BUZZ CULTURE: THE RETURN OF THE GIG | FEATURE
As part of the Buzz Culture programme, Izzy from Brighton rock faves Black Honey and music PR Warren Higgins of Chuff Media look ahead to the reanimation of the live music industry in 2021.
They can reopen the pubs and dismantle the field hospitals, but the only true ‘normal’ that many of us will know might be one of the last ones that we see: feeling the sweat and rush of a crowd at a gig. The live music industry is one global sector that has been left totally marooned by Covid, almost completely unable to adapt to pandemic society. Venue doors shut over a year ago and nearly all have remained that way. The skilled have been furloughed or moved on; the artists perform for donations via livestreams to keep active; an audience at home on the sofa tries to imagine how it would all sound buzzing through a faulty club PA.
Public relations companies like Chuff Media are one of the few moving parts in the music business that are still spinning, keeping the beast alive. In peacetime, a PR company acts as the liaison between an artist and the music media.
“We tend to deal with regional media, on behalf of record labels and bands that are touring,” says Warren Higgins, Chuff founder. “We would be the people that chat with Buzz or with the Western Mail, so that they’re aware that the artist is coming and then can look for preview opportunities, interviews, seek out reviewers and photographers. We do that for artists when they tour and when they come to release records, because there are publications that will review records as well.”
The closure of venues in the face of social distancing measures utterly transformed music media, as culture publications moved to cut their losses by mutilating their content, closing doors for companies like Chuff.
“The What’s On journalists that you would tend to deal with have been reassigned or furloughed; the What’s On pages themselves have shrunk down or disappeared altogether because there’s been nothing going on to write about, so those pages have been given over to something else. We’ve hit a bit of a wall.”
In the absence of live material, necessity bred innovation, and music publications survived by reverting to a focus on the records and music reviews. “Some people were like, ‘Fantastic, let’s run an album feature for an artist, let’s have a bit of a chat again,’” says Warren. “It was nice in that respect: it kind of went back to the old ways of feature-based entertainment writing.”
In February, after almost a year of fanning the dying embers of civil fortitude, the UK Government announced their ‘roadmap out of lockdown’ which, pending the success of the vaccination programme, low hospital admissions and control of Covid variants, would see the removal of all limits on social contact on Mon 21 June 2021. At the time of writing this pertains only to England; despite the cautions of senior medical professionals and the devolved Governments in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland that such a promise at this early a stage was, in Mark Drakeford’s words, “optimistic”, many organisers and punters alike have set their watches to summer as the rebirth of gigs, raves, festivals, and coughing for fun.
Live industry heads such as Warren Higgins are delighted at the renewed interest, and Chuff Media have cautiously begun moving ahead with promoting tours themselves, including a spate of dates in Cardiff beginning this autumn.
“People are hopeful,” Higgins says. “As soon as that roadmap was announced, the great thing was that we were starting to get a lot of calls and emails. Venues have had time to work out how they can make it work in terms of the whole health and safety aspect, and I guess people have got clever with touring – how they can make that affordable with what could be some reduced numbers at venues.”
however, he is much less convinced about the timescale of summer plans for festivals.
“There’s hope, but I think there’s a bit of a difference between a 500-2000 capacity venue and 100,000 people in a field – that’s just a super-spreader event waiting to happen. The smaller numbers I think could be a lot more manageable.”
You can read more about the music media industry in our interview with Warren here.
Buzz recently spoke to Izzy B Phillips, singer with Brighton four-piece Black Honey – represented by Chuff Media, and one of the planned first wave of post-Covid touring acts, booked in Cardiff’s Clwb Ifor Bach on Tue 12 Oct. For her, even just being able to play with others once more will be enough.
“I think the thing I’m actually most excited about is to get back in the studio with the band and just get really good at playing again,” she says. “It’s hard to visualize the gigs yet, so far away in October. I feel like I’m really falling behind and it’s bumming me out a bit.
“I’m excited to get back to what I love doing, which is being in the studio fucking around playing guitar, singing, and just doing what my job is and what I love to do. Then we’ll take it from there. Once I get to that point, I’ll be like, hey, I’m excited about the gigs now!”
For maybe all of us, the prospect of more isolation is just too much to bear.
“I want to write in the studio with people. The thought of writing on my own any longer this year is dreadful.”
You can read the full interview with Izzy here.
In March 2020, when venues first closed their doors and we settled down for our cushy three weeks of working from home, if we could have seen ourselves now – haggard and scruffy, exhausted and stir-crazy like lost mountaineers – would we have been able to do it? Is the temptation of June 21 and the spurring of those daily vaccination figures enough to make us forget how we got here in the first place?
“If we’ve seen anything, it’s that things can change rather quickly,” warns Warren Higgins, on the question of whether we are returning to normality. “But the vaccine’s hopefully doing its job, and once we do all that and continue to be a bit careful… there shouldn’t be any issues, should there? It’s kind of up to us.
“There’s definitely a light there at the end of the tunnel, but I think we’ve got to make sure to do everything just right, not rush it. If we have to lock everything down again because we got restless, that’s just going to be devastating.”
words JASON MACHLAB
Buzz Culture
Discover how our brand new learning experience is giving young people in Wales the skills they need to get ahead