Without the coronavirus pandemic, concert halls, from small clubs to stadiums across the United States, would be alive this summer with the sounds of music.
But COVID-19 took a break from top live performances, leaving live concerts as the safest way to bring musicians and fans together. While concert tickets would possibly be overlooked, concert T-shirts are placed in boxes, some unsold beyond the shows, other occasions before the spring and summer tours now canceled or postponed.
For example, T-shirt company Everywhere, which manufactures concert T-shirts and other products from recycled curtains, began making face masks with their curtains and donated them to charities and services that needed it as the pandemic broke out.
Everywhere, which was founded in Chicago, manufactures T-shirts for the Dead and Company summer tour; his roster includes singer and guitarist Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir and drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart, as well as singer and guitarist John Mayer. After Weir realized the task, nicknamed Music4Masks, he informed his friend and Widespread Panic guitarist Dave Schools; donated T-shirts and spoke enthusiastically about the assignment to other musicians.
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“We have all kinds of T-shirts of all kinds of tours that had never been sold before. It has something to do with them,” Weir said. “I guess we’ve just given them to other homeless people or something, but for now, it turns out to be a more urgent problem.”
Together, the two teams donated about 1,500 pounds of blouses, about 5,000 T-shaped blouses. “It doesn’t end up in a mass sale and each blouse can make five or six masks of two thick and give them away,” said Schools, who is the bassist and vocalist of Georgia. “We think it’s a very smart idea.”
Everywhere collects the fabrics and helps them take them to central locations and distributes them to local mask sewing groups, organized through Sewing for Lives and Frontline Fabric Masks, which in combination have more than 10,000 volunteer members who make masks at home.
Some volunteers create “seamless masks” made through cut and construction fabric, while others sew masks, which are more durable and were donated first to hospitals and medical facilities, but are now sent to pantry, women’s shelters and others. Sites.
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So far, the collaboration has distributed 20,000 masks to a lot of organizations. Musicians and bands can donate T-shirts on the Music4Masks website. You can donate to the existing Operation School Bus assignment to get a mask in schools. Schools can also get kits from 35 ready-to-sew masks.
Support for Music4Masks is growing, with more artists such as Josh Ritter, Wilco, Lord Huron and The Lumineers. And Everywhere now takes pre-orders from a Music4Masks face mask ($20, earnings go to the mask donation program and Sewing for Lives) made of 100% recycled cotton and polyester.
“The concert industry has been greatly affected by the pandemic,” said Irys Kornbluth, Everywhere’s co-executive director. “While live music and occasions are offline, we play artists and build another type of platform, spreading a positive message about how dressing up in a mask can have an impact.”
Also under development: a way for artists to turn unused products into a mask they can sell to fans. “Especially now, in the absence of live concerts, artists can get advantages from more products on sale online,” Kornbluth said.
In April, the Pollstar industry publication estimated that music would lose up to $20 billion, regardless of all locations.
For musicians, the most productive result would be more people dressed in masks, slowing the spread of COVID-19 and perhaps accelerating the return to live music, the musicians say.
“That’s what we do. That’s why we’re here and we can’t do it now. Everyone is helping each other with this virus so that we can go out and do what we do,” Weir said. “If we had done this at first, we could even have had concerts this summerArray … or at least autumn concerts.”
Widespread Panic guitar schools would possibly perceive music enthusiasts lack live performances. “With a little time to think about it in recent months, it becomes something of a fundamental human need… regardless of its scale, whether it’s a stadium for a concert or a sporting occasion or a nightclub to see a band that’s a fashion band,” he says. “But there’s no point in looking to do something on the user until we can master this and at least get more wisdom and perceive the spread.”
Follow Mike Snider on Twitter: @MikeSnider.