Kristen Grainger and Dan Wetzel, the core members of folk and bluegrass quartet Kristen Grainger & True North, have had plenty of time to rehearse at home since the COVID-19 outbreak. (Ron Cooper/Salem Reporter)
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Kristen Grainger remembers when she started thinking her music might be more than a “flash in the pan.” In the late 2000s, the Salem resident won awards at national songwriting competitions, including the Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas where now-famous musicians got their start.
Since then, Grainger and her husband Dan Wetzel, who are the core members of folk and bluegrass quartet Kristen Grainger & True North, had been planning to quit their jobs and play music full time.
Over the years, they’ve played the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and other notable events, sold out Salem’s Grand Theatre, won other awards and built up a following. During that time, they’ve maintained “adult lives,” with Wetzel working as a custom home builder and Grainger working communications jobs, most recently at Willamette University.
After years of writing, recording, promoting, booking shows and saving money, the couple abandoned adult life last year to play music full time. They were looking forward to 2020 being their busiest ever with nearly 40 gigs booked between March and September, including a tour in Ireland, concerts on the West Coast and the release of a new album.
“And then the global rug got pulled out from everyone,” said Grainger.
The band was scheduled to fly out on March 13 for Ireland. Days earlier, the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak to be a global pandemic.
The couple watched all their carefully laid plans come undone. Their shows in Ireland were canceled. Travel restrictions went into place. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown banned gatherings and shut theaters, bars and other venues.
The Wheeler County Bluegrass Festival, an event held in Fossil in July they were scheduled to play, was canceled. Their June show at Salem’s Grand Theatre promoting “Ghost Tattoo,” their newest album, was canceled. The word “postponed” now appears next to all their shows on their website.
The couple had just finished performing in “Midsummer,” a play at Salem’s Verona Studio, and were working at “breakneck speed” to tie up loose ends before the tour.
“Then you’re dropped into silence and inactivity,” said Grainger. “We just felt like we’d been dropped off a cliff.”
Grainger said that the band lost out on about $15,000 from the canceled tour through June, not counting sales of CDs, downloads and other merchandise. While she said the couple fortunate enough to have a financial Plan B, she wonders about musicians who eked out a living before the outbreak waiting tables, driving Uber and teaching music lessons.
“Are they going to persist?” she said.
Over a month after the tour was canceled, Grainger wonders if this is the end of live music and festivals as we know them. She wonders how people will gather together for shared experiences.
“These places that deliberately foster community are at risk,” she said.
Since the outbreak, the couple has hunkered down and they continue to strum guitars and ukeleles and write songs. They’ve also done live streaming performances as a duo from home, which she described as a “long-distance romance with the audience.”
“Streaming live online must be what a caged bird feels like, singing its songs aloud into emptiness,” she said.
She said there are discussions that maybe some sort of technological innovation will allow people to share live music. But she said a computer screen is not ever going to fully replace a live show and there is nothing as amazing as watching kids play “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” at their first concert.
While the couple has stayed home waiting for the outbreak to subside, Grainger said they’ve been in touch with bookers who want to get Kristen Grainger & True North back on their calendar later this year. But they’ve written off 2020 and are now looking to 2021.
Contact reporter Jake Thomas at 503-575-1251 or [email protected] or @jakethomas2009.
