From Americana To R&B, Here’s How Solo Artists Are Surviving 2020

It’s been over three months since the threat of COVID-19 caused live concerts and the touring industry across the United States to shut down. For many musicians and artists this meant cancelling or postponing shows, refunding tickets and walking away from their main source of income. 

So how are artists surviving after months of not being able to tour and no clear end in sight? We reached out to nine touring artists this month to find out how they’re handling the crisis financially, and to hear about their current approaches to touring in 2020.

When it comes to running a business, solo artists often have lower overhead and can pivot and innovate more quickly than bands since execution usually requires just one person. Their business model is unique, so this article will focus on the approach of solo artists, but we’ll be sharing the stories of touring duos, and bands in subsequent pieces.

Liz Longley is an Americana singer songwriter living in Nashville, TN with a voice worthy of sell-out shows, and with her stunning new album “Funeral For My Past” being released later this year, she was likely to have more than a few. All of that is up in the air now.

With her tour postponed to the fall, but with no guarantee that venues will be open by then, Liz is starting to diversify. “I think the strategy has been staying open and not getting attached to any one plan, because that will just set you up for disappointment,” she says. “So I’m definitely pivoting.” 

Having had two very successful Kickstarter campaigns raising over $200,000 collectively, Liz has a proven bond with her fans and she’s willing to put in the work to find new ways to connect. Since stay-at-home measures were implemented in March, Liz has hosted over 16 online concerts for her fans with the option to send in tips via Venmo or PayPal. But she’s also finding success in innovating a new branch of her creativity altogether: Helping people write songs.

“People will send me their lyrics and I’ll put music to it, or they’ll send me their melodies and I’ll write the lyrics to it,” she explains. Some fans will also tell Liz a personal story and ask for a song to be written as a surprise for an anniversary or birthday. And at $2,500 a song (written and recorded) it’s a promising new model. One fan has already commissioned three songs, essentially creating a personalized EP.

Devon Gilfilian is a genre-bending soul artist also based in Nashville, TN. With his debut album having come out in January, he was on track to have a very exciting year. “Summer was gonna be great!” Devon says. He had just finished a tour opening for Grace Potter and was excited to play a bunch of festivals including Bonnarroo and SXSW, as well as another opening slot for a big headliner that was postponed before it got announced and ending with a headlining tour in the fall.

Now in June, Devon is letting the new reality sink in: “My mindset is that touring is not happening in 2020. So what kind of content can we create right now that is meaningful and powerful and will bring people together without putting them in danger?”

Devon and his team have been working in home studios around Nashville to create that new content, but in the meantime Devon is thinking of his touring band’s livelihood. Having signed with Capitol Records, Devon is able to live off his advance for the time being, but the band he had hired for his tour doesn’t have that cushion. Through Devon’s management team, they have found initial success playing corporate sponsored online shows from brands like Siete Foods and the beverage company Guayaki. Devon is then able to pass along that revenue to his bandmates to help keep them afloat.

Allen Stone has been a touring powerhouse since he made his debut in 2010. He too had a new album, Building Balance, drop recently; with almost all of his shows selling out, it seemed Allen was having a moment. He was midway through his headlining tour when COVID hit and his shows got cancelled

“It’s hard to accumulate those numbers real time, but I was having a real good time getting out and playing the new music for people,” he told me from his home in Spokane, WA.

“The plan was to continue in that stride.” 

The headlining tour was set to end in California, but that was just the beginning. “We were gonna jump over to Australia and play Byron Bay Blues Fest. And then we were going to pop over to Europe and Hawaii. We had some privates (gigs). We were booked out until August and then had plans to do a co-headlining tour in the fall.”

But with venues likely re-opening at different times and at lower capacity, Allen speaks to a deeper issue with touring in general for the foreseeable future. “Any margin is so slim,” he says. “I mean, you’re going to tell a venue that they can come back to half capacity? Their bills are still the same. Their employees wages are still the same. And I’ve still got my bus, and my employees, and my band, and my crew and all the costs incurred to put on a show. And in reality the margins I make are on VIP and merch, so not having a full venue is not worth it.” 

“I don’t get paid to play music, I get paid to travel and the travel isn’t always glamorous. So as much as we’d love to be on stage playing music, supporting venues and loving on communities it’s tough to do so and lose money each night.”

As a traditional and gifted singer and performer, Allen is also hoping that the current touring constraints might pull artists back to the true and honest power of music. “The digitization of live music has made it so that we have to bring lights. We have to bring fire. We have to bring smoke. We have to shoot lightning bolts out of our f***ing belt buckles in order to compel an audience. But if you look at our brother industry, comedy, it’s just jokes. They show up with a mike and a stool. And that industry is going to live forever, because they don’t lean on tricks. James Taylor can pop out with just an acoustic guitar and his voice and it’s the greatest show you’re ever gonna see.” 

It’s a plea for musicians and artists to trust their art in these uncertain times and to show up in an authentic way when the venues do start re-opening and audiences are looking for genuine connection, because truly live music is not in need of innovation at all.

“Dude, just come out and play the song,” says Stone. “The song is f***ing good enough.”