Musicians, promoters and venues are getting mixed results with attempts at reaching audiences online
Months after the coronavirus pandemic shut down most of Oregon, two musicians stood on stage, playing live music.
Portland hip hop artists Mic Capes and DJ Drae Slapz held court at the North Portland music venue The Fixin’ To, delivering intense, blistering lyrics (Capes) and smooth, layered beats (Slapz). Their audience wasn’t in the room, but instead was watching the show through computer monitors, smartphones or tablets.
“This is a gift,” Capes told the virtual audience after his first song. He hadn’t performed live onstage since November.
As the pandemic devastates Portland’s live music industry, and with events rescheduled well into next year, resourceful musicians have increasingly adapted to online alternatives, such as livestreaming their concerts, in order perform and remain connected with audiences.
Nationwide, musicians have adopted novel and industrious alternatives to playing normally close-quarters events: drive-in concerts featuring notable musical acts like The Avett Brothers, The Libertines playing to concertgoers standing inside safely spaced platforms, and legendary indie-rockers Guided By Voices recently livestreaming their 2020 World Tour from their Dayton, Ohio, home base. Fans can listen to the first single on YouTube.
Closer to home, venerable live music venues like Holocene, Doug Fir and Wonder Ballroom are increasingly hosting online events, while the community-based radio station XRAY FM helps facilitate online showcases by lending studio equipment to enhance the sound of musicians’ performances. Some artists have taken to posting their home-recorded material directly to online platforms such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitch, either on their own channels or on those hosted by local promoters.
“It was fun, man,” Capes recalled of the livestreamed show hosted by XRAY FM on June 26. “I thought it was going to be weird with no crowd, but it felt more like a glorified rehearsal.”
Capes, who grew-up in North Portland’s St. Johns neighborhood, equated performing at The Fixin’ To to the Portland Trailblazers’ playing a home game.
“I’ve worked with him a lot,” The Fixin’ To’s booker, Joel Christerson, said of Capes. “He’s a great representation of St. Johns; a great person. He’s got that shout-out from (Trailblazers’ point guard) Damian Lillard about being his favorite M.C. in Portland.”
“They’re performing whether there’s anyone there or not,” Cervanté Pope said of Capes and show opener Jordan Fletcher. Pope, a freelance music and culture journalist, emceed this concert from her home. “That wasn’t that big of a change for them.”
“But I do think that not being able to gauge how they’re doing — because there’s no live audience there — was a little bit difficult,” Pope added.
“When the crowd’s there, there’s more opportunities to be spontaneous,” Capes said, adding that he adapted quickly to playing to the two video cameras at the livestream event. “You’ve got to think about, ‘What are they seeing on the other end?’ and kind of play to that. Or, ‘What would you want to see while watching an artist perform from home?’”
Capes said he normally feels a bit of anxiety before stepping on stage in front of a live audience. This anxiety is something he considers helpful to his performance, he said; it helps him to get into the moment.
That pre-performance anxiety wasn’t present during the livestream.
“I kind of view as like playing sports when you do film studies,” Capes said. “So, I look at it as something I can study to get better.”
On Friday, the Oregon Health Authority reported 396 new COVID-19 infections and raised Oregon’s total number of coronavirus deaths to 16,104. Nationwide, the total number of cases has exceeded 4 million, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with total deaths around 145,000. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown made face coverings a requirement statewide for indoor public spaces and outdoor public spaces where physical distancing of 6 feet is not possible.
Due in part to the pandemic, Martyn Leaper, who co-founded Space Cassette Records along with Mike Wyant, was forced to postpone many of the label’s projects, including the 20th anniversary re-issue of the former Portland-based indie-pop band Kissing Book’s “Lines and Colors,” which Leaper originally recorded and produced, as well as the most recent album, “Psychedelic Blacktop,” by his own band, The Minders.
“Every year, we always have plans to play shows and try and get out on the road if we can,” Leaper said. “We’re kind of hoping that 2021 — or it will maybe have to be 2022 before we’ll go back out again.”
At the outset of the pandemic, Leaper and his partner, Keia Booker, were posting videos playing acoustic songs on The Minders’ Facebook page. The goal was to do so every weekend. “We kind of dropped off somewhere just because we fell into the COVID lull,” Leaper said.
Recently, however, Leaper appeared on the Chicago-based podcast, “Talkin’ Funny,” from his home in Portland, to perform an acoustic version of the song “Astoria” from “Psychedelic Blacktop.”
“There’s an odd disconnect,” he said. “In your head, you can sort of tune yourself into, ‘Look, this is like any other performance. Just perform. There’s someone watching on the other end.’
“There’s a performance value to it,” Leaper said but added, “There’s no immediate interaction.”
For Leaper, there are many aspects to playing traditional live shows online performances cannot replicate: setting-up gear, soundchecks, figuring out the sound of the room — and feeling a direct connection with the audience.
“Getting in the middle of the heat of a show and getting a reaction from the audience,” Leaper said, “it’s an entirely human connection.”
Singer-songwriter Liz Harris, who primarily releases albums under the name Grouper, shares Leaper’s sentiments.
“At a live show you are taking in the room, getting distracted by the clink of a glass or a conversation nearby,” Harris explained in an email interview, “and sitting or standing with many other people who are breathing in and out with you, whose heartbeats may be syncing up in rhythm without our realizing it.”
“None of this occurs with a streaming show.”
Harris said she was extended an invitation to play a streaming concert curated by Maryrose Crook of the New Zealand band The Renderers, but ultimately did not believe her sound would translate well to the platform, citing diminished sound and video quality due to the lack of a proper studio set up.
Pope explained that livestreaming events may offer fans opportunities to engage with artists in ways live concerts might not. “As someone who has been in a lot of crowds at a lot of shows, I don’t feel like it’s that often that people will go up to the artist afterwards and try to speak to them,” she said. “People may be inclined to be more participatory over the Internet by leaving comments.”
“I feel like as long as the artist knows that people are listening, then they already feel like they have that connection, whether someone actually comes up and speaks with them or not,” Pope said. “I think that’s also why at least being able to play over a livestream is kind of cathartic for artists who are itching to play for people because they haven’t been able to.”
Leaper said he is weighing the options and logistics for potentially streaming an event for the artists on his record label; something akin to the label’s POPLAB variety show, which took place at the Alberta Street Pub in October.
“That would be the next thing — to do some kind of virtual showcase,” he said. “We’re going to be dealing with this (pandemic) for probably another year, I imagine.”
Anne Curtis, a professional photographer and full-time mom, started her Facebook account Captive Audience in April, as the coronavirus pandemic ramped up.
“I would describe it as a virtual venue project,” said Curtis, who took inspiration from the Astoria-based Quarantine Happy Hour Facebook page, which hosts performances by Bluegrass and folk musicians.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Curtis estimated she attended three to four live shows a week. With Captive Audience, she wanted to maintain as much of the communal aspect of attending concerts as possible.
“It just seemed like such a simple solution for so many working musicians who are out there every week, pre-pandemic, working for tips and not having that outlet anymore,” she said.
Curtis reached out to Portland musicians like Roselit Bone’s Charlotte McCaslin, Nicholas Quiller of The Wild Body and Jenny Logan from Deathlist, presenting Captive Audience as a virtual and centralized do-it-yourself platform for performers to showcase their solo, acoustic output while potentially reaching new audiences.
“All they really needed was a phone and an internet connection and a Facebook account,” Curtis said.
Unlike traditional concerts, localized concerts, so far, are free to stream online, and they operate, ideally, on audience donations.
Performances feature links to the artist’s PayPal or Venmo accounts, as well as links to a charity of the musician’s choice (Mic Capes, for example, donated money from his XRAY FM livestream appearance to the nonprofit advocacy group Don’t Shoot Portland).
Curtis, however, recalled some musicians on Captive Audience played shows simply to engage with an audience.
“I think a lot of people were really just missing performing,” Curtis said. “A couple of them didn’t even put up their donation info.”
She added, “Seeing people connect in the comments of the Facebook Live events, it’s really become a substitute for social time in a bar or in a venue.”
Citing nationwide protests calling for social justice reforms, Curtis, who saw her Facebook venue as “a short-term project,” said for her, the desire to post videos on social media has dwindled. “With all of the George Floyd protests and different things going on, it didn’t seem like the same moment,” she said. “I think it’s appropriate right now for the focus to be elsewhere, and to keep focus on the Black Lives Matter movement being sustained.”
Curtis said she is reevaluating how Captive Audience’s content might be delivered going forward, leaning toward a format that is, as she put it, more professional and formal, while retaining a DIY feel. She’d also put more emphasis on encouraging audience donations for musicians and possible matching options going to support services and organizations.
“It’s really important to me to know that my musician friends are able to keep being musicians and feeding themselves that way,” Curtis said.
Aaron Colter co-founded Portland-based Banana Stand Media in 2007 with his high school friend, Louis Herr. They posted videos online of bands that played in the basement of the house he and Herr shared with a group of friends. The house shows featured on the Banana Stand website quickly evolved from videos recorded with standard computer equipment to professionally polished live sessions produced by the website’s all-volunteer staff.
From its inception, Banana Stand was an outlet for underground bands and musicians who flew under the radar of Portland’s music scene. Today, the dense and impressive back catalog of live records includes performances by The Woolen Men, And And And, Ural Thomas & The Pain, Social Studies, Haley Heynderickx, and many more.
In light of the coronavirus pandemic, however, Banana Stand has halted production for the time being. Unable to record live concerts, Colter and his colleagues are also not comfortable going into musicians’ homes to record Banana Stand’s single-camera-and-mic video series titled “Unpeeled.”
“We have still a lot of material we recorded last year that we’re finishing up to put out this year,” Colter said. “so, we’re lucky in that regard that we’re able to put out albums.”
“Next year?” Colter added. “I don’t know.”
Annie Ostrowski is XRAY FM’s events manager, sponsorship manager and a DJ on the “PDX Pop Now!” radio show. She has been with XRAY FM since the station started in 2014. In March, Ostrowski said, all of the station’s events calendars for the year — including XRAY’s annual awards show at Polaris Hall — were canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
This left many of the station’s staff wondering, “How do we create connection and continue to support musicians in Portland?” Ostrowski said, “specifically, when going to venues isn’t a possibility.”
XRAY FM began its livestreaming its “House Show” series in early May, featuring local bands Pure Bathing Culture and Altadore. Shows are run through Zoom and broadcast to the station’s Website, Facebook Live channel, YouTube account.
To produce these shows, XRAY’s production engineer Chase Spross would drop off recording equipment kits he constructed at the artist’s home and walk them through the setup procedure over the phone.
“Every time I’m on one of these ‘House Shows’ for XRAY, it gives me a portion of that feeling of being at a live show,” Ostrowski said. “I can’t even describe how happy it makes me.”
Christerson, who curated a number of XRAY FM’s ‘House Shows,’ said the station and The Fixin’ To have always had a long-standing and successful partnership, so collaborating on livestreaming events was a given.
“I’ve always really respected Joel’s booking choices,” Ostrowski said. “He gets a lot of diverse artists in there. So, when he let me know that (The Fixin’ To) was offering their space to us, we definitely wanted to jump on that.”
The concert featuring Mic Capes and Jordan Fletch was the first collaborative livestreaming series for the radio station and venue.
For their follow-up on July 17, XRAY FM co-hosted the Out From the Shadows Festival — a showcase planned months in advance, but put on hold due to the pandemic — featuring Portland post-punk bands OVER and TimeBitch, along with Push Button Press from Tampa, Fla.
Musician Kyle Craft is scheduled to perform July 31.
“We’re basically transitioning that series into doing a lot of (shows) at The Fixin’ To,” Christerson said.
“It’s up to the artist. Whatever they would feel safest at,” Ostrowski said. While a solo artist may find playing a House Show from their living room the safest option, a four- or five-piece band may require a traditional stage set up. “The Fixin’ To is a way for us to offer a clean, socially distant space that’s really restricted to just the crew involved,” she said.
The spaciousness inside The Fixin’ To allows for crewmembers, which includes Christerson, an XRAY video technician and a sound engineer, and the musicians to safely distance from each another. When multiple bands are on the bill, they can be staggered between performances as the club’s patio area acts as an outdoor green room.
“For the most part, a majority of (these shows) have been live, with just a few that have been prerecorded,” Ostrowski said.
Ostrowski and Christerson said they are exploring production elements that would enhance the livestream experience, such as pairing bands with visual artists or hosting musicians with experimental music projects.
“Maybe get into the more conceptual realm of the show,” Christerson said. “Making things a little more interesting.”
XRAY receives sponsorships from Brian Wannamaker of the Falcon Art Community, media sponsorship from Grapevine Outdoor and a personal contribution from Mike’s Killer Bread co-founder, Dave Dahl. “We’re definitely looking for more partners and sponsors to keep this going as long as we need to,” Ostrowski said.
“I think people are just going to want to see artists perform, and they’re not going to be able to do it in person,” Ostrowski said. “So, as long as there is a need for it, we want to continue doing it.”
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