The cancellation of SXSW 2020 might well go down as the live industry’s Kennedy moment - no one will ever forget where they were the day the music stopped.
By the month’s end, the UK was plunged into lockdown, Glastonbury was called off and the global touring business was left in peril as the coronavirus crisis began to unfold in front of the world’s eyes.
'The last in-person event we ran was a trade mission to Moscow in partnership with British Council,' remembers Paul Pacifico, chief executive of the Association Of Independent Music (AIM). 'As we travelled back, it became clear that people were becoming very anxious indeed about the spread of the virus, so the moment SXSW cancelled was the moment it really hit home that we were facing a very challenging and traumatic period ahead.'
The British Music Embassy, SXSW’s venue for hotly tipped UK artists, was due to feature more than 60 performances across 13 showcases in partnership with AIM, BBC Music, the BPI, the Department for International Trade (DIT), Belfast City Council, PPL, PRS For Music and PRS Foundation.
'The British mission to South By has grown to be a vital moment of validation for artists who are springboarding from the European to the global music market,' notes Pacifico. 'The importance of that showcase and the significance of British Music Embassy has reinforced the standing of British music. And looking at where we are now in terms of Brexit and COVID-19, South By takes on even more significance as an important platform for global exposure.'
'Timing can be everything when it comes to breaking a new artist, so where does that leave SXSW’s lost class of 2020?'
Manager Tim Hampson was already Stateside with his acclaimed post-punk outfit Dry Cleaning when the SXSW news broke. The band had five US headline shows booked, including two sold-out New York dates, with a further seven gigs lined up at the Austin showcase.
'We'd just signed to 4AD, so we were going into South By on the back of a bit of a wave,' says Hampson, co-founder of management and booking agency Candy Artists. 'I was on the subway with the guitarist on the way to pick up a spare guitar in central Manhattan when we got a Twitter notification just saying it was cancelled.
'Without giving the number away, our first bit of finance from the record label was for one-year working visas for the band, which got five days of use and have obviously expired now. It was a hell of a financial outlay for a band that had just been signed, so God knows what it was like for the bands that didn't have that. We were fortunate in that we had PRS Foundation funding to go out there, so it didn't damage us financially as much as it could have done. But it was still very strange flying back into Heathrow on what was supposed to be our first day in Austin.'
The event was also set to mark a new high for Decca-signed Steam Down. 'It was lining up to be such an amazing moment,' recalls the jazz collective’s manager Kaiya Milan of Off Balance. 'We'd signed to Universal the previous November and we were going to meet our US label partners and have conversations with US booking agents for the first time at SXSW. Even to this day, we still don't have a US booking agent because that all got messed up and, in order to pay our musicians, we had to incur a debt that we still owe to our label.'
'There's always that sense that if you miss the perfect moment, it might not come again.'
CSQUAREDLDN’s Charlotte Caleb was due to fly out to Texas a week later with her client, electro pop artist Eloïse mp3. The pair were considering going ahead with their trip even after the bombshell cancellation, as rumours of ‘unofficial’ SXSW gatherings started picking up steam.
'We were still umming and ahing at that point because people were saying they were still going to go and everything was already booked and paid for, but eventually the seriousness of what was happening started to settle in,' says Caleb. 'We were really excited that Eloïse got selected to play in the showcase and I knew how disappointing it was going to be for her.
'I started communicating with PRS, the MMF and other people who were taking acts out there to try and figure out if we could do something in the UK - maybe in partnership with SXSW - just to give the artists that had worked so hard the opportunity to perform their sets. I was in Belgium on a day trip with a friend and I was literally on my phone all day trying to figure out how we could possibly do this. But as time went on, we realised it was an absolute no-go. It was quite the double whammy in terms of the emotional upheaval and the financial implications.'
Caleb, who has guided Eloïse’s career since taking her on as a teenager five years ago, estimates the cost of the abandoned trip to have been in the region of £10,000, some of which was able to be recouped through insurance. 'We were probably five to six grand in the hole,' she says. 'We put off paying for our accommodation to the last minute because we were hoping to get this sponsorship from a family. We were so lucky because I know of several people that paid out big style and didn't get that money back.'
For Eloïse at least, time has been a great healer. 'After about a month, I realised there was no point getting really upset about it or seeing it as the end of things,' she says. 'At the end of the day, even being selected for it was enough of a nod from the industry to say, ‘We like what you're doing’.
'The independent community doesn't have a conveyor belt, sausage machine approach to developing artists - these are long term relationships that are being built to establish sustainable careers.'
'In a weird way, I'm glad I didn't go [to SXSW] because my manager and I have worked really hard together this year to work out what I want to be aiming for. I've got much stronger with producing and releasing my own music and have a much stronger sense of who I am. If you're always active, you don't really take the time to reflect on what worked and what didn't.'
Candy Artists’ Hampson has also found a way to turn a negative into a positive - coming up with a unique marketing angle for Dry Cleaning’s debut album New Long Leg, out 2 April. 'A lot of the press came to see Dry Cleaning in New York so they are still the last band they ever saw and we're kind of fresh in their memories,' he grins. 'But playing SXSW would have been massive for the band - massive.'
An SXSW veteran, Hampson has accompanied Dream Wife, Our Girl, Willie J Healey, Demob Happy and The Wytches to the festival in years gone by. 'I definitely think the benefits of it are maybe dwindling compared to what they used to,' he confides. 'But if you're going in with an artist that people are excited by, that's when it can really help. I felt Dry Cleaning were going to have a moment out there and it would have helped drive along certain conversations.'
Timing can be everything when it comes to breaking a new artist, so where does that leave SXSW’s lost class of 2020? Time will tell, of course, but the prevailing feeling is one of optimism. 'There's always that sense that if you miss the perfect moment, it might not come again,' reflects AIM’s Pacifico. 'That said, there's great consciousness about what's been missed in the last year and everybody is pulling together to try to make sure that as much momentum as there would have been this time last year is recaptured coming out of COVID-19.
'People will ultimately always want to have that in-person connection, but there are ways in which you can connect in a different way and to wider audiences through digital.'
'The independent community doesn't have a conveyor belt, sausage machine approach to developing artists - these are long term relationships that are being built to establish sustainable careers.'
SXSW returned this year as a virtual event, broadcast on the SXSW portal, with a selection of other performances to be made available on the festival’s YouTube channel after Easter. Acts include Afronaut Zu, Katy J Pearson, Phoebe Green and The Goa Express.
Off Balance’s Milan, who manages solo artist Zu, was impressed by the production. 'It's probably the best virtual showcase that I've seen since this pandemic has begun,' she says. 'But there is nothing like live music.'
PRS Foundation’s senior grants and programmes manager Becci Scotcher, a veteran of eight SXSWs, is hopeful the event will thrive long into the future - whatever the format. 'People will ultimately always want to have that in-person connection, but there are ways in which you can connect in a different way and to wider audiences through digital,' she concludes. 'I think this hybrid type of event is likely to continue for quite some time yet. But I'm sure we'll all be back in British Music Embassy in Austin very soon to raise a margarita to all the exceptional talent we have.'
We’d all love to raise a glass to that.
