‘People Are Suffering’: Constant Show Rescheduling Crippling Music Industry

Every time a lockdown or new COVID-related restrictions are introduced anywhere in the country, it sends shockwaves throughout the Australian music industry. But, there are far greater repercussions than the show or tour cancellations and postponements that you might see populating your newsfeed.

And with some bands, promoters and managers forced to reschedule one tour multiple times, it’s wearing the industry down, with key players highlighting we’re nearly at breaking point as the bungled vaccination process continues to stall this country's pathway out of the pandemic.

“It affects everyone – I’m so sick of it,” Our Golden Friend owner/director Lorrae McKenna told The Music today following this morning’s news that a number of upcoming co-headline dates for Alice Skye and Elizabeth had been rescheduled due to lockdowns and border restrictions across the country.

“This Alice Skye and Elizabeth tour, we’ve been working on it since the end of 2019, and it’s been pushed back, pushed back and pushed back. Then we finally announced it at the beginning of this year because we thought, ‘Oh look, we’ve got some dates here on hold and it looks like it might actually happen.’ So we announced it, and then it didn’t end up happening.

“We’ve had to move the flights for that tour five times now and that’s so much money… we’ve lost so much money in flights, but it’s more of a time thing; every time we have to move dates, the booking agents have to go and get new dates from all of the venues and because everyone is shifting dates, there’s such a shortage of dates in the future now.

“We had a lot of Friday and Saturday shows and we couldn’t necessarily get those again when we rescheduled them because those Fridays and Saturdays already have bookings on them, so there are all types of things like that.

“This tour, it’s been nearly two years in the making and no one has made any money from it yet, but there’s been an absolute shit-ton of work done behind the scenes. I would hate to think the cost of that.”

Mick Thomas has also been forced to postpone a number of dates on his Out & About tour with Roving Commission.

“People say, ‘Oh, you can reschedule,’ but you can’t then do the shows on those dates,” Thomas told The Music.

“‘Bluesfest got rescheduled’ - yeah, that’s a weekend in October that I now can’t do gigs. You have lost shows…there’s the money you would have made and that’s five or six people who directly depend on that for an income.

“Then there’s the merch that you sell - this morning a box with 150 beanies rocked up, I’ve got about 300 bottle openers sitting here and a bunch of tea towels about to arrive - and this is sort of the crux of it more than anything: the way records have gone with the way of streaming and stuff, your main chance of selling them is getting out on the road and selling them at the merch desk.”

Not only is there a lot of time and money lost, but the constant changes are also a logistical nightmare, which is what Dan Nebe, the promoter behind Brisbane-based event Rockin' 4 The Homeless and Hoodoo Gurus tour manager, is in the thick of.

This year’s Rockin' 4 The Homeless is scheduled to feature Hoodoo Gurus, Superjesus and DEF FX, which has been postponed twice over the past 18 months due to COVID.

“Getting the logistics and the bands aligned for that, to get it all lined up on the same date and to then get airfares and accommodation and [crew], only to have it dismantled again? It is disappointing,” Nebe said.

“I don’t want to say we’re used to it because it’s not something we’d ever want to be used to, but I did go into the second round of this concert fully prepared for it to come apart. Here in Brisbane, a lot of people are suffering and plans are going out the window, people’s lives get thrown into turmoil.”

As seems to be the common census, Nebe enthused that the entertainment industry has been “left behind” because “the government basically have decided that we, as an industry, are not a priority”.

“We have these Arts Ministers already - I think they’re the ones that need to be doing their jobs. They need to understand what people in the arts require, and that really we have the same needs as everyone else,” he said.

“We have mortgages and kids that need school and cars that need petrol - everything else that everyone else has. It needs to go across the board, and they need to start lobbying for us harder. They just seem to be sitting back and doing nothing; compare that to the rest of the world and what they’re doing here in Australia is basically criminal.”

The ongoing lack of government support and uncertainty is something that McKenna said is “really frustrating”.

“They have to figure something else out because closing the borders every time is just… I don’t know how the live music industry is going to survive if we have potentially another six months to a year of this, if we don’t get vaccination rates up, that’s probably what it’s looking like.

“Booking tours at the moment is like a game of roulette; you just pick dates and hope for the best. You put your money on a number and hope that it’s not going to be a time when we’re in lockdown again.

“I look in my iCal and I see all the shows we have booked for the next month, in August, and I just think, ‘Are these actually going to happen?’”

Thomas added: “Some people have said, ‘Well, maybe you went out too quick?’ But we’ve got to keep trying. If we just rely on the bozos that are running the joint to give us the green light, we’re never going to get out there. 

“If we don’t keep trying to do it then suddenly we’ll look around and there’s going to be no venues and no bands.”