DUMMERSTON-What could be more fun than going out at night to hear live music, or to see a comedian, a play, or a movie?
It is pure happiness. The performers are happy - they have an audience for their art and a paycheck. The crowd is happy - they can greet long-lost friends and be part of a community. The venue is happy - it has a crowd.
But when the mind says, "Let's go," and the body says, "I don't think so," what happens?
What about those who are housebound? What about elderly people who can no longer see to drive at night? What about those who are ill, who can't leave the bed or the couch?
You might have been at Woodstock, but that was over 55 years ago. The days when you could sleep in the mud and still smile are long gone. Through no fault of your own, you're aging out of the fun.
Recently, the actress Jamie Lee Curtis begged Bruce Springsteen to do matinee shows because she was too old to go out at night.
She makes a good point.
So now enter livestreaming, which is starting to bring Windham County's musical scene not only to the shut-ins, but to the world.
For me, this is personal. I recently went through a bad patch: three months of bad health that kept me housebound.
Of course, I had books and magazines during the day and television in the evenings, but I missed going to shows, being in crowds, hearing live music, and seeing films on the big screen.
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Windham County is known for its plastic arts - for painting, woodworking, pottery, weaving, and glass. But it also has a thriving community of entertainment venues.
Aside from the local theater groups, from the Bellows Falls Opera House to Next Stage Arts in Putney, to the Stone Church, the Latchis Theatre, the Brattleboro Music Center, and the Vermont Jazz Center in Brattleboro, touring musicians and comedians are giving frequent concerts.
Some of these venues have realized that a large and valued part of their audience is now more or less housebound.
The Vermont Jazz Center and Next Stage Arts now stream almost all their shows. The Latchis Theatre is thinking about it. The Brattleboro Music Center used to stream, but they let it lag.
Others may want to get on board. In Bellows Falls, music impresario and plein air painter Charlie Hunter, who books many of the Bellows Falls Opera House shows, called livestreaming "an ingenious idea."
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Next Stage streams nearly all its shows; for a $10 ticket, you can sit in your easy chair and hear some of the best music in the world. And don't think I haven't done it.
"Streaming is an important part of our programming, and we are planning to expand it," said Barry Stockwell, programming and production director of Next Stage Arts, which is celebrating its 15th anniversary. "This is a great chance to to help spread the word that it is available."
At Next Stage, he said, "we're all about the live show. There's nothing quite like a live performance, as you know. That's one of our core values, getting people together, building community."
"But we totally realize that it's not always possible," Stockwell said. "And so, streaming is an important part of what we do."
Next Stage began experimenting with streaming during the shutdown. It began by streaming videos. Then it moved to holding concerts in outdoor venues so ticket holders practicing social distancing could return with relative safety.
But the organization soon turned its attention to streaming, which has been a vital part of its programming ever since.
"You get the link and you can watch it live, or you can watch it the following day if you've got a conflict that night and can't be in two places at once," Stockwell said. "A lot of what we've done is try to reach the local audience that can't get to the theater."
An unexpected benefit is that it also opens up Next Stage concerts to the world.
"We are trying to expand that audience," Stockwell said. "We're asking the artists, in particular, to promote the livestream. We've got people coming from around the world to perform in our 195-seat theater, but if they can get the word to their followers who may live in California or Paris that they can see the show, suddenly our theater gets a lot bigger.
"We might have a worldwide audience," he said. "That's what we're trying to do."
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The Vermont Jazz Center, which has five cameras ready to stream its shows, already has a devoted following in Colombia, director and jazz pianist Eugene Uman told me.
"I have friends and family in Colombia," said Uman, who taught there for five years. "And so almost every concert that we do, there's a bunch of people who have watch parties and enjoy our concerts. So we find it really exhilarating that this is something that is starting to have legs and reach out internationally and nationally as well as locally."
Back in the old pre-Covid concert-going days, audiences were warned against taking pictures, much less trying to record. Only the Grateful Dead let its audience plug in to its own soundboard, for example. Now everyone in the theater is holding up a cell phone and recording.
One might think that copyright protection for both the songs and the artist's image might be a problem for venues that livestream, but that is not the case.
Artists want to increase their audience, Stockwell said, and streaming is a good way to do so.
"We always ask the performers, and only a few artists didn't want to do a livestream," Stockwell said. "I can't even think who they were, but it seems like there were just a couple."
A venue can't play prerecorded music in the background while patrons find their seats.
Next Stage pays performing rights organizations - ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) and BMI (Broadcast Music Inc.) - royalties for the actual performance for songs that aren't either original or traditional and are done by the artist, but that covers the in-theater as well as the live-streamed content.
But that license doesn't cover recorded content. "We can't broadcast that, so we have to shut off the pre-show music before we start the livestream," Stockwell said.
The reasoning behind artists embracing livestreaming? Simply to get their music out there, he said.
"I don't really know much about Spotify, but I know nobody's making any money off that platform," Stockwell said. "We've had artists come in with CDs, and people just don't buy a whole lot of CDs anymore. But some artists just put them out there and say, 'Name your price.' They just want the music out there, and they think it's going to get out there anyhow, so there's no sense in trying to put a lid on it in any way. Just include everyone."
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The Jazz Center puts livestreaming into its artists' contracts.
"Some artists prefer not to have their concerts livestreamed," Uman said. "Maybe because they're old-school and they feel that they're they're concerned that someone's going to steal their product and then sell it. That tends to be most of the older performers who have been scammed in the past and lost their remuneration from different events they have done. Maybe they did online concerts that they didn't know had been recorded, and someone else has been selling them.
But such performers are "getting less and less common," he said. "Most of the artists realize that it's the common way of doing business these days."
The Jazz Center does not charge its at-home audience.
"We have friends who can't afford to come to a concert, but they can watch the concert for free and if they have the wherewithal, they can make a donation," Uman said. "But we don't expect that."
The Latchis Theatre has been producing more and more shows and concerts, so I asked its executive director, Jon Potter, if he had ever thought of streaming some of his shows.
"Recently, the Latchis has been consulting on what it would it would take to make livestreaming an option at more of our events," said Potter, who sees the option as "a fundamental aspect of accessibility."
"Our loyal patrons reflect the demographics of our community, and as our community ages, so do many of our cherished patrons," he said. "We can only fulfill our mission as a community venue by exploring all avenues of giving people access to the great things that happen here."
And one of those avenues "includes streaming events and special programs so that the Latchis can still feel closely connected to people even if they can't be here in person," Potter said.
While the decision to livestream really belongs to his artists, Potter said, he might eventually put it into the standard contracts for the venue.
A few of the Latchis shows already livestream - "most notably, the Sing Nowell concert in [December], Windham County's Got Talent in January, and the benefit concert for Ukraine in March," he said. "The organizers of those events made streaming possible to broaden the audience and enhance the fundraising impact of those events."
Brattleboro Community Television (BCTV) provided the livestream services. "They're a great organization," Potter said.
He also said that the Hollywood studios have been considering the possibility of making first-run movies available for home viewing, but that is a long way in the future.
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It is commonly agreed upon that the Vermont population is aging, but we might not appreciate what it means until we get shut in ourselves.
Even before I became ill, I noticed my horizons becoming limited by my age. Not being able to drive at night has become a big thing in my life. I have more than 60 years of concert-going behind me.
Now, unless I can find someone with the same musical tastes I have, I won't be seeing most of the performers I love, or getting turned on to the new ones I will love from now on.
COVID-19, however, changed everything. Remember when Zoom became a lifeline? Many great musicians invested in some lighting and sound equipment and started giving regular concerts in their living rooms.
Comedians flocked to Netflix, which recorded their stand-up shows and now stream them in perpetuity. Jim Gaffigan rebuilt his career on streaming, and Nate Bargatze became a star.
But then science discovered how to control Covid, and entertainers once again took to the road.
Unfortunately, by then an entire cohort of their audience had aged out. Next Stage and Vermont Jazz Center have been dedicated to growing a younger demographic.
"We are very proactive about getting young people into the Jazz Center, and our primary way of doing that is through the schools," Uman said. "We offer free tickets. We have an arrangement with [Brattleboro Union High School] and Leland & Gray [Union Middle and High School] where any students who come, the schools will pay half of the ticket price, and the Vermont Jazz Center will cover the other half."
Uman offers a youth jazz program on Tuesdays, and all his students come to the concerts without paying.
"We have a whole social media campaign geared towards young people," Uman said. "And we also send press releases and posters to any local colleges and high schools and music programs in the area. For each concert we send out 20 or 30 packets with that information."
That strategy has resulted in "an uptick in the attendance of young people," he said.
An emerging artists festival in November also attracts students who get to spend a weekend playing, studying, and listening to the professional musicians.
And the solo piano festival in April offers world-class professional artists as well as emerging artists.
"In terms of audience numbers, we've been really finding that the public is very supportive of our efforts and are showing up in droves at our concerts," Uman said.
Next Stage is also working to attract younger people.
"We understand our audience is older, and those are the folks that have gotten us to where we're at," Stockwell said. "But we do have to look to the future, and we try to do that with programming artists who appeal to younger audiences."
One bit of successful programming has been NextStage's Bandwagon Series, which offers family-friendly outdoor shows and free admission for children under the age of 12.
"We get a lot of young families to those shows," Stockwell said. "And those kids are listening. I know when I was that age, when I was 10 or 12 years old, I was running around listening to my dad and his brother play music. And you know, we may have been horsing around and doing somersaults, but that music makes an impression. So we love seeing the kids there at the shows."
The Stone Church in Brattleboro has a younger audience, Stockwell pointed out.
"Some artists certainly draw younger crowds, but there's a certain momentum there too," Stockwell said. "We've all got our little niche, but we and a lot of other venues are always hoping to attract younger audiences to fill out the theater."
"It's certainly always on our minds," he said.
Joyce Marcel is a reporter and columnist for The Commons, where she regularly covers politics, homelessness, economic development issues, and the arts.
This Arts column by Joyce Marcel was written for The Commons.