Andrew Sherman
The life of a local musician is already difficult, and finding a way to make it through this pandemic is only making it harder.
Spencer Douglas Wharton is a guitar player for The Infamists and leads his own band, The Static Creatures, in addition to working on solo projects. However, Wharton has always relied on his IT job to support his creative endeavors. In March that came to an end.
“I lost my job a week before shelter-in-place happened in Dallas County where I was working,” Wharton says, sitting on a bench outside the Denton courthouse on the square. “Called me in the middle of the day while I was working from home and said, you’re basically fired. There’s nothing we can do. We’re downsizing because this is going to kill our company. And then it did.”
After spending four months on unemployment, Wharton thankfully landed a new and better job, but the struggle to keep the creative juices flowing remains in the wake of canceled shows.
“I had a CD release show on April 4 that got canceled, which we had been planning six months,” Wharton says. “We were going to do like a two-hour show, too, with a bunch of the back catalog of my songs and, like, new shit. Both bands, The Static Creatures and The Infamists, had our schedules booked till August. We had to cancel everything — like 40 shows.”
In spite of all the show cancellations and unsupported album releases, Wharton found a way to make the most out of his time at home, adjusting to the demands of these unprecedented times.
“When I hit my creative moments, they tended to last longer because I had more time to, like, really think,” Wharton says. “But that also comes with the valleys and the droughts. Some of the droughts were longer than I’ve ever gone in between writing anything.”
For Wharton, the only way out of those droughts was going straight through them.
“You just commit to writing,” he says. “I wrote, like, two albums worth of material over this. I’m having to learn how to use Google Drive for, like, ideas with the groups. The Infamists just started practicing again, doing, like, once a month. We’re social distancing in the room. Everybody has tons of ideas, and the energy is flowing, and there’s just nowhere to put it.”
The Infamists had been planning to record their new album in late-September, but not being able to rehearse together for so long means that the material is not as tight as it could be.
“You don’t want to go and waste anybody’s time — yours or your engineer’s,” Wharton says. “Also, not playing shows, you don’t have money in your band account. If you’re going to record, it’s going to be out of pocket.”
To record and promote a single song can cost a band about $600, and without a live show to support an album and take in additional revenue from merchandise sales, there is very little money to spend on recording new material.
Thankfully, music fans are still out there supporting local musicians the best way they can.
“The Infamists released The Torment of Heroes a few weeks ago, and that got a really decent response,” Wharton says. “We actually, like, made a lot of money on Bandcamp!”
Wharton and The Static Creatures will be releasing a new single on Sept. 4, but he is looking forward to the day when he can play live music in front of live fans again.
“It’s been surreal,” he says. “The last time I went this long without playing a live show was before I even started playing music for fans.”
Until that day when we can return to our favorite venues and see our favorite bands live, the only way to keep local music alive is by buying music and merchandise online.
“You’ve constantly just got to fight it,” Wharton says, “and find new ways to fight it living as a musician in the pandemic.”
