April 2020 Newsletter - Quarantine
Hello Havenites
I know it’s been a while since I have reached out. It’s been crazy times lately hasn’t it? The world is in a place I’ve never seen before and I have no idea how long this will last. I hope you are all healthy, safe and abiding by the social distancing law and staying home.
I’ll give you a little breakdown on what’s been going on in my world.
I was doing my usual thing, keeping busy with gigs, working on my online presence, trying to save money to finish releasing my album...the usual.
My birthday was on March 15. My mom’s was on the 16th. We hadn’t been able to spend our birthdays together in about 2 years since I moved to Florida so I had her fly down at the end of February so we could celebrate together. Well, Covid-19 swooped in and turned our world upside down. We have been stuck at the house since my birthday. She delayed her flight back to Michigan and will be here for at least another month. Possibly longer. She’s not complaining though. She loves it here ;)
Between Arthur, my mom and I, we have been in survival mode ever since. I’m sure you all know by now but all the music venues are closed so all of our gigs are cancelled until further notice. It is very scary right now. Music is my FULL TIME job. I don’t have a day job to supplement income. I am in this 100% and I’m not the only one. All musicians from around the world are in this same position. And possibly even scarier, bars and restaurants along with all the staff are struggling as well. Those of you who can still afford to order carryout or delivery from your favorite local restaurant, I encourage you to please continue to do so.
On the bright side
this time at home has given me a different perspective and is forcing me to get creative. Unfortunately I have not written any songs yet, but I do hope that time is coming. However, I have been working more on my social media presence, working on creating more content to start utilizing YouTube and exploring other platforms. It’s a slow process for me because marketing and social media are very outside of my comfort zone. It’s a learning process.
The other very cool thing is we have been managing to get by for now with a little help from friends and fans by playing virtual shows on Facebook. If you have been tuning in thank you so much. I have been posting links to my Venmo, Paypal, CashApp and Zelle for tips. Those who have been contributing are helping in more ways than you can imagine. And not only financially, but being able to interact with people and learn new songs from requests gives us a nice challenge to break up the monotony of regular bar gigs. We have been hearing that we are helping people in these times by putting on these shows and that makes me so happy.
By the way, if you cannot afford tips I would like to let you know another way you can help me. Stream my music. A LOT. Share it with your friends. It takes a lot of streams to add up to $1 but if enough people start listening to me on a regular basis on platforms such as Spotify and apple music it will help tremendously.
Now for some Live shows!
I wanted to tell you I will be doing 2 Live stream shows today:
The first one is at 6pm called the Social Distance Festival. There is a very cool venue here in South Florida called Propaganda. They support local original music and just like many other venues are in trouble of closing permanently. They have a bunch of musicians playing to raise money so they can reopen in the future. I will be playing a 30 min all original set 6pm-6:30pm. Here is the link to the Facebook page where the live stream will be showing: https://www.facebook.com/SocialDistanceFest/ I highly recommend you follow the page for updates on the live stream.
For more info on how you can help Propaganda, they have a YouPage set up: https://www.youhelp.com/help-keep-propaganda-alive?fbclid=IwAR2rBYlwDMXQrnZEvEIZ6-f1SQh0RxR3_d-MksT5_bGcqFG5KSUQ8zy9VhU
My second show is with Arthur. We have been having a blast finally utilizing both grand pianos in our house. Tune in tonight at 8pm on my Facebook Fan Page:https://www.facebook.com/juliehaven
Again I encourage you to follow and sign up for updates to know when I am live. I have been live streaming almost every day. Yesterday we didn’t play but we did a little cooking show in our kitchen. You never know what you’re gonna get
I have also started updating my schedule to show the live stream shows when I know they are going to happen. Sometimes they are on the fly though.
Anyway, please stay safe, stay home and continue to smile.
We will get through this together.
Love
Jules :)