Dare I say it? It looks (cautiously) like the pandemic is winding down. Things definitely seem to be getting better in California, but that’s a very general term. I’m excited about the possibilities, but I’m mindful of how many people have been so affected by this outbreak. Oh, we’ve all been affected, of course, but I know people who have died, or been very sick. I won’t go into gory details – you all have your own stories.
Music is at once a personal thing and a community thing. When we were hunkering down, we lost the social aspect, for the most part. We burrowed in and revisited the music we love as a personal salve. It evoked memories of better times, and thrilled us simply because it’s there.
I know some working musicians who stopped playing music altogether. I suspect they were already getting disillusioned with the live music scene and the pandemic just helped them make a decision they had been pondering for some time. I hope many of those musicians change their minds about quitting playing.
I have been pretty busy. Since March of 2020, I have been working with a local non-profit (Martinez Music Mafia) to produce streaming shows of videos submitted by local musicians. This proved to be a tonic for both musicians and local music fans. With no place to watch musicians, and no pace for them to play, our weekly “Happy Hour and ½” was a big hit. Over 13 months we put on over 50 shows and featured about 90 artists, and raised thousands of dollars for local charities.
As restrictions grew less onerous, I began rehearsing with a few bands, and we did some cautious socially-distant gigs. I learned I CAN sing through a mask. As vaccines became available, the band returned to full strength and once again, the performance calendar is filling up again. The sense of relief is palpable – I had almost forgotten how great it is to experience live music, both as an audience member and as a musician.
I feel the end of the pandemic, or at least this version of it, is very near, if we continue to be smart and if the world can work together to get the world vaccinated to a degree where the virus (and all its variants) can have great difficulty in finding new hosts. Viruses care nothing about borders of countries – they go wherever they can find susceptible hosts. We’re smart – we can enjoy the opportunities and simultaneously continue the fight.
