What Being in a Pandemic-Era Band Is Really Like

On the 4th of March 2020, my band Cherry & The Fever Dreams rehearsed together for the very first time. The experience of meeting other like-minded musicians who had similar tastes, ideas and aspirations as I did was incredibly exciting, not to mention the collective joy we all experienced when we instantly recognised the musical chemistry we had. We immediately began writing music - as much music as possible - so that we had a setlist to gig with. After asking around, we found ourselves some open mic nights and a few shows to play and we could not have been more thrilled. Now, just over a year later, we have played a grand total of zero gigs. I don’t think I need to explain why. 

The coronavirus pandemic has hit many industries incredibly hard. For the music industry specifically, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the impact has been devastating on smaller venues and artists. In a time where we all need entertainment, it has been so difficult for young creatives to get their work out there and build an audience but luckily, it has not been entirely impossible. 

Typically, the best ways for upcoming bands or artists to market themselves and get their career started is by regularly playing gigs, going to shows and making connections with other musicians, getting professional photos taken and recording music in a studio, but in a pandemic, doing all these things is next to impossible. Of course, huge, well-established artists have been fine; their career isn’t helped by their inability to play shows but they still have a dedicated fanbase who will be there when large gatherings are safe again. These people also have the resources to record music in a built in-home studio, like Taylor Swift did for both Folklore and Evermore, so their careers don’t have to come to a complete halt. Unfortunately, small, lesser-known artists don’t have this luxury and have had to figure out ways of gaining a following with less traditional methods.

My band and I realised early on that our best bet to grow an audience from home would be through social media. Obviously, this was not a revolutionary idea; artists have been promoting themselves through social media as long as it has been around, but the game changes slightly when it becomes your sole form of finding people who may enjoy your music. Despite having no press shots, we gathered the few rehearsal photos we had of each other and took pictures of ourselves at home so we had content to post. I also made 90s-style collages of us at the suggestion of our singer so that we at least had some content that displayed all the members of our band together. 

Taking on the role of a social media manager when all you really signed up to do is write and record music with your friends can feel a little frustrating at times. Especially with the knowledge that there was once a time where musicians didn’t have to do such a thing in order to gain success and were able to preserve a sort of ‘mystique’ around themselves by not being their own salesperson. Although a part of me wishes that the industry was more like that today, I have to admit that it does feel good when the work you put into marketing your music starts to pay off in a way that feels significant. For example, I recently figured out that TikTok is currently the best, most effective platform for creatives to market themselves, and after filming a slightly embarrassing amount of videos - I may or may not have recorded 15 in a single evening - and posting them in a way that was favourable to the algorithm, we happened to get lucky on one video in particular that ended up on quite a few For You Pages. 

11k views on a TikTok video may not seem like a lot, and in the context of the app as a whole it definitely isn’t at all an impressive number, but it brought our band to the attention of so many new people who otherwise would’ve had no idea who Cherry & The Fever Dreams even were. The streams for our song ‘On Your Back’ shot up overnight, going from 1,814 to 2,371 which for a band of our size was incredibly exciting. We also grew from 138 followers to 342, meaning that when we next release a song, more people will be notified on the day of release and the Spotify algorithm will likely treat the song more favourably. All because of one TikTok that happened to get some views. 

In terms of actually writing music, it hasn’t been too strenuous, but there are a handful of difficulties that one wouldn’t really experience in regular times. The singer of my band and I have been sending each other lyrics, chord progressions and voice memos back and forth, looking for any coherent ideas that could make up a song. But, finding the inspiration to come up with anything in the first place has probably been the most difficult part of the process due to the fact that musicians tend to write music based on life experiences and in the last year, these have been very limited. 

For me, writing music is often a reactionary response. It’s a way of venting about a situation or telling someone how you feel about them without having to express it to their face, but in the last year, there has been such a feeling of nothingness for so many people that it’s hard to get into a creative headspace. Being in a band during a pandemic is many things; it’s frustrating, difficult and incredibly inconvenient, but despite all of this, most importantly of all - it’s possible.