COVID-19 decimated the music industry. Western New England University’s Nicole Acevedo spoke with pop-rock band The Home Team about the reality of life as a musician during a global pandemic.Racking in over 148,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, The Home Team is a four-piece pop-rock band from Seattle. With COVID-19 canceling concerts and tours, the band couldn’t travel to perform – but the pandemic didn’t stop them from producing their second album.
“My company that I was working for had to completely shut its doors, because it was all based on field marketing – which is like, big events that are like 20,000 people, which those definitely do not happen anymore,” said Brian Butcher, the band’s lead vocalist. And so I have pretty much been riding on unemployment, and taking this opportunity to work as much as humanly possible on the release of the album.”
The Home Team’s debut record “Better Off” was released in 2018, and fans have been patiently awaiting new music ever since. As the group grappled with severe writer’s block in 2019, drummer Daniel Matson spoke with Butcher and guitarist John Baran about their plan for refocusing in the upcoming year.
“We were like, sitting in the van in a parking lot, and I think we were like waiting for the last person to come out of the shower, and I remember having a conversation about what the next year was gonna look like,” Matson said. “And I literally said, ‘You guys gotta be ready to not tour, not play any shows in 2020, because we have to write a new record…And it just so happened that you know, the pandemic hit and –
“Nobody was touring,” said Butcher.
“So what I’m hearing is that you cursed us,” added Baran.
“The whole pandemic is Dan’s fault,” quipped Butcher.
While venues closed because of COVID-19, The Home Team opened up to new ways to keep fans interested, and bring in revenue. The popular membership platform Patreon allows content creators to earn a monthly income by running a subscription service for their followers. Matson says the band joined this platform mid-way through 2020, and has been more active on social media, which helped build their fanbase.
“Not a lot of bands are working musicians trying to establish a business and find new ways to innovate,” Matson said. “A lot of people relied on just the model of, ‘I put out some music, I go on tour. I put out some new music, and I go on tour.’ And that’s pretty much all that we had, too, but we realized we had to change, and we had to adapt, because there was going to be no shows for the foreseeable future.”
While it seems as though The Home Team has been in the studio nonstop during the pandemic, Butcher says their life in quarantine didn’t look much different than ours.
“When I was working, I always had this thought like, ‘Man, if I ever just had like, two or three months to not work, and I could just buckle down, I would write so much music, I would work on this all the time, full-time,’” Butcher said. “Uh...and I hella did not.”
That said, Baran and Matson say the shutdown gave the band extra time to expand their musicality and experiment.
“Our first record I’ve very grateful for, and I’m very thankful that people enjoy it, but I feel like now I’m able to express myself in a way I think fully does,” said Baran.
“With this record, we really like, just gave in to what we like as artists, and what makes us happy,” Matson said. “And we stopped trying to be some other band and just started doing the [stuff] we feel like. And it is, it has definitely created a sound that I don’t think that many people have heard before.”
“I mean, I’m just gonna say this – I had to get an eight-string guitar, so it’s all over the record,” said Baran.
Massachusetts venues began their reopening process at the end of March, with Governor Charlie Baker’s decision to open concert halls, theaters, and indoor performance spaces with the 50 percent capacity and 500-person limit. However, the majority of performers are holding off on booking tours until larger audiences can gather, and the risk of rescheduling is lower.
While The Home Team won’t be on the road this year, they look forward to dropping new music in the upcoming months. Until the return of regular live shows, music helps so many get through, even when listening alone.
Nicole Acevedo is a junior and Creative Writing major at Western New England University. This piece is part of WAMC’s partnership with the university’s Radio Production class.
