Where Are We Going to Rock Now?
Picture this: it’s the night of your 19th birthday and you’re setting out for your first bar crawl. You hop off the streetcar, see the run-down sign, and wonder if this place is as fun as they say. Palm a crinkled ten into the bouncer’s hand and head through the dimly-lit hallway while live music blares through the booze-scented, crowded room. It feels like everyone else is a local, and you don’t know who’s playing, but it doesn’t matter—after tonight, they’re your favourite band and this bar is as much yours as anyone else’s. While you jam to fresh tunes and pretend to like the local craft beer that the bartender convinced you to try, you are, for a brief moment, a part of the continuum that is Toronto’s age-old live scene.
Just kidding! COVID-19 has made sure that won’t be happening anytime soon.
Depending on case numbers (or how Doug Ford feels when he wakes up that day), non-essential establishments have been ordered to close their doors or to operate under minimal capacity to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Permanent closures of long-time historic venues and staples to Toronto’s music scene have periodically punctuated the monotony of lockdown. Small deaths include The Boat, The Mod Club, and the Matador, to name just a few.
COVID-19 has made easy pickings of iconic venues, where condo-proposals swoop in like vultures and promise steep, high-rise buildings in exchange for the bit of musical culture we have left. Venues that have stood the test of time to give Torontonians front seats to the variety of genres, from jazz, to punk, to hip-hop, to indie, are dropping like flies, and there’s not much we can do about it. Since March of last year, more than 20 venues have permanently shut their doors, and it seems as though more are to follow. Fundraising and rallying behind momentary patio-opens can only do so much, and frankly, the future of live music is uncertain, to say the least.
So what does this mean? For casual music-lovers and bar-hoppers, maybe not much. They’ll find a new bar to haunt, or maybe board-games will replace discovering new musicians every Friday night. Big venues like Massey Hall, Rebel, and Scotiabank Arena are likely to survive the financial hemorrhage that is COVID-19, but local musicians especially feel the pang of losing the opportunities that smaller venues always gave.
Danie, a singer based in Toronto, explained, “it makes it quite hard to stay motivated. [The chance to perform in] venues is basically non-existent, so there’s not really much to do right now other than to just keep working on my music and try to stay positive. Playing with people is massively inspiring as well, and I definitely miss the intimacy of it all. There’s also a certain push/pressure I think that’s just the result of everyone being in their own bubbles. The biggest thing is that I’m trying to simply stay inspired in an uninspiring time, and a lot of uncertainty goes with that.”
Danie isn’t alone in her sentiment. How are local artists supposed to catch their big break without local venues to act as incubators?
Live-streaming, social media, and Spotify have shown that we live in a different world now, but there’s a certain kind of authenticity to being discovered on the small stage and a thrill to being part of a crowd when an act starts small. Rush would’ve stagnated playing Ontario high schools and church basements for $25 bucks a pop before their big break opening for New York Dolls at Victory Theatre, another historic gem that closed down thanks to the giant of gentrification. Billy Talent stayed local in the indie scene for ten years before catching their big break with Warner Bros, and that all started from venues taking a chance and keeping an open mind. With these spaces gone, it’s hard to imagine a platform for musicians to showcase their talents to people, and to the people that want to listen.
From Harrison Pickernell’s perspective, front-man of Toronto’s The Get Alongs, “it hits harder when smaller venues that would host out-of-town bands or give local acts a shot are gone. You want to go see bands at places that aren’t just Rebel and instead are more intimate.”
But that doesn’t mean the end to live music as we know it. As Harrison states, “maybe this is just being optimistic, but with indie becoming more mainstream and the pent-up energy from people being cooped up inside, that’ll create a demand for venues and concerts after the pandemic is over.’
Now more than ever, people are itching for a chance to connect and take full advantage of being with each other again and living in the moment. For people that have been forced to stay inside and watch their lives go by without them, what doesn’t sound more appealing than moshing with a group of sweaty strangers to music you didn’t know you loved until you walked in? For the places and times that have left us through this pandemic we give a moment of silence, but there’s light at the end of the tunnel; for the budding musicians and the patrons itching for something new, it’s okay to have a bit of hope to see where we’ll be soon. Maybe it’ll be through new venues, or maybe we’ll have unorthodox shows; but as long as music is still being made, the live scene will never die.
Check out Danie’s music here.
Check out The Get Alongs here. ■
Graphics by Jennifer Wan, with footage from Glass Animals
