I always get a chill when I hop in the car and crank up some music by an artist I am driving down to see live. I love seeing shows at smaller venues like the 9:30 Club, where you stand shoulder to shoulder with fellow fans and jump to your favorite tunes while you watch amazing musicians play powerful music. That was before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ten months later, please take a moment and send positive thoughts to the live entertainment industry, which employs more than 12,000,000 people in normal times and contributes more than three-quarters of a trillion dollars to our economy. For almost a year now, COVID-19 has essentially robbed us all of live music, theater, and dance, and worse, has taken the livelihoods of the people who perform, book, and produce all of this activity. And it looks like it will continue well in 2021 before things ease up.

Put bluntly, we are at high risk of losing most independent performing arts venues if there is no support. The Blind Pig, an independent music hall, recently made it into a political advertisement highlighting how bad it was that the COVID pandemic impacted the whole industry.

Last week, the Metropolitan Opera announced that it was canceling performances and production work until the Fall of 2021, further hitting the musicians, set designers, and tech staff, who have been without pay since last April. Down the road from Rockefeller Center, the Broadway theaters are shut tight as well. And Feld Entertainment, which produces family live entertainment like Disney on Ice, Monster Jam, has permanently fired 90% of their workforce, and the fantastic Cirque du Soleil has cut more than 3,500.

In the live music scene, the cuts are just as bad. Live Nation, AEG, and other national scope concert promoters have laid off most of their employees. Many talent management companies, the people who plan and book the concerts you go to see, have furloughed more than 50% of their staff. Concert halls are looking at up to a 90% closure rate if the pandemic's impacts go well into 2021. This means that famous establishments like The Dexter Lake Club, Bob's Country Bunker, or more seriously, the Ryman, the Capital, 9:30 Club, the Anthem, or the Ryman will all have to figure out another business models or perish from the pandemic. Like B-Chord Brewery in Round Hill, some venues have made progress, who has been bringing in major national Jamgrass acts and presenting them outside in a socially distant fashion. Some bands have started doing live shows across the country at Drive-In theaters and large racetracks, but these are the exception to the rule.

Many great but unknown artists have gone back to teaching online, which can provide some cash flow. People are apt to take some lessons from a prominent musician, and we are now at ease with virtual tools that make these lessons easy to give and take.

Larger outdoor festivals can't socially distance 10, 20, or 50 thousand people, so the festivals like Telluride Bluegrass, the Newport Jazz Festival, Coachella, Bonnaroo, or Glastonbury in the UK are all sitting idle. Whether they operate in 2021 is still up in the air, and they could be finished if they don't. I put off my Telluride Bluegrass tickets until June 2021, I hope the festival can go by then, and a concert I had tickets for back in July is now scheduled for October 2021, assuming the venue still exists when we get there in 12 months.

We should not forget the local arts scene. Community artistic and musical organizations of all kinds - choirs, theaters, orchestras, dance companies, festivals, music rooms, not to mention all technical and independent suppliers - all are trying to find alternatives to succeed in the COVID pandemic. The Middleburg Film Festival figured out an alternative way to run this year, but the Middleburg Concert Series is waiting for the end of the pandemic. It goes all the way down to the local schools, where annual plays and performances are also in limbo--you cannot have groups of people singing in an enclosed space during the pandemic. My music teacher wife is teaching percussion instead of choral music.

So what do we do? Culture is important nourishment for our society. If we don't support the industry now, we will lose it, and the replacement could be 90% less than before. We need to support all the people and businesses impacted. Check out the National Independent Venue Association at www.nivassoc.org to learn more about the pandemic's impacts and how we can support live performance art. Even buying a t-shirt or poster helps.

With all of this destruction, at least there are a few glimmers in the music world; Fleetwood Mac's song Dreams is back in the top 25 of the Billboard Hot Chart due to an Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice video some guy in California posted to TicTok, what's the deal with that?

Steve Chase is staying home in Unison, listening to great music.