“ are great for industries that are operating,” says Dayna Frank, board president of the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA). Despite more favorable conditions, the change hardly helped the live-music business. Small Business Administration (SBA) released updated PPP guidelines on June 15th that changed the divide from 75/25 to 60/40. (Last week, two New York City councilmen formed the “CBGB’s Caucus” to support the city’s independent music venues.)įollowing the newly signed PPP Flexibility Act, the Treasury and U.S. Conditions have gotten so dire that artists as high-profile as Lady Gaga, Coldplay, and Billie Eilish have called for Congress to provide much-needed support. Along with the financial threat faced by countless musicians and service workers in the city’s thriving local scene, the very spaces that they have based their livelihoods around are in danger whereas some major bookers like Live Nation have continued to receive investment funding while shuttered, indies haven’t been as fortunate. The pause on live music has devastated regional music scenes across the country, and New York, one of the country’s earliest coronavirus epicenters, was hit particularly hard. When she spoke to Rolling Stone last month, only half of her staff had managed to file their claims. “The system in New York crashed – most of them weren’t able to file for unemployment,” she remembers. Julie Kim, co-owner of the performance space Littlefield in Brooklyn, says she spent the first few weeks of the pandemic frantically applying for loans and grants while trying to provide financial resources for her recently let-go staff. Dhruv Chopra, director of operations at the nightclub and concert space Elsewhere, described the initial shutdown as a “nightmarish week,” with more than 100 part-time employees left out of work and more than 600 subsequent events postponed or canceled for this year. “There was a lot of speculation as to how seriously it was and how seriously to take it, and we just didn’t want to mess around or take any risks that were unneeded.” Baby’s All Right canceled its shows that weekend and shuttered its doors indefinitely Jones remains in L.A., quarantined for the foreseeable future.ĭozens of independent New York venues faced the same fate as Baby’s All Right some closed shop right away, while others reduced their capacity to 50 percent that first weekend before shutting down altogether on March 16th, when Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered that all restaurants, bars, and nightlife venues in the city be temporarily closed. “I was actually in the air the night, when Tom Hanks’ and the European travel ban occurred,” Jones tells Rolling Stone. on March 12th when he learned that New York restaurants, bars, and venues were shutting down due to the spread of COVID-19. In February, the New York booker and promoter went west to break ground on a second outpost for Baby’s All Right, his beloved Brooklyn indie venue that has hosted acts like Beach House, Ariel Pink, and Girlpool. Billy Jones has been stuck in Los Angeles for three months.
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