Before the shutdown of live music this past March, if you’d asked tour manager Kat Lewis what she expected to be doing in February 2021, she would’ve been able to describe her workdays right down to the bands she’d be having wake-up coffee with. After nearly 20 years of booking and managing music events such as Warped Tour and West Fest Chicago, her life had settled into an unusual but predictable rhythm: she’d schedule commitments two years in advance that would require her to work in clusters of long days, starting around 2 PM and ending just as the sun came up.

At the end of December, Congress finally passed a version of the Save Our Stages Act, which had been introduced in June. This $15 billion stimulus bill, now technically retitled the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant Program, offers grants to entertainment venues (concert halls, clubs, theaters, museums, movie theaters) that can demonstrate revenue losses of more than 25 percent. The grant amount is capped at 45 percent of 2019 income, and a second round of grants, half the size of the first, may be available to venues with losses of 70 percent or more.

Nik Brink, 30, has been a stagehand and live sound technician in Chicago for more than ten years, employed exclusively as a 1099 worker. He studied photography at Columbia College and played in bands, gradually becoming more involved behind the scenes at shows. When the Affordable Care Act was signed into law in March 2010, it allowed him to stay on his father’s health insurance until he was 26 while he grew his connections in a field that seldom provides full-time work or benefits.

“There were two years where I was just doing stagehand work on the side, and I got an office job,” Brink says. “I sat at a desk every day, and after a while, I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror. I hated being at the same place every day, doing the same work. I wasn’t even sure how it was helping anyone or . . . doing anything! It was absolutely horrible for my mental health. And there are so many creative people that I know—stagehands, musicians, even people who run photo booths and bars—just people that can’t sit down at a desk and do that kind of work every day. It’s soul-crushing to them in a way it isn’t to others.”

  • Schenay Mosley performs her August 2020 release Silk Ca$hmere in December 2020.

Now she’s providing virtual vocal and piano lessons through My Music Lessons in Oak Park. Her solo music is popular enough that she can expect a modest check from streaming services every month, and she was able to qualify for an Economic Injury Disaster Loan through the Small Business Administration. Mosley has a BA in music business from Columbia College, so she knows about some of the resources and protections available to help her make a long-term commitment to her music career. She’s also had collaborators and mentors who taught her pitfalls to avoid. Setting herself up as a sole proprietor—basically a business owner without employees—allowed her to qualify for SBA assistance.

One bright spot is that Illinois allocates more money to arts grants than many states with similar or greater populations—and it took steps early in the pandemic to preserve that funding. Of course, such grants are usually awarded to institutions or artists, not to people working behind the scenes in live music. And unfortunately the pandemic has also affected Chicago’s extraordinary devotion of public resources to its robust creative community. In 2020, the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) had a budget of $40 million. This year, it’s only $24 million. Some of that will pay for artists’ grants to fund projects such as full-length albums, but even in the best of times, this money is difficult to secure.