Change of Plans

How life has changed for musicians during the pandemic

Story by Josie Long

Bob Schnieder posing for Discogs. (Photo by Discog)

Musicians play a big part in how culture has evolved, but when lockdown began because of COVID-19, musicians have had to adapt to their new lifestyle. Bob Schnieder is a musician who began his career in Austin, and later moved on to expand his reach over various places. Shaan Shirazi is an Austin based musician who plays bass guitar for a few bands around the city. During the COVID-19 pandemic, both have been affected in various different ways and were forced to adapt the ways they perform for different audiences. One big change Schnieder made during the pandemic was in how he played shows: “I was on tour in Belgium, and we had to cut it short by week because of the pandemic. I remember it was Friday the 13th. We had about five more shows at the end of the weekend, and then we were going to be gone. Then that’s when the President said travel from Europe was going to be suspended as of that weekend, so we had to hustle and then change all our plans to go from Antwerp to Amsterdam to Portugal to Chicago to Austin.” Shirazi was also affected in other ways by the pandemic since he wasn’t able to tour and wasn’t able to have live shows to make revenue. The change in his lifestyle affected which careers he wanted to pursue.

“The pandemic made me pick up a new career as well. Learning how to do appliance repair was just something I never thought to do before because I always had an office job. This made me think of a new career or a way to make money to offset the money that I’m not making playing music.” This is a regular occurence in the music industry now, since so many small musicians have not been able to go out and play for

Bob Schneider in the cover of his album A Perfect Day. Photo Credit: Bob Schneider

Shirazi dancing at a band’s concert (Photo by Getty)

revenue, and most are not able to afford their rent and bills they still need to pay off. Since lockdown began, restrictions began to be enforced which resulted in Schnieder and Shirazi as well as most other artists being forced to cancel all of their shows and performances. Schnieder says that he was playing about 12 shows a month before the pandemic but he’s currently averaging only six shows per month.

With Shirazi being a much smaller artist he has been able to tour before lockdown and now has several jobs to perform: “I have a couple of places where I’m playing. I play one Saturday night at the White Horse. The same group of people own another bar on the South side [of Austin] called Sagebrush Play. I do a bunch of live stream gigs there. A place that normally would host live music is called the Little Longhorn Saloon. I have done a live streaming of Good Life there Sunday while I was doing every other Thursday with another band.” Schneider has been playing many gigs during lockdown but has done so with uncertainty around careers returning back to a sense of normalcy. “It’ll get back to whatever the new normal is,” Schneider said, “I think things will change once everybody’s vaccinated, but I don’t think it’ll ever go back to the way it was. I think there’s definitely going to be an impact on what people do and how they do it.” It’s not all bad though as Shirazi shows that he can see the good parts of what seems to be a completely bleak and unforgiving situation. When asked if he was happy with the small amount of performances during the pandemic, he said: “Yeah, and I take it with a grain of salt; it could be a lot worse. I guess I’m lucky that I get to play at a level to know what I’m playing at the club level which still exists. People that only play big arenas like big touring bands, they can’t do anything; hardly anything can happen, it’s just too many people to sustain. In a way, being on this sort of band level, even though it’s professional and you’re as good as most musicians and at any level, it’s a little bit better because we can play to smaller audiences. We can play to distanced audiences and we can do basic live streaming things. I would say that it could be a whole lot worse. And I tend to always try to look at things on the bright side.” As well as Shirazi, Schnieder also sees some good that has come out of the pandemic for him and he says things may go back to some

Shirazi playing with one of his Austin bands, Weird Satellite. (Photo by Dataveria)

kind of normal. “I know for a fact that I will never not do live streaming. That’s just part of what I like doing [since I] enjoy it. It’s something I’ll continue to do even after I start playing regular shows.” With all of this in mind, it’s clear the musicians have made many changes to their lives and the way they enjoy music and perform their own music to an audience but both artists are able to see the good parts in a bleak situation.

Image by Bob Schneider represents how his music makes you feel