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For the last few years in Columbia, the Summer Solstice has been abuzz with creative activity. Led by the local culture-boosting nonprofit One Columbia, the city has embraced the international celebration known as Make Music Day, with performances and activities that range from busking to drum circles to full-on concerts scattered in various typical and atypical spots throughout town.
This year, with the COVID-19 pandemic still gripping the area, there won’t be so much in-person activity on June 21. But while One Columbia is in the process of transitioning away from leading the charge for Make Music Columbia, it will promote an array of largely virtual efforts, both local — the online concerts Rice Music House is organizing, the Koger Center’s push for people to participate in environmentally conscious Bash the Trash instrument-building workshops — and national — trumpeting the programming offered by the national Make Music Day organization and by participants in other cities.
We can’t all be together, One Columbia Executive Director Lee Snelgrove reasons, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make the day musical.
“There’s still the possibility, even if we all have to be very separated on the day of Make Music Day, that people can still participate in the creation or celebration of music,” he says.
But not everybody is taking the same approach. Indeed, one regular participant is having a go at a live concert. Kipp Shives, who has organized outdoor festivities for Make Music Day in the past, has arranged a show that will take place on the patio outside his new Granby Grill restaurant, located in Olympia’s The Mills apartment complex next to The Village Idiot.
The public is invited to attend, with five bands slated to play between 5 and 10 p.m., running the gamut from eviscerating and adventurous metallic hardcore (the headlining Abacus) to winningly shambolic slacker rock (Ghetto Blaster) to a guitar-strumming barroom troubadour (Brent Lundy).
“[With] the experience we’ve had with inside dining and whatnot, we don’t expect a huge crowd,” Shives explains. “We’re just trying to get something going.”
“It’s definitely something we’re going to want to do more of in the future,” he adds, pointing to the restaurant’s weekly Sunday DJ nights (largely a live-streaming play during COVID-19) and enthusing that he’d like to host more rock concerts and even free jazz once it becomes more feasible to hold regular events.
“I just thought it was a good opportunity. It’s good weather, supposedly, and if it works out well once, who knows? Once the pandemic is over, you’re going to see a lot more stuff like this down here,” he says.
Doing the concert safely is a priority, Shives emphasizes. On June 20, the day before the event, South Carolina reached a new daily high for coronavirus infection, with the state Department of Health and Environmental Control reporting 1,157 new cases.
“If the weather was going to be bad Sunday, we would have canceled, just because we can’t have but 20 something people inside, and we’ve never had more than about eight or 10 people inside at the same time,” he says. “We’re not trying to do anything that would be perceived as dangerous to anybody. But I think outside, it’s a fun venue, plus we have a huge park across the street so if there is a crowd then people could spread out and put blankets down and whatnot.”
As to whether One Columbia’s official Make Music pages would promote an in-person event, Snelgrove says it would go against the event’s ethos to exclude them, though he encourages organizers and attendees to be responsible.
“We would never discourage groups from doing that. That’s sort of the design of Make Music Day anyway, is that any business could participate if they wanted to,” the executive director offers. “We don’t want anybody to put anybody in an unsafe position, so while we wouldn’t necessarily discourage them from participating in Make Music Day, we hope that they’ll do it safely, that if they’re having actual musicians that the musicians are safe and that the people that can participate and appreciate the music are safe as well.
“Obviously, restaurants are open, so there’s no reason that they cannot do that. And I would hope that they’re following some safety protocols anyway.”
Columbia's Make Music Day organization will be promoting events and programming via Facebook. More information on Granby Grill's concert can be found on its Facebook event page.
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