The Leadbetter Band plays during the 2018 Bend Roots Revival. The band will play at 5:45 p.m. Sunday during the 2022 festival.

As musicians and music teachers, Stephanie Slade and Patrick Pearsall saw their jobs shut down along with the rest of Central Oregon last year.

The couple, this week’s featured artists in the Central Oregon Creative Artists Relief Effort, found ways to keep afloat. Slade received unemployment benefits from a previous job and created and sold art and jewelry ; she also learned to play piano. She taught a few voice lessons virtually early in the pandemic but found it to be a challenge.

“It’s hard when you can’t play and accompany your student at the same time and hear them sing because of the delay and all that stuff,” she said.

Pearsall, who plays bass with numerous groups including The Mostest, Fair Trade Boogie Band and The Leadbetter Band, lost most of his gigs. He continued to teach music in a limited capacity in Bend schools.

“I certainly played at best a quarter of the shows I play in a normal year,” Pearsall said. “But it’s hard to tell because for so much of the year, we didn’t do anything. We were going to; we all were going to do concerts. We had plans and nothing happened. We didn’t make money, but we didn’t spend money either.”

The couple make up one-half of Bend rock band Slade and the Hatchet, which lay mostly dormant last year except for an appearance with the virtual edition of the Bend Roots Revival in late October.

But with the vaccine out and Deschutes County reopening, music is slowly returning. Slade and Pearsall played a set with Eric Leadbetter for the Worthy Star Bar Sessions early in the year, and Pearsall has played recent shows with Leadbetter and The Mostest. They’re both looking forward to trying again with a slate of shows later this year.

“This summer so far seems to be shaping up to be a modified version of last summer,” Pearsall said. “… I’m in The Leadbetter Band, and we just did a streaming show for the Midtown (Ballroom). And the guys who run that place are just now starting, ‘OK, how could we maybe do a show in here? And who could we book? And if we can only have 100 people, how much do we have to charge for it to make sense?’ So those conversations are starting to happen. But who knows?”

Slade, who lost about 90% of her income last year, said CO CAREs can provide a needed boost.

“I think it just brings to light that this whole area is very artist- and music- and everything-driven,” she said. “And without everyone supporting that, it’s going to go away. So we need to remember that these people that are full-time musicians and artists, they don’t have income coming in, and they’re trying to figure it out. We just can’t forget the arts in this town.”