From Your Everlovin’ Editor

Seasons Greetings!

I hope that you and your loved ones are having a peaceful and enjoyable holiday time.

We have only 3 1/2 days left in our End of Year Fundraiser.

The next 62 or so hours will shape our budget and determine the level of service we can provide in the coming year.

Can we raise enough to create our Educational Programs and offer new opportunities to Youth Performers?

To bring more Touring Artists to our stages with Local Luminaries opening for them?

To ramp up Railroad Square Music Festival and keep it free?

To build out more Monthly Residencies like Live Band Karaoke, Brad Barton, Reality Thief,  StandProv!, You’re Going To Die, Knights of Revery, and TLC Song Service?

To further serve our peers and community by offering Free Consultations and Fiscal Sponsorships?

To continue our Mission to Create, Sustain, and Defend Spaces for Live Performance?

Support us and let us know how much you think we can accomplish in 2023 by donating before December 31st at midnight. 

We’re energized, organized, and ready to go. Thank you for your help!

Love,

Michele & The Lost Church

Email us at hq@thelostchurch.org with your questions and comments, testimonials…and to talk about Rentals!

Amplifying Arts Journalism

Pitchfork “Confronting Music’s Mental Health Crisis”

This is a well written and in depth article that articulates so much of what performing artists are experiencing and could not make public previously. It is a longer read, but well worth your time and attention.

Santigold cemented her legacy as an alternative pop hero in the late 2000s thanks to her piercing artistic conviction. This September, following the release of her fourth album, Spirituals, she broke through to people again, but this time through her absence. Announcing the cancellation of her North American tour, Santigold shared a long statement that concluded, “I will not continue to sacrifice myself for an industry that has become unsustainable for, and uninterested in, the welfare of the artists it is built upon.”

Speaking on a video call a week later, she elaborated on the overarching impact of what have become untenable demands in music—anxiety, insomnia, fatigue, vertigo, and more—and the overlapping broken systems at their root. “The math does not ever work,” she said, referring not only to the grueling and increasingly unprofitable nature of touring, but to the broader reality for working musicians in an era where music has been devalued by exploitative streaming and ticketing models.

“The music industry pits us against each other,” Smith (of DIIV) said. “So being able to build a coalition is really important.” The union’s website poses vital questions: “If we can be part of the movement for healthcare for all and also find ways of taking care of our members, we could make a real impact. How can we plug into broader organizing that’s already happening around healthcare? What’s the leverage we have as musicians?”

From Williams’ experience, Europe exceeds Canada in progressive arts practices. State-assisted venues, like Kesselhaus in Wiesbaden, Germany, which offers a full apartment to touring musicians, a large kitchen and dining area, and prepared hot food upon arrival, “provide working conditions that should be the model for the world,” Williams says. “At our level this was a wild gift and an extra breath of life on a long tour,” he added, responding via email en route home from a nine-week tour in which he only had five days off.

Formerly, Chastity was signed to Royal Mountain, a Canadian indie label that offers all of its artists a $1,500 wellness stipend per album cycle as part of its Mental Health Initiative. Label co-founder Menno Versteeg said he started the fund with insights from his own 20 years as a touring musician, watching his friends struggle. He described the typical attitude he’d encounter in the 2000s: “‘You’re feeling bad on tour? You’re too sad to go on stage? Well, drink up and shove it down and get the fuck out there.’”

Right before the pandemic, Denzel Curry spoke out in support of label-funded mental healthcare. Curry himself had signed up for therapy a year prior, after a period of severe depression. “I thought I was dealing with my problems through music, but I wasn’t really confronting them for real,” he said. “When I went to therapy, I was able to confront them.” Speaking from his home in Los Angeles in August, Curry remained a strong supporter of therapy, which he said helped him tremendously—so much so that his 2022 album, Melt My Eyez See Your Future, is grounded in his therapeutic process. “Therapy taught me how to really feel. It changed my music because I don’t just run through one or two emotions, I run through all of them.”

In the absence of systemic change, a number of new initiatives have emerged in the U.S. in recent years to address the mental health crisis in music. One is Backline, a non-profit launched in October 2019, which connects artists, touring crew members, and their families with mental healthcare providers. Through a form on the Backline website, musicians can qualify to be paired with a case manager who creates a custom care plan tailored to their needs and finances. Therapists and treatment centers in Backline’s clinical network are vetted for their understanding of the music industry—they’re attuned to the specific stressors of the road and know the right questions to ask. Or as co-founder Hilary Gleason put it: “One of the main things Backline has tried to remove is having to explain what it means to go on tour.”

Syreeta Butler had been a therapist for the better part of a decade when, around 2015, she started to envision the possibility that a record label could have a specialized mental health and wellness department. “It was gnawing at me, but there was no real blueprint,” Butler said. “I mean, there still isn’t—this blueprint is continuously being created.” Butler hopes to set a precedent in the music industry that will impact not only artists, but listeners too. “Supporting musicians has ripple effects,” Butler said. “It’s not just about getting over your anxiety, but asking: How can we support you in being the best version of yourself? How does that impact not only your well being, but the music and art you create? And from that, how are the people consuming your art changed in their own lives from what you have created?” If therapy could change an individual musician’s interior landscape, she suggested, maybe it could enlighten the music and message they communicate, and even the world it reaches. “Once I was able to unlock those ideas,” Butler added, “the work took on a different life.”

READ the full article by Jenn Pelly on Pitchfork HERE

We STRONGLY RECOMMEND MASKS be worn while inside our theater to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Masks are no longer mandated by the State of California and are no longer required for entry, but are encouraged since colds, the flu, and COVID are on the rise.

January ONLY 10% Off Private Event Rentals

A private event in our beautiful and rather eccentric theater is a party or event that your guests will really remember.

Daytime is delightful at The Lost Church Santa Rosa (as is the evening).

–photo by Bobbee Cline

Brad Barton, Reality Thief at The Lost Church San Francisco.

Rent our theater and hire Brad to perform at your holiday party at either theater in SF or Santa Rosa!

We’ve extended our 10% off special through to January 31st.

TLC YouTube Archives

Moving pictures… with sound!

Visit our Lost Church YouTube Channel for new videos from the archives uploaded weekly!

CLICK THE IMAGE ABOVE TO SUBSCRIBE

F.A.Q.

Answers to your burning inquiries.

Find the answers to your questions by visiting https://thelostchurch.org/faq