How Live Music Venue 'THE GOV' Survived the COVID-19 PANDEMIC & Managed To Host Over 350 Live Music Events during The Year of the Coronavirus

BAND IT ABOUT - Podcast Series

This interview is a must for Live Music Venue owners and musicians who are interested in finding out more about their own return to live music events and concerts once their countries current social distancing measures are relaxed. It will give many a realistic insight into just how long it will be before you can expect to get back to any sort of normal and what that new normal will look like. At the start of the pandemic we hoped it would be a lot sooner than the reality. On the 26th of April, 2020, I released an episode about the fact that one major Live Music Venue's had the means to survive the lockdown for at best another 4 months, before having no choice but to shut it's doors for good. The interview was with Richard Tonkin, one of the family members that own and run The Governor Hindmarsh Hotel, referred to as The Gov by locals. The Gov is home to a large eclectic group of musical acts, and is the venue that International and Interstate Bands who don't pull the big crowds to fill the Entertainment Centre, come to play. If The Gov were to close, it would mean that our state would lose out on a lot of great entertainment, and that is the last thing that a UNESCO City of Music wants to see happen. After that interview I searched for a solution, it seemed that any kind of substantial assistance was going to be too far away to be of any help to this venue. Where other venues have other means to stay afloat, by the way of selling take away food and drinks, or pokies, The Gov didn't have anything. They are a dedicated Live Music Venue, and it is the touring acts and the money that those acts bring in to the venue, that enables them to be able to afford to have all of the other small groups play in their venue. I decided to write a petition to the South Australian State Government to make them aware of the situation, so I looked at what was available and I chose to do it on Change.org where others had written petitions to the government previously. I knew that for a petition to be even considered, I would have to have a reasonable amount of signatures. I decided to set the goal at 10,000, and once I had reached that I would take the petition and all of the signatures and messages of support in to the South Australian Premier's office and deliver it to the Premier, The Hon Steven Marshall. I combined the petition with information and a video to attract attention, and posted it on my Band It About Facebook Page on the 29th of April. I then proceeded to share it with other music related groups on Facebook. The petition didn't take long to start receiving public support, at one stage I recall that it was getting signed at a rate of 77 per hour, it was going viral, and was not only being signed by people in Australia, it had reached and was being supported by people all around the globe! I knew that there was not going to be a problem getting to 10,000. I was only 1,359 signatures away from reaching my goal when I received the news that I could close the petition. The State Government had contacted the venue owners to arrange a time to begin discussions, which resulted in The Gov receiving a Grant of $300,000! Today I have invited another member of the Tonkin family to chat about what it has been like to survive and operate a Live Music Venue throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic, my guest is Melissa Tonkin. If you would like to read the petition you can do so via this link: http://change.org/SavetheGov If you would like to assist me to continue to do this podcast, you can do so by buying a $5 cup of coffee ☕ via this link: The Band It About podcast series can be heard on all of the major podcast listening platforms including Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google podcasts and Anchor. If you would like to contact me you can do so via email at [e-mail] Band It About website: https://www.podpage.com/band-it-about-podcast-series/ Band It About Socials https://www.facebook.com/allowmetoguideyoutothegig https://twitter.com/dispillane --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dianne-spillane/message