THE GOOD LIFE
ART S
The Case for Charlotte Music, Post-COVID
Just as Charlotte began to lay a foundation for something it’s notoriously lacked over the years—the ability to sustain a vibrant, distinctive local music scene—the pandemic snatched it away, as it did so much else. Was it a lethal blow? This magazine’s longtime editor, now a driver of a local music initiative, grabs the mic to argue: Hell, no BY RICK THURMOND | PHOTOGRAPHS BY DANIEL COSTON
THE YEAR 2020 was shaping up to be a good one for the Charlotte music scene. Going into March, independent venues The Evening Muse and Neighborhood Theatre in NoDa had celebrated a run of sold-out shows. Uptown, the brandnew jazz club Middle C had hit its stride with its own string of sellouts. Charlotte’s largest venues, including four Live Nation-owned stages and the city-owned Bojangles Coliseum, Ovens Auditorium, and Spectrum Center were booking more shows than ever. Any night of the week, you could experience high-quality, local, live music. Heck, pick a night, and you could hear live jazz, which, until the Bechtler started a monthly series 11 years ago, was kept on life support by the legendary Bill Hanna, who died in January. Once a month, at cozy Snug Harbor in Plaza Midwood, Elevator Jay, the bard of Beatties Ford, presided over Player Made,
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an Ode to Southern Rap. At Comet Grill in Dilworth, some of the city’s best bar bands lit up the place three or four nights a week. On Sunday afternoons, local and touring bands contorted themselves into a corner at iconic dive bar Thirsty Beaver and played for hours. Recording studios were booked with sessions. Local artists in all genres worked on new material. Backup players joined big names on cross-country tours. Charlotte’s own Jonathan Kirk, better known as DaBaby, was on his way to a second straight Billboard No. 1 record. For me, more than two years of work was starting to pay off. In late 2017, through my role at Charlotte Center City Partners, I helped launch an initiative called Music Everywhere CLT. Our longterm goal, building on a latent strength of Charlotte, is for music to become an essential element of this city. Through research, focus groups, a survey of 2,000
people, and work with a consultant, we produced something called The Charlotte Music Ecosystem Study and Action Plan. Nerdy, I know. Town halls and meetups followed. We have strategies to boost audience awareness, grow artist resources, develop the industry, ensure equitable outcomes, and organize the music community. All of that is the foundation. Atop it, a killer music scene can flourish. At 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 12, I was scheduled to meet with a few folks in the music community at The Evening Muse. We were planning the first-ever Charlotte Music Week, a followup to Confluence, a music conference and festival that debuted at the U.S. National Whitewater Center in 2019. We were shooting for the week before the Republican National Convention in August. The concept: a conference during the day, with guest speakers from Charlotte and all over the country.
