SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – Just a little over three years ago now, much of the Bay Area was ordered to shelter in place.
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Industries that evolved around human interaction came to a halt. And out of them, the live music industry was one that perhaps suffered the most.
For many, like Oakland-based activist and rapper Bambu, this led to a decision to step away from the live music scene heading into the COVID-19 endemic.
In a Bay Current earlier this month, he told KCBS Radio just how complicated the situation really was.
"I definitely did a couple of Zoom shows, which are terrible," he said.
Playing to a live audience is important to a lot of musicians, an opportunity to connect with fans that the pandemic took away.
"My first one back was a little weird," he said. "I made sure the venue cut the capacity down just so people wouldn't feel so crowded. And, you know, and it's also the first time people are out and drinking. And I saw that as potentially a problem."
It's become even more of a priority now than it was before the pandemic to make sure venues are safe for every attendee.
For Jonathan Gunton, general manager of The Independent in San Francisco, a member of the National Independent Venue Association, safety is important as well. But it wasn’t just safety that became a concern during the pandemic. It was managing to keep. the doors open at all.
Gunton is still reeling from the effects of what happened to the industry more than three years later.
"It also seems like it's very close in the rearview mirror and in a lot of ways still affecting everything we're doing," he said. "I'm spending a lot of my days, you know, applying for this forgiveness."
Gunton is talking about venue operator grants they received for shuttered venues during the pandemic. Now the process for applying for forgiveness for those grants has begun.
"The process of this is not over and that chapter is not totally closed," he said. "But I definitely feel like we're at the end of it, like we're really starting to turn a corner."
Despite the struggles, Gunton has also viewed the pandemic as an opportunity to grow and pivot in the industry.
"We're reexamining, you know, how we work, our work-life balance and stuff like that," he said. "And so from just a music perspective, I do feel like we're starting to tick back up to the place that we were at before."
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