Tupelo Music Hall resumes events in novel way

By Michael Witthaus
[email protected]

Though the entire economy was rocked, the Covid-19 pandemic hit the live entertainment industry like a hurricane. It was the first to close and will likely wait the longest for a return. Tupelo Music Hall owner Scott Hayward met the coming storm as he stepped off a plane on March 12 and immediately began to cancel and reschedule shows, wondering what things would look like on the other side of the crisis.
To keep his employees working, Hayward pivoted to food service and making his excess inventory of critical supplies like toilet paper and hand sanitizer available to those who needed it. With social distancing rules in place, indoor concerts at his 600-plus-seat Derry venue were a long way off, but the self-described “entrepreneurial realist” began to think of another way to bring music and comedy to the region. If he couldn’t welcome crowds inside, why not do it outside, in the parking lot?
With cars occupying every other spot and patrons sitting in lawn chairs, The Tupelo Drive-In Experience opened May 16. It was, according to a reporter from the Washington Post who traveled to Derry for the opening, the first live concert event since the pandemic shutdown began in mid-March. The drive-in was also featured prominently in a recent Rolling Stone article.
Singer-guitarist Tim Theriault, a familiar figure on the local nightclub scene and a veteran of tours with Godsmack frontman Sully Erna, played two sets. Every day more shows are announced. The calendar is filling up, even as the near-term future of Tupelo Music Hall’s main room remains uncertain. Hayward talked about the “new” venue and the challenging road ahead, in a recent phone interview.

You’re staying busy?
Yeah, I’ve never been so busy to make so little money, but at least we’re doing something.

Well, good on you for doing enough to keep your employees working and keep live music out there for people to enjoy. How did the first show go?
It went great, it was a home run. … It was a little bit of a Herculean effort between everyone who worked with and for me to get all the systems in place and make it work. But everything went fine, it all came together and we opened [May 16] and said, well, let’s see how it goes. Honestly, we’re gonna change a couple of things, but they’re so minor. People were great; they all stayed in their spots and were enjoying themselves, and it was a fantastic day. You couldn’t ask for better weather.

The sound was a real trick with the delay and FM — your reputation has always been great sound, so you must be your own worst critic. How did you feel listening back?
We couldn’t take our sound system … outside because the boxes are too small. We need a sound system that you don’t hear in Londonderry but everybody in the parking lot can hear it when it’s really windy. That’s where it gets a little crazy. So we worked with Ultrasound. They’re a West Coast company, but they’ve always had an East Coast presence with the guy who does my PA stuff. That was dialed in, they had the plans, and they literally made a system for my parking lot. When we were tuning it up the Thursday before the show we knew it was going to sound good, but it sounded better than we had anticipated.

You had a guy come in and weld some special mounts?
Yeah, the infrastructure we had to do just for the sound system, we built the whole stage over the entrance, we put a back curtain on that had custom graphics, we had to install the correct bracket, everything was cut and welded and then had to be painted and everything for the show. So it was a busy week before the first show, we were putting a lot of things together. I couldn’t be happier with how the sound system came out. Also, we’re streaming things to the Derry radio station, broadcasting through that, and I sat in my son’s car during the show on Saturday, and I had the radio on and rolled down the windows — I wanted to see if there was a disconnect [or] delay with the timing, and there really was none. [For] people that want to stay in their cars, it’s great. It’s a really good broadcast.

What other shows are on the horizon?
We do a lot of tributes that always sell out for us, so we’re going to do them with an entire weekend. So in June, Tusk the Fleetwood Mac band, we’re doing them for two days; Kashmir, which is Led Zeppelin; EagleMania, and we’re currently working on a lot of stuff. After that Washington Post article I’m getting contacted from people all over the country, it’s crazy. … My plan is to do five to six shows a week. We’re not going to do multiple bands in a day, just for safety. But we have performers who will do three in one day, [at] noon, three and six o’clock.

Having comedy is great too.
Yeah, I think that’s going to be cool. You know, I think that we can do almost everything we do inside, outside. We really have to keep bands to a five- or six-piece to meet the distancing guidelines for them, but besides that, I don’t see a lot of limitations. The only limitation we really have is weather.

Yeah, but the stage is covered and people can listen in their cars if it rains.
But there are no sides — it’s an open roof and the stage will get wet. So we need to put some temporary roll-down sides for bad weather. One thing at a time.

The Washington Post story said Tupelo Drive In was the first of its kind in the country. Is that true?
Well, the writer was talking to me about that … and he said there was supposed to be some show on Friday that was canceled by the governor [Travis McCready’s appearance in a Fort Smith, Arkansas, church was moved from May 15 to May 18] and another one that was going to happen at 6 in Missouri. So he said since yours started at noon, I can confirm that you’re the first in the country.

I know some are going to be happening, like Pat Green in the parking lot of the Texas Rangers stadium.
Definitely this outdoor thing is going to catch on. … I mean, I don’t think we’re the first ones to have the idea, but we are the first to implement it.

How would you describe your time leading up to this moment when the pandemic shut everything down, doing other things in lieu of music?
Well, the knee-jerk reaction was it was all about essential business. Since our food and beverage business is a completely separate entity, that allowed us to stay open. So I thought, we need to pay some people here so let’s do whatever we can, and people gave us a lot of donations and it worked out great, you know? It was eight weeks of doing that, a lot of work for a little bit of money, but it paid my kitchen staff. To me that’s time well spent, and while we’re doing that we’re researching all the systems. It took a month just to figure out how to deal with working with the town for the broadcast and that we didn’t have any issues with delay, all these little things that we had to do, we had all these projects that had to come together at the same time. Then we’re doing what every other venue is — rescheduling shows and trying to answer the question, how is this going to go? We don’t really know, obviously, but we’re doing what we can to find out.

Main room shows are still listed on the Tupelo website. Will some of them happen in the Drive-In?
We’re not moving any shows to the drive-in. The shows we have inside are based on contracts that were negotiated months and months ago. Some a year ago. … What we’re able to do [outside] right now is get people who are willing to say, hey, I live three hours away and I can come and play. We’re lucky because we have nationally touring artists who live around here. Johnny A, Gary Hoey, Adam Ezra — they can go all over the United States and get gigs. Those are the easy ones, the people who live close and they want to work and we work with them anyway and it’s fantastic to get them. We’re not going off a show we already booked — it’s a brand new model.

There are indoor shows scheduled at Tupelo from July to November and beyond. What’s your hope for them?
We opened the outdoor venue because I plan on needing to do outdoor shows until fall. We’re moving indoor shows week by week — my goal is to reschedule everything.

The notion that the government can tell everyone to reopen — I heard you say in an interview that just because you’re told it’s OK, that doesn’t mean you will.
Luckily, they’re not going to do that, but if the State of New Hampshire said, hey, you can put 500 people in a room, I’m not doing it. Even if they open venues this summer, we’re not going to be able to, for two reasons. One, if it’s not safe, I’m not going to do it. The other is all the tours are gone — they’ve all been canceled. Down the road, I see possibly — it depends on the second wave — but if things go well this summer I can conceivably see venues [opening], I can see that happening. I don’t see people going to shows and lifting up a mask to drink a beer. I wouldn’t do that, though I’m sure some people will. I personally don’t think that is the future of this. I might be wrong. That’s why we did the outdoor thing. It’s limited on how many people we can put outside, but that’s OK. People weren’t wearing masks in my parking lot, but they were outside and 20 feet from each other with a car between them.

It sounds like there’s a lot of upside even if there’s uncertainty stretching out to the end of the year. Would you call yourself an optimist in terms of what the coming months offer for you and your business?
I would categorize myself as an entrepreneurial realist. Necessity is the mother of invention. People are going to have to think of ways for people to have entertainment that are safe and also meet the state guidelines so you don’t get shut down. It’s kind of that simple. I think a lot more people are going to do the outdoor venue thing. I think if they do, that’s great. I can’t possibly meet all the entertainment needs of New Hampshire. I would like to see other venues do what we’re doing. We’re in the business of providing entertainment for people and people are missing it something horrible. I think as things open up a little bit we’ll be able have small outdoor concerts where there are people and not so many cars. It would be great if this summer we could have concerts in parks where people spaced out blankets 20 feet from each other. Space the blankets out. Spray paint lines in the grass and tell people to plop down in the square. I think that’s where we’ll end up, but who knows? No one has definitive information on this virus and what it’s going to look like in four months.

Well, hopefully someone will open Checkerboard Field.
It would be easy to do. To me, I think that could be something to open up places like Prescott Park, that whole series. The problem is if people have already canceled shows for the summer, what do you do? It’s a hell of a position to be in. Whether you agree if we should be open or closed, you still need access to artists.

Yes, but as you say, we have a rich regional scene. One woman at the show said she didn’t even know Tim Theriault, she just wanted to see a concert.
That was my original thought. Tim’s no slouch, he’s one of the better musicians in this whole area, but that doesn’t make him well-known. What I knew was if I put him on the stage, they’d come because they want to do something and I also know they’d become Tim Theriault fans because he’s so good. As a promoter, you just have to have confidence that the artist is going to be good.

The most promising thing is it will develop the regional music scene because even if tours are canceled, people that are here that want to play, can.
That’s exactly what I think. There are a lot of great musicians out there that are local. Being an artist and getting on stage is as much luck as it is talent. This might open up an opportunity for a lot of those local people to get on smaller stages and it will actually be enjoyable to be out there sitting in the sun and listening to some music.

Tupelo Drive-In Experience – Upcoming Shows
Where: Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry
Tickets: $75 per car at tupelohall.com
Saturday, May 30: Jimmy Lehoux (noon & 3 p.m.)
Sunday, May 31: The Weeklings, Beatles Tribute (noon & 3 p.m.)
Saturday, June 6, and Sunday, June 7: Foreigners Journey (noon & 3 p.m.)
Sunday, June 14: Johnny A. (noon & 3 p.m.)