MUSIC

can’t tour due to family obligations, disability, or a hundred other factors.

During the pandemic, plenty of stories have surfaced that expose additional cracks in that conventional wisdom. If even a single member of a touring band tests positive for COVID19, it can result in a string of canceled shows and the loss of hundreds if not thousands of dollars—even without factoring in the cost of housing, feeding, and transporting the band while they can’t perform.

When Animal Collective canceled a European tour in fall 2022, they cited COVID-19 and the economy. In a public statement, the group wrote, “From inflation, to currency devaluation, to bloated shipping and transportation costs, and much much more, we simply could not make a budget for this tour that did not lose money even if everything went as well as it could.” If that’s the position of one of the most successful indie acts of the past 20 years, what chance do smaller bands have?

I called up more than a dozen Chicago indie musicians to talk about touring since the arrival of the pandemic. Some, such as Montez, had little to no experience on the road before 2020; others, including Facs front man Brian Case, started touring more than a generation ago. Everyone I contacted had encountered challenges on the road, whether caused directly by the pandemic or aggravated by pandemic-related economic conditions. No two people had the same experience, with the arguable exception of Bridget Stiebris and Haley Blomquist—and they play together in the band OK Cool. A few artists I interviewed aspire to make music a full-time job, but only a fraction of them can pay for even basic needs with music- related income. Everyone makes money some other way.

Most of the subjects of this story still value touring and the opportunities it a ords them. Even before the pandemic, several had recalibrated their expectations for their music careers to bring them in line with the financial constraints of the post-streaming industry. One key element of productive touring is learning to depend on it only for what it can give, and that’s constantly changing—usually for the worse.

I couldn’t answer some of my larger questions, such as the e ect of deteriorating tour conditions on regional music communities— that’s an entirely different story. But I did come away from these conversations with a newfound appreciation for the lengths to which indie artists will go to hit the road.

Montez works full-time as an architect. “I needed a job that could provide health insurance, ’cause I’m diabetic,” he says. “That’s a whole other can of worms on the road.” His day job also allows paid time o , so he can keep drawing his salary even when a tour isn’t breaking even. Not every musician has that luxury.

“None of us really have vacation pay with what we’re doing—we’re all freelancing or working in the service industry,” says Ganser drummer Brian Cundi . That makes it much harder for Ganser to treat tours as loss leaders as they build an out-of-town audience. “We have to make it worth our while now,” Cundi says. “Sometimes that means exceeding just covering the cost of the tour. We need to have money to eat. We’d like to have money to pay our bills when we get back.”

“It seems like the independent venues are kind of helping bands out.”

Relatively traditional nine-to-five jobs have disadvantages too, including less flexibility with time o . “We only have so much time o , in general, from work,” says OK Cool guitaristvocalist Bridget Stiebris. “Me and Haley have never done a tour longer than a week, because never done a tour longer than a week, because

When Bret Koontz booked a seven-date November 2022 tour with his backing band, Truancy Club, he relied on the DIY network he’d built in the late 2000s as front man of Cool Memories. His Rolodex has shrunk since then, because turnover is high in the DIY scene—it’s volunteer run, and even when people don’t age out of the community, its venues are vulnerable to shutdown because organizers often live in them.

Reynolds (aka Rose Hotel) in September 2022. They played in each other’s groups and brought along a bassist and a drummer who could perform both sets—thus presenting two full lineups each night while paying just four people.

“We didn’t pay each other, and it really worked out,” McConnell says. “Because we were essentially splitting the cost, we were able to pay our other musicians a rate that felt really fair.” that’s usually all that we can get off.” Since March 2020, OK Cool have gone on just one tour, playing a date in Wisconsin and another in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Stiebris and Blomquist also toured for a week or so in October 2021 as members of five-piece band the Weekend Run Club.

Artists without booking agents often discover that the labor of scheduling their own tours can be time-consuming. But as Meat Wave front man Chris Sutter learned as he booked 13 road dates for his band in fall 2022, it has benefits too. “A lot of these small, unaffiliated venues are more generous, I suppose, with a band of our ilk, rather than [venues] owned by Live Nation or a broader company. We used to play those [corporate] kinds of venues all the time through an agent,” he says.

“A lot of the smaller cities that we’d normally go to, like Louisville, the people that I spoke to and that I normally work with told me that that town is basically still recovering,” Koontz says. “They’re still trying to get their DIY music scene up and running again, and they didn’t really have the resources. I got that sense from some other places too. So we decided to do major cities and do longer drives and consolidate it more.” Koontz brought all four members of Truancy Club along, which shortened the tour because not everyone could stay out for the two and a half weeks he would’ve preferred.

Izzy Olive records as Half Gringa, and when she goes on the road, she usually brings four support musicians. Since the start of the pandemic, she’s organized three full-band tours. “It’s my rodeo, so I pay my band and I pay for all the expenses on tour,” she says. “I know costs are going up, and I want to pay people in my band more, because they’re worth it.” Olive’s desire to do right by her band a ects her cost-benefit analysis. “I have to make sure that I’m able to pay people and pay for all the things I need without completely being broke,” she says. “Or being able to just pay it o in a reasonable amount of time.”

Vivian McConnell, aka V.V. Lightbody, cut down on the expense of a backing band by partnering with Atlanta songwriter Jordan

Even before the pandemic, Seth Engel had decided he couldn’t tour with his main project, Options. The cost of hiring musicians exceeds what he’s been able to make on the road solo. “The reality is, [touring] without being able to pay people what I would ask for would just feel gross and bad and icky,” he says. “I’m perfectly content to just hang out at home, play shows locally, and make bangers in my room.”

That said, Engel toured more last year than any of my subjects—he just did it as a sideman. He played with Nnamdï, Water From Your Eyes, Mister Goblin, and Dust Star, which by his own reckoning kept him on the road for almost four months of 2022. “There are two lines I draw,” Engel says. “One is, I have to come back and not su er financially—otherwise it’s like, why did I even do it? The other one, of course, is: doesn’t matter how much I’m getting paid if I don’t love playing the music.”

Of everyone in this story, McConnell has landed the biggest support gig: in May she performed at BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend with Harry Styles, singing backup and playing in his band. “It definitely gave me a boost of confidence,” she says. “I was feeling pretty down at the beginning of last year. I was not ready to do the hustle again, just because I’ve been doing it for so long. And it can be really discouraging with touring.”