closed/cancelled overnight for three or four months, with uncertainly beyond that.

I have a feeling that the musical landscape at the level I particularly enjoy, as a punter – the cottage-industry touring artist playing mostly in pubs and arts centres – will be very different by the end of the year. Acts that you or I might have enjoyed seeing every so often – local and international – may not be there any more because there is no obvious economic bridge for them from now until then. My sincere hope is that the UK government will do something to help self-employed people in the arts/entertainment world basically pay their bills and stay alive for the next few weeks at least. Music has existed in a non-professional form before and I suspect a predominantly non-professional landscape is coming. But that’s no comfort to individuals involved in it in the here and now.

My pal Brian Houston, a professional troubadour for 25-odd years, has made no secret of his applying for jobs in the past week. Whether he comes back to music even as a spare-time/part-time activity is up in the air – he’s an all or nothing kind of guy… I suspect he will – it’s in his blood – but in the meantime, fingers crossed for those job opportunities.

Brian had a significant solo concert in Belfast (due to take place yesterday) cancelled. That’s a month’s money gone. Plans for working in the US and Canada in April-July have gone too.

I ran a charity event in Belfast on March 13th, and Brian was the headline act. Someone posted a clip of the last number of the night, a spontaneous jam on ‘Johnny B Goode’, with Brian unexpectedly inviting up any musician in the room (from the previous three acts) who fancied it.

Brian has, literally, five albums of music in the can – distinct albums, across three or four genres, and a couple of them high-production jobs. He had been asking advice from various friends on how to release these, or even two or three of these – in a strategic way, over the next couple of years. In the current circumstances, my advice is now to just release them digitally, one a month. The may not have any strategic career impact, but his fans will support him – and a bird in a hand right now is better than two in the bush.

If ‘Johnny B Goode’ proves to have been the last thing Brian ever did on stage as a professional musician, it’s a pretty good way to bow out. The joie de vivre, spontaneity and camaraderie here are surely the essence of the rock’n’roll dream…

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