SEETHER Frontman On Inability To Tour Amid Coronavirus Pandemic: 'None Of Us Know How To Navigate These Stormy Waters'

SEETHER frontman Shaun Morgan spoke to Ernie Ball's "Striking A Chord" podcast about how he is dealing with the coronavirus crisis. He said (hear audio below). "It's forced us to look at things very differently, and it's shining a very big spotlight on a bunch of interesting things. The first thing, obviously, that we're looking at is we're looking at how can we still play music for fans and how can we still earn a living. So we're looking towards streaming platforms and how we can set up shows. We're setting up production here in Nashville which we can use with full-on video walls and lights and the whole deal — so kind of like it would be at a live show. So it's a new thing to look at.

"You see bands that are doing geolocating shows, where it's kind of locked to a certain area or a certain grid, and then they'll do a show in that town, so to speak," he continued. "So a virtual show in, let's say, Cincinnati, Ohio, and then the next night, you do a virtual show in Dayton, Ohio. I'm in Nashville, [so] I can't watch the Cincinnati show. That's one approach that some guys have taken. And then what we are looking at doing is we're gonna do a show right around the time, within a week or two of [the new SEETHER] album dropping, and just do an hour-and-a-half-long set and charge people, I think, 10 bucks to buy a ticket, or whatever it is, and we're gonna open it up to the world and kind of make it so there's no limit. Some other guys have also limited the shows to, say, a thousand people. So there's all these different approaches to it.

"None of us know how to navigate these stormy waters," Shaun admitted. "I think it's quite an interesting time. And then the other part is, you kind of feel a bit like a scumbag… I think I have too much empathy sometimes, but you don't really wanna take money from people in a time when they may be slightly short on money. But by the same token, we're not just half-assing the show. And we will be doing concerts on a regular basis. In fact, all the band guys are coming up to Nashville from their various geographic locations and we're gonna do a whole bunch of content in a very short amount of time. We're looking at stuff like maybe doing albums from front to back and then having that be a show. And then we're gonna maybe be looking at doing possibly a second 'One Cold Night'-type show where it's all acoustic, and it's a completely different set and a completely different vibe.

"What the spotlight has shone for me the brightest is most of my eggs are in one basket at this point, man, and most of my income, if not in fact all of it at this point, is directly from this band and this music," he added. "So if you take away the largest driver of revenue for us, which is live shows and merch sales, that really has an impact on, 'Oh, wow.' How am I prepared? What are my safety plans? Are my nets all in place? If this continues for another year, is everything gonna be good?

"You take it for granted that the cycle's just gonna repeat itself. And that for me has shown me that I haven't really… I've done some things to diversify the portfolio, so to speak, but for the most part, I haven't been very clever in creating new business opportunities up until this pandemic started. So now I've got my irons in a bunch of different little fires and I'm stoking it to see which ones will grow into flames. But that was out of sheer necessity for my own mental well-being, because I stress about everything. And when you add something this big onto the top of it for me, yeah, it's been crazy."

SEETHER will celebrate the release of its eighth studio album, "Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum" — its first in three years — with a global livestream event to be held Sunday, August 30 at 3 p.m. ET in an exclusive partnership with Veeps and Elite Multimedia.

Ticket packages are on sale now at Seether.Veeps.com.

"Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum" was produced by Morgan and engineered and mixed by Matt Hyde (DEFTONES, AFI) in Nashville from December 2019 through January 2020.