HOLLYWOOD—Our world has been turned upside down like a snow globe. We have to become creative. Leave it to the music industry to become creative. As the ongoing pandemic continues to wreak havoc on the live music industry, enterprising artists and venues around the country are being forced to think outside the box when it comes to playing for an audience.
At first, many celebrities turned to Instagram, quite frankly we all know that it’s the concert venue that pulls in the money. Going out on tour, that’s where the real money is. So drive in concerts could become the new normal. From an underground show in Los Angeles to Keith Urban becoming the first major star to hop on the trend. One of the first drive-in concerts of the current pandemic era took place in mid-March, yes, in the parking lot of a Los Angeles supermarket.
The event was co-organized by online radio station Dublab, and local musicians took turns in a white van, using synthesizers and using an FM radio transmitter to broadcast ghostly synth tones into the stereos of around 50 cars in attendance. So drive-in movies and drive-in concerts could definitely be reincarnated in our future.
Country star Keith Urban was one of the first stars to perform in a surprise show last week for some 125 cars at a drive-in outside of Nashville. DJ D-Nice, went to to The 1/ST Preakness At Home’s Drive-In FieldFest, on May 16 at Gulfstream Park in Hallandale Beach, Flordia…it was set up to accommodate 200 first responders. The star of the show, fittingly, is the DJ behind #ClubQuarantine, D-Nice, who has been livestreaming sets during Miami’s coronavirus quarantine on his Instagram account.
He is great, with over 2 million followers on Instagram. Let me just note, that while I personally like Diplo and think he awesome. If they are on IG live, no question about it DJ D-Nice will have over 20k listeners, while Diplo will only have 2k. However, let’s not forget that Diplo is doing very well. The song “On My Mind” was originally released via Diplo’s Higher Ground imprint, a sublabel of Mad Decent that he launched in 2019 to put out his house records and support other house artists.
Other Higher Ground releases include the eponymous EP and the “Samba Sujo” remixes. Made in collaboration with the Sway App, the “On My Mind” video features dances that will be available on the app for fans to join the fun. The “On My Mind” video follows another recent Diplo release “Do Si Do” with Blanco Brown, the latest from his long-awaited country album “Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley Chapter 1: Snake Oil,” set for release May 29 on Columbia Records. He continues to be one of the most dynamic forces in music today under his own name, as well as a member of the now legendary Major Lazer—which most recently released “Lay Your Head On Me”—LSD, the psychedelic supergroup with Sia and Labrinth, and Silk City with Mark Ronson, whose Platinum-certified “Electricity” with Dua Lipa that won a Grammy.
So throughout the country, the new trend is the drive-in theater. On May 23: Kasim Sulton will perform two Saturday shows at the Tupelo Drive-In Music Hall in Derry, NH, one at noon and another at 3 pm.
On June 4: Black Jacket Symphony will perform the first show of their Concerts From the Car series, and will focus on The Beatles’ Abbey Road. The event will take place at the Hoover Met Complex in Hoover, Alabama, beginning at 8 p.m. local time. The band’s upcoming concerts will feature the music of Queen on June 11, Journey on June 18, and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers on June 25. Eli Young Band will kick off the Concert in Your Car series at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas.
The country act will be followed on subsequent nights by Whiskey Myers (June 5), Pat Green (June 6) and Josh Abbott Band & Kevin Fowler (June 7). Each artist will play two sets — at 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. The entire concert series sold out within a matter of hours. June 9: Electronic musician Marc Rebillet will embark on an 80-city drive-in tour, starting with back-to-back nights at a yet-to-be-announced venue in Baltimore, Maryland. From there, he’ll run through tour stops in Charlotte, North Carolina (June 11); Indianapolis, Indiana (June 16); Kansas City, Missouri (June 18); Tulsa, Oklahoma (June 20) and Fort Collins, Colorado (June 22 & 23), before finishing off with shows in Fort Worth (June 26 & 27) and Houston, Texas (June 28). On June 13: The Davisson Brothers Band is playing outdoors at the Sunset Drive-In Theater in Meadowbrook, West Virginia. Tickets are $80 per car.
Rose’s Scoop: Yankee Stadium in July is scheduled to turn into part-drive in movie theater and part-time concert venue.
