Tony SmileySubmitted photo

1. Facebook event
2. Ticket link

Like most independent musicians, Tony Smiley was forced to find a new way to play when COVID-19 hit. The Vancouver, Washington, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and self-proclaimed “loop ninja” started performing weekly streaming shows for his fans in March and has kept it up ever since. While many musicians in Central Oregon eased off of streaming as smaller outdoor venues and bars reopened, Smiley kept up a regular schedule of Tuesday- and Friday-night streams out of necessity.

“I have been offered a couple of (live performances),” Smiley said. “There’s just certain ways of going about it that — I don’t want to do anything indoors; I want to stay safe. I have a house full of people, and so I want to keep everybody around me safe. My parents are older; they’re not living with me, but I do want to be able to continue to see them. So I’ve been offered a few things, and I haven’t accepted anything.”

That is, until Friday, when Smiley will perform at the Going Left Drive In Fest outside Thump Coffee on York Drive. The show, which will also feature Austin, Texas, neo-soul keyboardist Motenko, will be hosted by Going Left Music, which also helped put on the August Black Lives Matter Drive In Fest that ended up moving to Silver Moon Brewing.

Last Friday, Going Left Music hosted a trial run for this weekend’s show also at Thump Coffee, featuring local artists Jeshua Marshall (one of three Going Left partners), Redwood Son and Matt Puccio Jr. While that show was free, this Friday’s performance will cost $40 per car, with a maximum of six people per car.

Cars will be limited to 25, but walk-ups will be welcome, according to Caleb Turner, Going Left co-founder and show organizer. Thump will serve pizzas, coffee and beer to be consumed on-premises only, Turner said.

“The event last week went really well — big thanks to Thump Coffee for allowing us and facilitating the usage of the space,” Turner said from his home on San Juan Island, Washington (he drives down for the Bend events). “There’s some room for improvement and definitely some logistical things that we learned, but I think overall it was a smashing success.”

Turner co-founded Going Left Music in March with blogger Garrett Bethmann, who is based out of Denver. Marshall got involved in July through his work booking acts for The Brown Owl before the pandemic shut everything down. The collective runs a national music blog at goingleftmusic.com, and promotes shows for and manages independent acts.

“I’ve been managing bands since I was about 16 years old — I’m 23 now,” Turner said. “… The way that Going Left came about was, with managing bands, just seeing holes in the music industry for under 500-capacity venues, the bands that occupy that space. And so having grown up in Charlottesville, Virginia, where Live Nation, Coran Capshaw — that was all built off of Dave Matthews Band — you can see that model runs the major side of the industry, and I’ve toured with bands that size. But I always recognized that managing bands that are coming up, it’s really hard to find good, local support, and it’s really hard to link the dots between these major markets that you need to get to and find those $200 gigs and $300 gigs.”

Eventually, Turner hopes to form a 501 c3 nonprofit around the group, or partner with another nonprofit, to take tax-deductible donations from community-based, independent businesses to develop 3,000 to 5,000 capacity music festivals around the country. From those, he hopes to take the profits from ticket sales and use them to support creative opportunities for kids around the country.

“If you want to play professional football in America, there’s an avenue for you to try to be a professional football player,” he said. “But if you want to be a professional musician, you have to figure it out on your own, and I think that’s a big intimidation factor.”

The group hosted three South by Southwest parties at the beginning of the year before COVID shut everything down. With most venues still shut down in Turner’s and Bethmann’s home bases, it made sense to turn their attention to putting together shows in Bend.

“The environment’s great,” Turner said. “It’s dry, it’s dependable and people really like to be outside.”

It’s also fitting for Smiley to return to live performance in Bend, a city he has regularly performed in for many years.

“Of all the places that I play, the fact that my first fully public show is in Bend is just awesome,” he said.

In addition to live streaming, Smiley has kept busy recording new music and videos, and creating artwork for fliers and album art. He said he’s learned at least 150 new songs during the pandemic.

To keep interest in the live streams going, he has introduced themed nights. For one performance, he played Prince’s “Purple Rain” album in its entirety. He has also recorded “Loop Ninja Grams,” which feature him singing specific requests with dedications, a la video telegrams.

“It’s definitely been challenging,” he said. “Of course I’m an artist, so it’s always kind of up and down in this business. I think being an artist, I’m fortunate enough to have already accepted the uncertainty years ago.”

As for playing for a drive-in audience, Smiley is up to that challenge, too.

“You know, I’ve been looking at a computer screen for the last almost eight months,” he said. “So cars will be a nice change. People can give me — they can honk, they can flash their lights and whatever. I don’t know. I’m sure people will be having their windows down. I’m not exactly sure how it’s gonna look, but it will be nice to be on a stage again.”

Facebook event: https://bit.ly/3jgQIwi

Ticket link: https://bit.ly/34eH49b