Eric Leadbetter and Friends will perform at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Silver Moon Brewing.

Anyone who follows music in this town knows that when the going gets tough, the artists get going. Musicians and music industry workers have had a tougher time than most during this pandemic. As independent contractors whose work is based on gathering large groups of people to listen to live music, these folks saw their livelihoods disappear in an instant in mid-March. And without a set employer, many of these folks have been unable to secure unemployment assistance.

But even in these lean (and frightening) times, the music scene is helping its own, and many more in the process. These efforts include the Worthy Roots Relief Fund and live streaming concert series to help musicians and industry workers, details of which you can find in last week’s column.

The St. Charles Meal Mission (#stcharlesmealmission) started by Eric Leadbetter popped up early in Central Oregon’s lockdown. The Bend blues rock guitarist and vocalist, formerly of Jive Coulis and current leader of his eponymous trio, started fundraising for the mission with his Worthy Roots Relief Fund streaming show April 15 and recently wrapped up with his May 11 live stream show.

Feeding the front line

Leadbetter got the idea for the mission after he and his wife, Briana, went to the hospital April 1 for the birth of their son. The family found itself stuck in quarantine for about four or five days due to the novel coronavirus.

“I couldn’t leave the hospital, she couldn’t leave, nobody could come in, so we were stuck there,” Eric Leadbetter said. “But the hospital staff, the nurses, the room service, the cooks — everybody was just so cool to us. We asked the nurses, ‘What’s a good way to give back as like a thank you?’”

The answer from every hospital staffer the couple asked was the same: food. Leadbetter posted something about this online and ended up contacting Lori Walls at The Blue Rooster food cart in Bend, which was planning a meal donation to the hospital anyway.

“I was like, ‘Well, instead of just donating some, what if I try and raise some money from some of my live stream shows to pay for a meal that will feed the entire staff on duty that day?’” Leadbetter said. “For the full 24 hours. So that first meal I paired up with Bleu Rooster and raised some money from a live stream.”

Each week Leadbetter would team with a local restaurant or food cart to feed one of the hospital’s five units on their busiest day — usually a Tuesday or Wednesday. During the course of the mission he ended up serving seven meals to roughly 250 hospital workers, he said. Food carts such as Southern Accent, Big Ski’s Pierogi’s, SOPA and more were involved, and musicians including Bobby Lindstrom, Pete Kartsounes and Jennifer Lande Galewski donated.

Leadbetter didn’t rule out restarting the mission in the future.

“You never know. If someone’s like, ‘Hey, I want to donate 500 bucks’ — then if that happens, then I’ll do another one,” he said.

Leadbetter worked on the mission with St. Charles physical therapist Rebecca Sahadi, who currently serves as a community partnership representative for the hospital’s Caregiver Support Team.

“Eric has been a true blessing to St. Charles,” Sahadi said via email. “… He delivered the meals personally and was willing to serve multiple departments on both day and night shift. In a world with so much uncertainty during this time, he brought comfort to many in the form of a hot meal. His donation was twofold; he also focused on supporting many of Bend’s local businesses during this economic downturn to ensure that they were provided support, as well.”

Get some Honey

Bend roots/country duo Honey Don’t — guitarist/vocalist Bill Powers and bassist/vocalist Shelley Gray — became some of the strongest supporters of the meal mission. The couple started hosting “Honey Brunches” — live streaming concerts at 11 a.m. every Saturday — in mid-March, and was donating roughly $20 per week from tips to the meal mission.

Powers also donated tips from his solo shows. They ended up sending close to $150 in total to Leadbetter for the meal mission, Powers estimated.

“We’ve switched it to the (Worthy Roots Relief Fund),” he said. “… We wanted to spread it around a little bit and do … a little more to support the musicians.”

Like Leadbetter, Honey Don’t gives away items donated by sponsors to people who share the duo’s live stream on social media. The giveaways have included four-packs from Bend Cider Company, coffee and gift cards from Strictly Organic, a case of beer and more gift cards from Worthy Brewing and more.

The series has allowed Honey Don’t to dive deep into its back catalog of original and cover songs. The duo challenges itself to not repeat any songs from week to week.

“We might have repeated a couple of tunes here and there just because people had requested them, and nobody’s really keeping track of what we’re doing week-to-week, I’m sure,” Powers said. “But for ourselves, we were just trying to have it make us go through our catalog. … We’re pulling in songs that we learned for weddings, songs that we don’t generally play but that we have played for benefits or for tributes or whatever.”

The situation may not be ideal for musicians used to playing for people in person, but it has had some benefits for Honey Don’t.

“I think the virus situation is pretty much the only reason we’ve (found) ourselves able to do something that many weeks in a row,” Powers said. “It’s the most consistent that we’ve ever played, really.”

The 10th Honey Brunch at 11 a.m. this Saturday will close out the series in style. (Find the stream on the band’s Facebook page.) The duo plans to reunite with Benji Nagel and Don Hawkins, AKA the full-band version of Honey Don’t, for an outdoor stream from Powers and Gray’s Bend backyard. They may even invite some close friends to make up a live audience.

“We just want to take a break from it after nine to 10 weeks of doing it,” Powers said. “… If we decided to do another series, I feel like I would probably do a similar thing (and) go back to the sponsors or see about others and say we’re gonna do this thing for a set amount of time.”