How the coronavirus pandemic Is wreaking havoc on international bands touring the U.S. - By zzzzaaaacccchhh
Last Wednesday, the Argentina-based bluegrass band Che Apalache was traveling through North Carolina when they got some distressing news. Two Midwestern dates on their sprawling U.S. tour had been canceled. It was the first wave of cancelations for Che Apalache as the grim reality of the coronavirus pandemic spread throughout the music industry. The band was about to embark on a 13-hour drive to Indiana, where they had a show scheduled in Goshen, Ind.
Yet the chaos has been particularly complicated for international bands who happened to be touring the United States last week when the stateside pandemic reached crisis proportions. For one thing, this country’s byzantine health care system often seems barbaric to people accustomed to universal care. In Che Apalache’s case, two of Troop’s bandmates are Argentinian and one is Mexican. “They don’t want to get stranded in the United States with no health insurance,” Troop said.
In a lucky coincidence, Robertson got the news at the exact moment he was about to pay an invoice for an equipment rental in Austin. Still, “the cancelation was quite a big hit financially for our band,” he said. Since SXSW can provide fledgling acts with crucial press exposure, international acts often route their American tours around the festival. This is what’s called an “anchor gig”—a major, profitable show that you can plan your whole tour around.
Che Apalache’s situation escalated rapidly over the last week. The band was halfway to Indiana when they got word that their show in Goshen had been canceled. Troop called a friend nearby, a Lutheran minister in Kentucky. “He said, ‘Come on over.’ We holed up in his house for a couple days, waiting,” Troop told me Sunday.
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