Artists are hardly considered essential workers, and their repercussions from the COVID-19 outbreak aren’t as obvious as the impacts on health-care workers or grocery store employees. But the closure of bars and restaurants, along with the cancellation of concerts and other large gatherings, has stopped the music for a lot of local entertainers. The situation has forced singers, actors and instrumentalists to do what they do best: get creative.

“There are several musicians who have had a really hard time,” said Erica von Kleist, a local musician who started a grant fund to support fellow performers through the pandemic. The Montana Music Relief Fund has raised over $5,000 for Montana musicians who make 51% or more of their yearly income through performances. It’s one of the few options available to many musicians, who often don’t qualify for unemployment benefits or other assistance programs set up for more traditional careers.

Von Kleist has been fundraising for the relief effort since Montana businesses first started closing their doors in March, but she said artists still get bottom billing when most people consider the effects of the pandemic on members of their community. “The awareness is definitely not there,” von Kleist said. “We barely fund the arts without a pandemic.”

Performers who depend exclusively on live concerts, especially in bars and restaurants, are some of the hardest-hit members of the local arts community, according to von Kleist. Even as bars and restaurants have started to cautiously reopen, she pointed out hiring back live musicians is not a top priority at most venues.

With sociaL distancing measures still in effect, bands and performing groups are “still out of luck,” too, von Kleist said. That is certainly the case for large groups like Glacier Symphony, which postponed its entire summer season until 2021. Also postponed until next summer is the second annual Under the Big Sky Music and Arts Festival. About 15,000 concert-goers attended each day of the inaugural concert weekend in July 2019.

“Like everyone on the planet, COVID-19 affected the ability to play music,” noted Kalispell singer-songwriter Luke Dowler. “As venues shut down, there was a giant question mark of how to be a musician at this time in history.”

Dowler is one of many performers who have had to face the music recently due to prohibitions against large public gatherings. In 2019, he played 60 shows on the East Coast alone, and he had planned another East Coast tour throughout May and June of this year.

The disappearance of that revenue has been “impactful for my finances,” Dowler said gingerly.

But gigs aren’t only a source of income for artists like him.

“Live music and live interaction is a major part of our life,” Dowler said, stressing the social and emotional impact of working as a live performer without any live performances. “It’s a giant hole to not have that ability to share music.”

“Live music — there’s nothing like it and that’s still where my heart is,” he stated.

He and many of his counterparts have found a kind of stopgap solution by live-streaming concerts online and soliciting donations from digital concert-goers. Every Tuesday at 8 p.m. throughout the pandemic, Dowler has been performing on Facebook Live for any listeners who want to tune in.

“I transitioned into live-streaming and was able to take that time and use it creatively,” Dowler said. It’s been a little hit-and-miss, but Dowler said this innovative approach to performing is better than not performing at all. Some weeks, he admitted he doesn’t make a single dollar from the digital performances, while other times viewers have “put some dollars in my pocket,” he said.

“Whether it’s eight viewers or 80 viewers … it was an opportunity to connect,” he insisted.

But von Kleist pointed out the online format is a far cry from performing onstage for an in-person audience.

“It’s not nearly as fulfilling,” she noted. “It’s not a sustainable fix.”

Online concerts are just one avenue local artists have taken to keep the arts alive amid the pandemic. Alpine Theatre Project in Whitefish, for example, has found numerous creative ways for their shows to go on this summer.

“We cannot give up and we cannot cancel,” insisted ATP’s “Chief Evangelist” Luke Walrath. As an organization that teaches creativity and artistic expression to young artists, the ATP leadership felt canceling their shows would have “sent the wrong kind of message.”

ATP produced a digital performance of “Young Frankenstein” in late April and an outdoor, socially distanced rendition of “Moana” in June. Plans are still on for ATP’s Broadway summer training camp, too, although Walrath said they’ll have to do some extra fundraising to meet the $100,000 cost of bringing in New York City acting professionals to the program.

They’re even looking at incorporating a timely masquerade theme in order to make the unique “Operalesque” performance possible at the end of the summer. ATP hasn’t yet made an official decision about the wildly popular, slightly risqué combination of burlesque and classic opera that was originally slated for late August.

They only drew the line at performing “Jersey Boys” because the musical, which would have been ATP’s main summer show, was simply too large an undertaking to carry out safely, Walrath said.

“It’s too big a show,” he confessed. “We would need to sell over 5,000 tickets” to meet the production costs, which didn’t seem prudent in light of social distancing guidelines.

ATP decided to postpone “Jersey Boys” until January, 2021—but not before exhausting all its options for putting on the show this summer, including the idea to host a drive-in performance. “If we can find a way, we’re going to find a way,” Walrath asserted.

“It’s a scary time for the arts,” the dedicated dramatist observed. “We are trying to figure out how to keep going because the community needs it.”

Reporter Bret Anne Serbin may be reached at (406)-758-4459 or bserbin@dailyinterlake.com.