Nashville Music Venues Say Latest Relief Money May Only Buy Them A Few Months

Nashville’s music venues are still suffering monetary losses because of the pandemic. But now some of them are eligible to get an extra boost from the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Under the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant, hundreds of Tennessee businesses have already received upwards of $260 million.

Now, businesses that can show that their revenues in the first quarter of 2021 were at least 70% below what they saw in the same period of 2019 can get even more funding.

“Things are really, really slow right now,” says Chris Cobb of Exit/In, Nashville’s oldest rock club. “We’re losing significantly more money on a monthly basis now than we were when we were fully closed.”

The delta variant is slowing the process of getting live music back to normal, he says.

Cobb also says ticket sales are down, and the number of people who buy tickets but don’t show up is the highest he’s seen in his career.

Exit/In is spending its original SBA grant on operations, but Cobb says he isn’t sure how long that is going to last. This supplemental grant is half the size of the original one, so he says it may buy them a few more months.

“We were hopeful that we would be close to profitable again by now,” says Cobb. “And we’re a long way from there.”

Cobb donated part of his new funding back to the National Independent Venue Association, which has been lobbying for venues across the country and was instrumental in advocating for the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant. But Cobb says that organization is also running low on cash, just like the venues it is working to preserve.