Musician coping with the COVID-19 pandemic and keeping hope

I’m a musician, I live in Canada, in the province of Quebec. Today our prime minister announced that the province is on “pause” for at least three weeks because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Or course it’s been a while since I realized my upcoming gigs would be canceled, the first one was Saturday the 14th and I have a few in the upcoming weeks.

I have to admit, the last 6 months have been quite strange. In October I lost my web programmer job, three weeks later I broke my hand, and now there is a worldwide pandemic. It’s ironic that after 4 months of healing my hand, I was ready to go back to gigging regularly.

The timing of the COVID-19 pandemic

It’s such bad timing, two weeks ago I re-joined an old band as a bassist, I even bought a bass and an amp especially for this band. I also have a Madonna and an ABBA tribute in the works. Of course, we stopped the jams, I haven’t even met the other musicians on the ABBA tribute. It’s hard not knowing when we will be able to start again, and what will be the situation then. The economy will not be the same, will the venues be able to pay the bands?

Right now all we can do is learn songs, practice while keeping our distance from each other. As for the Music Muncher project, I’d like to put more blogs on the site, make videos for the YouTube channel. But I realize it’s hard to find the motivation with everything going on in the world. My last addition to the website was the Electric guitar buying guide, but now I feel strange to try to convince people to buy stuff while a lot of them are losing their jobs.

What a musician can do during the COVID-19 pandemic

You know, life goes on, we have to keep living and passing time. Being forced to stay at home, it could be a good time to create music. That’s usually a process which can take a lot of time to do, but now the time is not an issue.

If you don’t create music and you are more of a performer, it’s harder to find an alternative. I saw a few artists doing some live performances online, I know there are a few options such as Facebook and YouTube, but I never tried myself, although that’s something I would eventually like to do.

So keep yourself occupied, that’s what I’m trying to do. I spend a lot of time with my immediate family and keep in touch with my parents, who are more at risk because of their age. The musician community can keep contact on social media, use Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. I actually like the latter a lot, I just recently discovered it and I think it’s great for sharing quickly images and performances.