Neumos in Seattle, in a Pandemic: ‘Spring Is Going to Be Down 25-35%’

As co-owner of Seattle’s popular independent venue Neumos in Capitol Hill, Steven Severin has been a staple in the Seattle music industry for more than 20 years. Roughly 10 years ago, he helped create the Seattle Nightlife and Music Association to bring together the area’s live event insiders, and for the past 16 years has helped run Neumos with its sister club Barboza and the accompanying Runaway bar.

As part of Billboard‘s efforts to best cover the coronavirus pandemic and its impacts on the music industry, we have been speaking with Severin regularly to chronicle his experience throughout the crisis. (Read the last installment here and see the full series here.)

Washington state and King County, where you’re located, now have varying mandates on wearing masks indoors. How are you feeling about that for your venues and restaurants?

I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to think anymore. By having a mandate, we didn’t have to think. “You are going to be masked.” “You are going to be vaccinated.” Now everybody is different. All the venues in [Washington Nightlife Music Association] want to do different things. It is complicated and I don’t really have the bandwidth to figure it out.

I know the government agencies don’t always agree, but they shouldn’t just leave us out to dry. People are going to freak out either way. If I say, “You don’t have to wear masks anymore,” people are going to freak out. If I say, “You still have to wear masks,” people are going to freak out. It is a no-win situation. I really want nothing to do with it, but I don’t have that choice.

Do you feel like it is time to take masks off in venues?

I don’t know. That’s the thing. I want health professionals telling me whether it is or is not safe to no longer wear masks inside. I want to know what the science is. If the science says that we don’t need masks anymore, fantastic! If the science says that we need them, we’re still going to wear them. But I need the experts to tell me that.

Have you seen any kind of consensus from venue owners on how to proceed?

Anyone can talk themselves in or out of COVID. You can rationalize either side now. If you want to no longer be wearing a mask, you can rationalize it. It is so up in the air right now. I hope that when masks come off, the numbers don’t spike back up. I am certainly going to lag behind everybody else, let everyone else be the guinea pigs. It will be so nice for people to go back out and live a normal life like we used to. Not that it will ever be normal again. This [pandemic] changed things forever. Even the way people think about work, about offices. You would have never gotten this much freedom to work from home without this.

Does the dramatic drop in cases after the omicron variant signal a positive turn for live music?

If the numbers are still falling like they have been in a lot of the country, I think we’re going to start seeing things revert back. People are so tired of it. If they can justify it, they’re going to do it. The last two years have devastated our businesses, f–cking destroyed them. It is going to take years to bounce back.

How is this year looking so far on the books?

People had their worst month of the entire pandemic in January this year. Omicron went through and devastated venues across the country. Neumos was closed 476 days. It is hard to do worse than zero income, except when you have a whole staff you’ve got to pay. Not only were you not making money, but you had to pay more expenses. I don’t know when it gets easier. I keep looking at my calendar and being like, “Alright. The spring is going to be down 25-35%. Ok. Cool. We can get through that.” And then I see July and the summer isn’t looking great. Then I look at the fall and I’m like, “Sh–. We should have many more shows in the fall confirmed by now.” This is going to last the whole damn year.