Musicians Turn to Streaming Concerts From Home to Pay the Bills
Covid-19 has left an estimated multibillion-dollar hole in the ticket sales that account for most of performers’ income.
The crowd of a few hundred begins to gather a half-hour before Rhett Miller takes the stage. While they wait, one fan recounts meeting Lou Reed at a long-gone Tower Records. Another makes an early request for a David Bowie cover. People shout out their hometowns—Seattle, Austin, Detroit—and despite the distance, there’s a sense of reunion in the crowd. Someone going by “Coombie” reports having seen Miller 13 times, including 11 times as the frontman of the Old 97’s, and attendees exchange a flurry of inside jokes about one another’s dog photos on Instagram right up until the moment when Miller, dressed in black jeans and a black shirt, appears on all their screens.
A lanky 49-year-old with straight, long brown hair, Miller looks every bit the stereotype of the American singer-songwriter, and he has for a long time. His hometown alt-weekly, the Dallas Observer, dubbed him a “ubiquitous teen folkie” after his first shows at the Club Clearview more than three decades ago. In the 1990s, with the Old 97’s, he graduated from bar-conversation interrupter to a main event. For the past month, though, Miller has played all his shows from the small office he built in his garage in upstate New York, allowing his audiences to enjoy his songs without fear of Covid-19.