FORT WORTH, Texas — The day after he recovered from COVID-19, veteran Fort Worth club owner Brian Forella fell more than 20 feet and crashed down onto a swath of pavement situated in front of his venue’s outdoor stage. He was building a roof over the outdoor seating area. Forella was wheelchair-bound for weeks. Doctors didn’t know if he’d ever walk again, but he was back on his feet in about three months.

As owner of Lola’s Saloon and the indoor-outdoor Lola’s Trailer Park — two adjoining clubs set in the now-trendy West 7th area of Fort Worth, Forella is the godfather of local music to many. His first club, notorious punk-rock station of the cross, the Wreck Room, which was torn down to make room for a shopping center, opened back in 1998. Currently, he is by far the longest-tenured rock club owner in town — and maybe North Texas.

Night clubs and venues have the highest failure rate of any business in the service sector. Even before the pandemic, around 75% of venues failed within two years. Forella has survived decades in a hardscrabble world where live music meets booze. He said, without question, that the last 12 months of have been the hardest of his life.

“Right now, I can kind of see light at the end of the tunnel,” he said. “But, in July, when it was hot as crap and we were closed back down again for three months, … I was worried about people breaking in here. Other bars were getting broken into because everyone knew nobody was there. That was happening all over the place.”

Forella’s fall might be an apt metaphor for club and venue owners across the state — at least the ones that are still operating. Businesses in the service industry in general were the economic canaries hurtling down COVID’s noxious mine before other sectors followed them in near collapse. Music venues were hit particularly hard, since they are also dependent on musicians and live music acts to draw crowds.

Forella said business is down around 80-85% compared to last year. His story is hardly unique in Texas and around the country. Brendan Anthony, director of the Texas Music Office — a state office that serves as liaison between music businesses and government offices and agencies — said he recently heard venue owners who have lost 90% of their revenue testifying at a state hearing.

“I know many who've lost homes, possessions, and who are relying on the goodwill of other folks right now,” he said. “It's heartbreaking.”

Anthony said it’s impossible to quantify the losses of the industry until the pandemic releases its stranglehold on music venues. Since 2015, his office has commissioned a biennial economic impact study. The most current iteration of the report only includes pre-pandemic numbers, and it tells a story of a thriving industry at its apex before COVID-19 decimated the entire service sector.

“Combined, music business and music education directly account for just under 100,000 permanent jobs, $4.4 billion in annual earnings, and just over $10.8 billion in annual economic activity, up from almost 95,000 jobs and about $8.5 billion in annual activity during 2017,” the report says.

“The ripple effects associated with the direct injection related to music business and music education bring the total impact (including the direct effects) to over 210,000 permanent jobs, $8.8 billion in earnings, and $27.3 billion in annual economic activity,” the report continues. “The state of Texas also realizes approximately $440 million in tax revenue from these impacts.”

Tom Martens, creative director for Visit Forth and the brains behind Hear Fort Worth — a member-based arm of the CVB that promotes local music as a way to increase tourism — said that, in Fort Worth, live music adds $742 million a year, and accounts for 7,311 jobs.

“Our numbers show that every dollar spent on a ticket is $12 that impacts the economy, whether that’s through eating at a restaurant, parking a car, staying at a hotel, or buying an alcoholic drink,” he said. “So these are all things that really affect our economy as a whole, because when concerts aren't here, people aren't coming to town, staying the night, eating dinner, or doing any of these things.”

Over the past year, Martens, Anthony, and others have helped venue owners and musicians file for unemployment, enter the Payroll Protection Program, and find various grants and other revenue streams. Now, everyone whose business is touched by live music anxiously awaits the $16 billion windfall written into the Save Our Stages Act, which was recently signed into law by President Joseph Biden.

The federal relief fund for live-event businesses like music clubs, theaters, museums, and concert promoters will start taking applications on April 8, according to the Small Business Administration.

Applicants are eligible for grants of up to $10 million from the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant fund, which Congress created in the economic relief bill passed in December. Groups that lobbied for the relief money are desperate for it to start flowing, but also nervous about how long it will last. With an estimated 30,000 or more businesses eligible for the grants, those in the industry fear the available funding will quickly be consumed.

Members of the National Independent Venue Association, which formed last year to push for federal aid, have said they are counting on the grant money to help them stave off evictions and bankruptcies.

For venue owners like Forella, who said his landlords have been helpful over the past year, the money is a lifeline — though it is mostly likely already spent on unpaid rent, repairs to his leaky roof and broken POS system, and other costs. He said he feels lucky just be alive and still in business.

“I'm here, so there’s that,” he said. “I'm going to give it a good go to make inside as cool as I can again. Hopefully, we get some money from the shuttered venue thing. I think everybody's hoping that. The landlords want some money, there’s payroll, and I just need to fix up the crap that all got jacked up being closed.”

For music venue owners — and everyone else employed in the service industry — March 18 triggers traumatic memories. Like many, Forella thought he might lose two, maybe four weeks of business until hospitals could flatten the curve. When he realized COVID-19 might be long-simmering, he reached out to other venue owners.

“Everybody was talking and going, ‘What are we doing here? Are we shutting down? Are we going to cancel shows?’ Everybody just kind of did it at once, because I didn't want to be the dude doing shows when everybody else was canceling,” he said.

As venue owners scrambled to adjust to their new reality, officials at every level of government went back and forth on occupancy rates, restrictions, and created various new regulatory hurdles for venue owners.

In late June, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott closed all bars across the state through an executive order after coronavirus cases began spreading in Texas. His order let restaurants stay open, but only at 50% capacity.

Throughout the year, Forella and other venues around the country held various fundraisers, set up GoFundMe accounts and virtual tip-jars to raise money for his furloughed staff. Because Lola’s houses a food truck, it was able to reopen by using a loophole in the state’s shutdown orders. He managed to stay open only a month. The West 7th area became the epicenter for protests after the murder of George Floyd. Protesters and police frequently clashed in the area, and what sparing business he had disappeared.

All over the state, venues and promoters shuttered and joined the millions on unemployment. One of the largest promoters in the country, Austin-based Margin Walker Presents, which booked the popular Fortress Festival in Fort Worth and other festivals and venues around Texas, announced its closure. Storied venues, including Austin's Threadgill's and Barracuda, permanently shut their doors.

Earlier this month, for the first time since last summer, Texans woke up to new possibilities as restaurants and bars were free to operate at 100% capacity. Local communities, businesses, and schools were authorized to drop mask requirements and concerts and events are once again allowed — at least according to state guidelines.

Under Abbott’s order, counties and cities are required to drop local restrictions — although they can, and many have, kept restrictions in place on city or county property.

Hours after the restrictions were lifted, businesses and venues began their return to some degree of pre-COVID-19 operations.

Lola’s Trailer Park, which can comfortably hold 500 people, is taking booking slow with small outdoor events. Forella still encourages masks and social distancing. He’s still weeks away from opening the indoor stage, which has fallen into a modest level of decay after months of sitting empty, but he’s staying optimistic.

“People are clamoring to have shows,” he said. “They hit me up to have shows in here from all over the place. And I’m, like, ‘I'm not doing it yet.’

“Whenever I do start doing shows, I'm probably only going to do a few a month,” he continued. “I'm not going back to full-on five bands this night, four bands. I'm not doing that until this is over or somewhat contained.”

While venues around the state languished, Anthony, Martens, and many others played a pivotal role in the creation of the Save Our Stages legislation.

Through its connections with the mayor’s office and the city’s economic development office, officials from Visit Fort Worth were able to work with Rep. Roger Williams, Sen. Chuck Schumer, and others by playing a connecting role between venue owners and legislators.

“We were able to connect people like Edward Cavanaugh from the Kessler, who really spearheaded the Music Venue Alliance, to people like Kay Granger's office to get them to talk,” he said.

Anthony also went to work lobbying lawmakers and will advise SBA on how to distribute the money.

“We worked closely with Senator (John) Cornyn's office, because he's part of the Texas delegation, to give them background information about the needs of the Texas music industry economy,” he said. “I'm glad to say that helped inform that campaign to get that bill done.

“Now it's up to us to work closely with the SBA, who was given authority as an agency to absorb applications for those funds and distribute them, to make recommendations to them about how best we think that would work,” he continued. “We're one of many groups doing that, of course, but SBA has been given a huge job here and, along the way, we’ll encourage them in various ways to expedite the process with the understanding it is a big job.”

In May, a letter supporting the act, which was signed by Rep. Williams and more than 90 colleagues, was sent to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy

“These venues support the economies of communities across the country, are a crucial component of the music industry’s ecosystem, and serve as incubators and launch pads for the most popular talent in the world,” the letter states. “We can provide a vital lifeline for the industry that will help to sustain the iconic venues that are central to the social, cultural, and economic fabric of so many of our communities.

“This industry is not going to make it without our help,” the letter states.

The fight for a relief package kicked off this spring with the formation of the National Independent Venue Association, which peppered federal lawmakers with more than a million emails. In a survey, 90% of NIVA's members warned that they'd be forced to close if the shutdown lasted more than six months.

"We’re thrilled that Congress has heard the call of shuttered independent venues across the country and provided us a crucial lifeline by including the Save Our Stages Act in the COVID-19 Relief Bill," said Dayna Frank, CEO of Minneapolis' First Avenue Productions and NIVA's board president.

Under the Save Our Stages Act, venues whose business have declined by 90% or more during the pandemic will be eligible to apply for the SBA grants during the first two weeks of an application period.

Those that have lost 70% or more can apply during a second two-week period, and a portion will also be set aside for venues that have suffered less-significant revenue losses.

Save Our Stages' passage comes on the heels of reports showing that corporate chains, megachurches, and other large entities took advantage of the Payroll Protection Program, or PPP, passed in the spring to aid small businesses.

One of the enduring lessons of the pandemic for people like Forella is that music fans have changed, and so too have their interactions with bands and music venues. Competition is fierce, and people don’t come out in droves to support local music the way they once did.

“We're just going to do cooler, out-of-the box events,” he said.  “I'm not going to just book shows because we have to book them. If there's not a decent show, I'm just not going to do it. We had to do it before. COVID has changed my whole business model in my head. What it showed me is what I was doing wrong.”

Nationally, some larger festivals, like Lollapalooza, have decided to resume in 2021. Others like Coachella, will stay dormant for another year.

Anthony said he doesn’t expect the music business to get back to where it was pre-pandemic until summer 2022, though music venues can still survive — especially the ones who receive federal dollars. Music venues in Texas, he said, should be as prepared as possible for the April 8 Save Our Stages application deadline.

“Get your ducks in a row, and check with the SBDCs (Small Business Development Centers) to make sure you got your ducks in a row,” he said. “Use those people who run those regional SBDC offices to make sure that all those boxes are checked. That way, you don't have to go back to square one and get in the back of the line. Have your stuff ready on application day and apply, and then stay on that agency until you get that money distributed.

“These venues have to get this money,” he continued. “They are in dire need of this money. The funds will absolutely be spread thin and exhausted quickly.”

Martens was a little more optimistic. He expects the state to turn a corner toward the end of the summer, as people who have been cooped up all year return to area stages.

“In a broad scope, hospitality is one of the first industries to come back from any kind of recession or shutdown, because when people start getting a little bit of money in their pocket, they want to go eat — they want to celebrate,” he said. “There's a lot of pent-up desire to go out and see a show and to connect with live music.”

In the larger economic picture, Anthony said, music venues, bars, restaurants, and other businesses in the service sector are all interconnected. The health of one affects the others.

“There's a game of patience involved for when you can get back out and support people,” he said. “Please buy stuff from artists you like. So, if you're able to buy something an artist has created, do that. That's certainly helpful to these folks.

“We'll get back for sure,” he continued. “No one wants to get back more than me.”

Forella said he wouldn’t have survived without the help of his staff, friends, patrons, and supporters. All of the charity benefits he’s hosted, touring bands he’s supported, and every other good deed he’s done as a venue owner came back to him over the past year.

“I'm 50 now,” he said. “Without the outpouring of support, and then the money people gave me the give to the employees, you know, it kind of kept me going. It kept my spirits up.

“I’ll tell you, the fall made me change my outlook, too,” he continued. “I asked the doctor, ‘Am I going to walk?’ He said, ‘That’s the goal.’

Just like venues around the state, Forella was an inch away from death. Now, as he plans the immediate future of his venue, just walking feels like a victory.