Country Update
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Country Update BILLBOARD.COM/NEWSLETTERS MARCH 16, 2020 | PAGE 1 OF 17 INSIDE BILLBOARD COUNTRY UPDATE [email protected] Barrett, Andress Set Precedent Nashville, Take Heed: Country’s >page 4 First COVID-19 Survivor Speaks Out New Heartland Adds Management The coronavirus has officially hit Nashville’s music community. the manager. “I’ve never felt more influential in this town.” >page 9 CMT closed its offices March 10 to thoroughly sanitize the The manager agreed to speak with the Billboard Country premises after an artist manager who had attended the net- Update, believing it was important for the community to take work’s tornado relief telethon, the COVID-19 threat seriously. held in conjunction with WSMV- Even though a large portion of Postponements: TV Nashville on March 5, tested Nashville’s music community has The New Normal positive for COVID-19. CMT ex- already identified him, he spoke on >page 10 ecutives who were present at that the condition of anonymity to pro- event were asked to work from tect his children’s identities. home for the following two weeks “We’ve had these outbreaks be- as a preventive measure. fore, but this one seems a little dif- Nashville Clubs Black River took similar steps, ferent, a little more aggressive,” he Shut Down closing March 10 for a deep clean says. “There’s maybe a little more >page 10 and requiring five staff members panic in the air.” who had a 15-minute meeting with That panic mushroomed from the infected manager to work re- a little to a lot over the past week Makin’ Tracks: motely through March 20. as the number of U.S. coronavirus Newcomer Plenty on Music Row were skep- cases exploded, just weeks after Payton Smith tical for a time about COVID-19, the White House minimized the >page 14 a new strain of coronavirus. But virus’ impact. With no cohesive as the number of infections soars plan in place to combat COVID-19 in the U.S. and across the globe, — and with the president openly at- the impact on the community of tempting to manipulate infection Country Coda: the artist manager’s diagnosis is a data for the best possible market- Amazing Gracin’s confirmation that the bug is real, ing position — the stock market No. 1 and it’s not just somebody else’s nose-dived, businesses pulled >page 17 problem. back, and individual states placed “I do joke that I’ve shut down limits on public gatherings, in CMT, Black River and maybe a few other Music Row offices some instances banning events of more than 100 people. — and the entire Williamson County school system,” says That hit the country music business hard. Dan + Shay, Blake SPOHNW PHOTOALTO/MATTHIEU MASK: ACCESS THE BEST IN MUSIC. A DIGITAL VERSION OF EVERY ISSUE, FEATURING: COVER STORIES . SPECIAL REPORTS . CHARTS . REVIEWS INTERVIEWS . EVENT COVERAGE & MORE AVAILABLE FREE TO CURRENT BILLBOARD SUBSCRIBERS billboard.com/iPad BILLBOARD COUNTRY UPDATE MARCH 16, 2020 | PAGE 2 OF 17 Shelton, Reba McEntire, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Sturgill Simpson, Dwight Yoakam and the Zac Brown Band were among the artists who post- poned tours or individual dates. Loretta Lynn, who at age 87 has weathered a stroke and broken a hip in recent years, was quarantined by her doctors to avoid coming in contact with infected visitors. The Stagecoach country music festival in Indio, Calif., was delayed from April to the fall; RodeoHouston, the Tin Pan South Songwriters Festival and Europe’s C2C music festival were canceled; the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum closed for a thorough cleaning through March 31; and the Grand Ole Opry announced it would turn away audiences through April 4. The lat- termost’s WSM-AM Nashville show will air as an in-studio live broadcast on Saturdays during the interim, but the Opry will not be held on other nights during the week. Chris Janson was unable to perform at the WIRK West Palm Beach, Meanwhile, numerous companies have instructed or encouraged their em- Fla., Rib Round Up on Feb. 7 when a local concert crew member’s ployees to work from home, including Beasley Media and Billboard. heart-related death ended the show. From left prior to the event: WIRK “Nobody wants to lose money, nobody wants to be sitting at home when assistant PD/music director Nick Rivers, Janson, Hubbard/West Palm they could be out singing, but no one wants the country shut down either,” says Beach operations manager Bruce Logan and Warner Music Nashville the manager with COVID-19. “At some level, maybe that’s the choice we’re regional manager WAR radio and streaming Tom Starr. faced with. I don’t fault anyone [for] taking steps that may turn out later to be unnecessary. But it may turn out later that, thank goodness, we did it right, because we had no idea how bad this thing was going to get.” Conflicting messages and a lack of data created much of the nation’s cur- rent panic. President Donald Trump suggested in his first address to the na- tion on Feb. 26 that the number of U.S. coronavirus cases might be capped at 15. Nine days later, he declared a national emergency, with more than 1,000 infections and 41 deaths reported across 48 of the 50 states. Most people who are infected are likely to recover. The manager, who prob- ably contracted COVID-19 during a trip to Colorado on March 1-3, sweated out the bulk of his symptoms in a 48-hour window after he began to feel sick on March 6. He suffered body aches, chills, a runny nose, a dry cough, a sore throat and intestinal issues, while his temperature peaked at 101.5 degrees. But elderly citizens and people with compromised immune systems are par- ticularly vulnerable to the virus, and that’s part of the reason that the manager Walker Hayes received a plaque from YouTube after accruing 100,000 insisted on getting diagnosed. subscribers on the streaming platform’s channel. From left: YouTube “I didn’t come in here for my own health,” he told nurses at the hospital. “I Nashville artist relations executive Copeland Isaacson, Hayes, came in here for everybody else’s.” Monument director of digital marketing and sales Sarah D’Hilly and In fact, he was repeatedly rebuffed in his attempts to get tested. Health care YouTube manager of artist and label relations Margaret Hart. workers told him short supplies required them to ration the tests and he did not fit the criteria to receive one. He pushed four separate times through differ- ent doctors and his local emergency room to get tested. He finally received a test on his last visit, which took seven hours as he was given several other tests first to eliminate other possible illnesses. The COVID-19 test, administered with a throat swab, took less than a minute to complete, and once the results came back positive, he was placed on quarantine for two weeks. He had visited a local school and was initially asked not to reveal his diagnosis to the school system, but he decided that was irresponsible and notified authorities, who CHAVERS. ROBERT HAYES: shut down facilities and conducted a cleaning. The coronavirus can cause death and appears to reduce long-term lung ca- pacity in some of its survivors, though most people eventually recover. “At its worst, I would call it a mild flu,” says the manager, describing his personal experience. “It doesn’t have to be a dire sentence.” But he was also amused by tales of behavior at an industry party before Josh Abbott (center) checked in with the staff at KVOO Tulsa, Okla., Scotty McCreery’s March 11 concert at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium. Some including PD Dena Fletcher and Griffin/Tulsa director of radio attendees were in sync with fist bumps and elbow bumps as a replacement operations and programming Steve Hunter. for the traditional handshake, while others seemed insulted when people re- fused to shake their hand. Still others hugged old friends without asking first if it was OK. “I can empathize with people that think we’re overreacting,” says the man- ager. “On the other hand, I’ll think about my peers and, you know, I don’t want people inadvertently infected.” It is, he believes, important for the Nashville music industry to know that COVID-19 is in the community. Though no additional infections have been reported publicly since he appeared at the tornado telethon, it is easy to con- ceive of his fellow telethon attendees Kid Rock, Cassadee Pope, and Lady Antebellum’s Charles Kelley and Dave Haywood contracting the virus that night and in turn spreading it to their families as well as cowriters, musicians, radio programmers and fans across the country. An ounce of prevention, the manager believes, is worth a ton of cure. Indie artist Allie Colleen (center) visited WVLT-TV Knoxville, Tenn., in “Whether we’re reacting appropriately or overreacting, we won’t know for support of her current single, “Along the Way.” She’s shown with WVLT some time,” he says. “People, I think, are just trying to do the best they can.” hosts Brittany Tarwater and Harry Sullivan. PROMOTION N S A L O E MAY 30, 2020 20 20 COUNTRY POWER PLAYERS Billboard’s sixth annual Country Power Players BONUS DISTRIBUTION issue will profile the people who have driven CMA Music Week 6/4-6/7 another solid year for the country music industry, generating billions in sales, streaming and touring.