BBC News
By Max Matza
image captionWichita s Wave, which opened in 2018, has been shuttered since March
Arts and music venues across the US have been hard hit by the pandemic. Can $15bn in new relief funds help them survive? It s heart-breaking and it s terrifying, says Adam Hartke, who co-owns two music venues in Wichita, Kansas, that have been closed since the first wave of pandemic lockdowns in March. We re out of business. We ve done nothing. There was a point where we were thinking of not ever reopening, says Paul Rizzo, the owner of The Bitter End in New York City s Greenwich Village, which has been shut for the past nine months and would be extinct if not for an understanding reached with the landlords.
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Can new relief funds help arts venues survive?
Arts and music venues across the US have been hard hit by the pandemic. Can $15bn in new relief funds help them survive? It s heart-breaking and it s terrifying, says Adam Hartke, who co-owns two music venues in Wichita, Kansas, that have been closed since the first wave of pandemic lockdowns in March. We re out of business. We ve done nothing. There was a point where we were thinking of not ever reopening, says Paul Rizzo, the owner of The Bitter End in New York City s Greenwich Village, which has been shut for the past nine months and would be extinct if not for an understanding reached with the landlords.
2020 has been a seemingly endless bad news grind, with death and economic devastation all around. We couldnât even soothe ourselves much with live music.
The tail end of this absolute mess of a solar revolution brings some hope for the future, even as people crowd airports to do their holiday travel in what will be the yearâs final super-spreader event.
Two items that provide big hopes make up my top 5 music news items for the year.
Save Our Stages Act passes
A bipartisan measure to keep music venues alive is part of the recent COVID-19 relief package that Congress finally passed, and which awaited President Trumpâs signature.
Local Concert Venue Confident After President Trump Threatens To Veto Stimulus Package
Concert venues across the country, including the Oklahoma City metro area, are holding their breath after President Trump threatened to veto the latest COVID-19 relief package Tuesday night.
The move caught members of Congress off guard after passing the bill, a bill which included an act called “Save The Stages Act.”
The act would provide funding for struggling concert venues across the country.
Noise from the Jones Assembly in downtown Oklahoma City isn’t what it used to be. You can blame a global pandemic for that.
“COVID hit us really hard, we do a lot of stuff under one roof at Jones,” said The Jones Assembly Operating Partner, Graham Colton.