Tom Dunne's Music & Me: Now is the time that musicians really need our help 

They've given us some of the best nights of our life,  but many are struggling with a situation that has become a perfect storm in terms of decimating the sector all the way to Christmas 

Some of the people in Cork who are part of the National Campaign for the Arts' attempt to highlight the difficulties faced by musicians and others working in sector. Picture: Clare Keogh

I can feel his tension. He hasn’t played a gig since March 12. His Covid payment is getting cut. He has supported himself by music his whole life. He is 39 and his daughter is two. He’s been offered a wedding gig. “It’s in Wicklow! I’d be breaking the lockdown. If I get paid do I lose the Covid payment?” His dad is in at risk group. “You can’t do it,” I tell him, but sure he knows.

His brother also hasn’t had a gig since March. His band released a great album that month, now collecting dust. His girlfriend has been let go from a promotions company. She has rallied and set up her own business but the gigs she is promoting are next year.

The music industry has reached a point at which someone would normally suggest putting on a gig to raise money and boost morale. At the very least a few heads would gather somewhere and just play few songs, because in difficult moments, that’s what you do. “As long as you can fill a room,” Neil Young once told an aspiring writer. Yes, but if there are no rooms.

Walking home a friend texts me a photo of his desk in the office of a major venue. He’s cleared it out. “Sad day,” he says. But it seems to be sad days everywhere you look. I keep thinking of a very well-known person I met on the beach in April. 

“Sure look at us, enjoying the sun,” they said, then adding, “I have money until August, I don’t know after that.” I keep trying to put a brave face on it, playing the great records that come across my desk. 2020 will be remembered, despite everything, as a great year for writing music. The show isn’t long enough to do it justice. But the background noise is rising. It is an existential crisis.

Back home Christy Dignam, an almost lifelong friend, is on TV. He is making the point that although Aslan had weathered the initial Covid storm they are now at the end of their savings. The new restrictions, the reduction in the Covid payment and realisation that barring a miracle the annual Christmas gigs are gone is hitting home. The frustration, the worry is palpable.

Early I had seen Jerry Fish, another almost lifelong friend, making similar points. He was pointing out that behind the (I would say ‘amazing’) on stage persona is a married man with children and a mortgage. I felt sick to my guts. 

Artists, as Tommy Tiernan pointed out, are the people who give us the best nights of our lives. You like to think of those gigs as ‘a kind of magic,’ not something that is mortgaged.

Artists are becalmed. Fontaines DC should be a few months into a 12-month world tour, making hay while the notoriously fickle music sun shines. But they aren’t. Ailbhe Reddy should be preparing to tour the US and Canada with Paul Weller. She isn’t.

The list goes on: Villagers, Pillow Queens, Seamas Fogarty, Lankum, to name but a tiny few. Artists who have spent their lives working hard to get to this position, ready to reap the rewards of their hard work, honed creativity, chemistry, hunger and passion are sitting on their hands.

And behind every name a story: Luka Bloom, at considerable expense to himself recorded a new album called Bittersweet Crimson. It is a thing of beauty. He reckons it cost €30K, an enormous amount, but it would be money well spent if it meant radio and TV appearances, tours and a reconnection with audiences the world over. Instead it too gathers dust.

It has become the perfect storm. Music was the first to close and looks like being the last to re-open. The novelty of the pandemic, the ‘all in this together spirit’ has worn thin. As summer ends a chill wind blows. The Christmas season is when most bands tour and make the bulk of their income. That won’t happen now, but at the same time the Covid payment is being cut and the mortgage breaks are coming to an end.

I saw a comedian tweet that he now doubted he would ever do stand-up again. I fear a lot of musicians, crew, production staff and others in the industry are thinking the same thing about music. Music helps us celebrate the great times in our lives, but it also gets us through the worst. It is the music itself that needs our help now.