Live music returns to Seattle with The Black Tones sold-out show
The pandemic year has virtually shut down live music in commercial venues. But live music is coming back in Seattle.
The Black Tones are playing Seattle’s first socially-distanced outdoor concert at the Museum of Flight on Sunday, March 28. The show is sold out.
They spoke with KUOW ahead of the event.
Eva Walker: My name is Eva Walker, I play in a rock band with my twin brother called the Black Tones.
Cedric Walker: I'm Cedric Walker. People might know me more such as Cedric David. I am the drummer of the Black Tones; Robin, to Eva's Batman.
Eva: Our last show before the lockdown was playing at Easy Street Records. And it was on March 5, the place was packed. Amazing. It was fun. And then it just, like, stopped. I remember driving through. Seattle was like a ghost town. It was just like, no one's outside. And it was just bizarre. And it kind of felt surreal.
Cedric: And then you had to think about "well, how are we going to navigate this?" You know, "how is a musician who plays live music, going to navigate this?"
Eva: We've been able to do virtual concerts. We've done quite a few virtual performances. They were fun, they were different. And it's weird because you don't get that real-time audience response back, which is the thrill I get from live performance. Me and Cedric have done what we could to when this first started. We made a list of musicians that we wanted to just donate to from just like our own money, like, "Hey, I have some extra money coming in, let's give someone $50 today."
Cedric: We knew (what it was like) because we lost that extra income. And to be able to put ourselves in the shoes of people who only solely relied on that income. We knew that it was is a tough time.
How has the pandemic affected your music?
Eva: We haven't written much that relates to the pandemic, specifically, the summer of 2020 was really difficult. We lost our stepdad to cancer who was a civil rights activist, and the next day George Floyd happened. The pandemic, at that point, I wasn't even thinking about it anymore. So it's been stuff more correlating to social issues than it has been pandemic issues. We wrote a song called My name's not Abraham Lincoln, which was a song about lack of representation.
To hear part of that song, click on the audio above.
And it's not so much to be like, "Oh, I don't like Abraham Lincoln." It's not like anything like that. It's more like, he signed the Emancipation Proclamation. There were also a lot of Black abolitionists that were a part of that process that don't get talked about as much as Abraham Lincoln.
Eva: Me and Cedric actually canceled some live stream shows. Now I called him up, like crying and I was like, "Hey, I can't do this show today." (He was like) "I was hoping you would say that. I can't do it either." Yes, you had to just stop in and mourn.
Eva and Cedric have thrown themselves into a campaign called "Keep Music Live." Along with club owners and other musicians like Sir Mix A Lot, Keep Music Live raises money to preserve the small music venues which have been closed for so many months.
Eva: But it’s really to get the community together.
Cedric: We’ll see if we can get private companies involved and try to save the ecosystem that is the Washington state music scene. Because it’s one of the best in the country.
