Newbie Musician Gets Back On Stage As Pandemic Fears Fade

CARPENTERSVILLE, IL — Gabe Hirst started to book his first gigs as a musician in 2019.

He got a late start as a musician. He's played different instruments for years and can sing, but it took him until 2017 to get serious about it and consider it as a career option. And then it was a couple more years before he got up in front of people to sing his original songs.

After several months of performing in person in 2019, the offers started to dry up a bit in October. But the momentum had him hopeful for more.

And then 2020 hit. And it hit suburban musicians hard — from solo acts like Hirst's that are just starting out to even more-established bands.

"Essentially, it was just a massive panic attack for everyone," said Hirst about how musicians coped with news of the shutdown.

Fast forward 18 months, and the 28-year-old Carpentersville musician just played his first gig since fall 2019. It was at the Mockingbird, a small bar in East Dundee that also serves wood-fired pizza. He played outside, and Mockingbird opened up a massive window in the side of its building so people could hear inside, too.

Passersby also stopped. Going into it, Hirst was nervous.

"I was really focused on putting in the best show that I can and finding my stage feet again. And a lot of that is just getting used to talking to people again. And talking to strangers. And getting used to feeling out a crowd," he said. "I feel like I got really good vibes from the crowd ... it took about a half-hour, but I got into the groove, and it was like old times. It was nice."

How Musicians Made It Work During The Pandemic

Patch spoke with Hirst in the past week about how he tried to get his music out amid the pandemic, as part of a series of interviews we are doing on how COVID-19 has affected suburban life, including the arts.

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For Hirst, the shutdown also shut him down musically.

"For me, it was really hard to perform for anyone. I was desperate trying to figure out what to do with myself," he said.

He writes his own lyrics and had no inspiration to do so while cooped up at home. He told us about how being stuck at home — the monotony and stress of the day-to-day in those early months of the pandemic — affected him creatively:

It was me and my brain. And when it's you and your brain for too long there comes a point where you have to develop certain protective measures against literally going nuts. Because say, I'm trying to write a song, there's certain things I'm not trying to reflect on in that moment. Because reflecting on those things is extremely stressful and I don't have a way to get away from it.

I feel like a lot of good songwriting, you know is reflective and captures moments and feelings and tries to explain things. I was literally stuck in a bird cage. And I didn't want to sing about that. And I didn't really want to write about it. Because I don't want to just use island metaphors for seven months.

So, he wrote nothing.

"It would've been a detriment to write a song during that time, because that song would've been a trophy. Like, reminding me of what I was stuck in and how I felt like there was going to be no other escape, and it was just desperate," he said.

"So, for me, I don't think I'll be able to write on that (the pandemic and how it affected him) until normalcy is obtained and I can go back and reflect on it," he added.

Hirst has worked in restaurants and bars in the past to make ends meet, and he also worked on the factory line at Abbott Labs in 2020, helping get their just-approved rapid test out. As the year wore on, he decided it was time for a change. He started chatting with his closest friends more, a group of people from all walks of life that opened up about how challenging the year had been for them.

They, like Gabe, were stuck.

"We can meet up online and kind of help each other get some form of vision on what we can do next," he said.

Those friends encouraged Gabe to release his first single — which he did on Apple Music, Spotify and Prime Music — and then his extended play record, which includes five original songs, in December.

From there, a musician friend who had a strong online following asked to play Gabe's songs on loop for nine hours on Twitch.tv, which is among the many online avenues musicians have been turning to during COVID-19 to keep — or, in Gabe's case, kick-start — their fan base.

The next month, his songs' popularity shot up on Spotify.

"Avenues like that have been where musicians have had to thrive," he said. "He reached out to me and asked for my permission to play my music. And naturally, of course, it's always worth the publicity," Hirst said.

"And then I looked at my numbers, and they shot up, not just from him but from a bunch of other people who heard my stuff through his stream and went to go listen to it," he added. "And I was like, yo, this is great," Hirst said.

In March, Gabe did his first live performance on Twitch.tv. He played his songs for an hour and a half for anyone who "stopped by."

At the height of the performance's popularity, 18 people were logged on. That accomplishment, he said, he was proud of. Marketing himself and attracting fans amid the COVID-19 pandemic has been extremely tough amid the shutdown, he said.

"It's just hard to keep people's attention in a stream where it's like they could or could not be there. Where, like, if Chance the Rapper did a livestream show it's going to be amazing because he's Chance, and he's great and everyone knows him," he said.

What's Next For Gabe?

Hirst is too early on in his career to think about talking with any record labels; he needs to build up his fan base and go from there, he said. So, for now, that means he is also in charge of marketing himself. And he also has the creative freedom he may not have if he was with a label.

He also doesn't have the resources, such as a recording studio. He records at home, something he says other artists have been doing more of since the pandemic.

Right now, the money isn't there, and he needs to book a certain number of gigs each month to make it his main source of income.

He said friends more established, who've depended solely on cash from shows and their music, were sidelined more than he was during COVID-19. Unemployment was an option, and some music-related nonprofits have provided some grants.

The Musicians Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to providing financial assistance to musicians and their families in times of need, began doling out "micro grants" to a fraction of the thousands of artists out of work during the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. The grants were up to $200 to help the struggling musicians "get through a week or two," according to the Musicians Foundation’s CV19 Emergency Relief Aid Grant Program.

By the end of 2020, the Musicians Foundation had doled out 1,500 grants nationwide while seeing a "600 percent" increase in new applications to its grant program, B.C. Vermeersch, executive director for the Musicians Foundation, wrote in December 2020 to the organizations' supporters.

Other federal and state government resources for struggling musicians, such as unemployment and small-business relief grants, have helped as well.

But even with all the struggles, Hirst is hopeful — especially as more bars and restaurants open up, more people get vaccinated, and restrictions are lifted to allow more in-person interaction, which should make performances more common for him.

He's got some more shows booked at Mockingbird, 217 Barrington Ave.; people can check him out on June 10 and 26. And he's looking for more places to showcase his music this summer as well.

Patch is talking with local artists, musicians, and theaters regarding how the COVID-19 pandemic affected their careers and businesses. This is part of an ongoing series focused on how COVID-19 affected suburban life and how residents, business owners, parents and workers are finding their way forward.

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