Weather the storm

To “weather the storm” means to survive a difficult time without suffering too much damage.

Today's story: Live music venues
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Weather the storm

Today’s expression is “to weather the storm.” This means to survive a difficult time without suffering too much damage. And it often means just to survive. We use this when a person or a company is in danger. In times of danger, you focus only on surviving. All your effort goes into surviving until the danger passes. You know you’ll be hurt by the experience; you just hope that you’re not hurt too badly by it.

Live music has been put almost completely on hold in most parts of the world. The owners of concert venues are not making any money now. Many are at risk of closing. Therefore, we say that the owners of live music venues are trying to weather the storm. They are trying to survive this difficult time.

What are they doing to survive? Some may be negotiating with their landlords or their banks to get a break on their rent or their loan payments. Some may be trying to adapt and sell a little bit of food. Maybe they are hosting online concerts and asking for donations. Many are lobbying the government for help and applying for grants and loans. They probably cut most their staff a long time ago, so in many cases it’s just the owner and one or two other people.

These are not the activities of a thriving, growing business—or even a healthy business. These are the activities of a business fighting for its survival. They are just trying to survive until the end of the pandemic, until they can start selling tickets, selling drinks, hosting concerts again. And that is the essence of “weather the storm.” You hope you can survive until the storm passes because you can’t be in this situation forever.

In today’s lesson, I said that a big company that operates music venues is better able to weather the storm than a small independent venue. Why is a big company able to weather the storm better than a smaller one? A big company might have more cash available. A big company might make money in multiple different ways, so that bigger company wouldn’t be as badly affected if just one part of its business is forced to close. A bigger company might have more leverage to negotiate with suppliers and landlords; a bigger company might have the ability to invest and capitalize on new trends, and so on. And indeed you are seeing this throughout the economy: big companies with the means to adapt and weather the storm are doing well; small companies without the safety net are not doing as well.

Many individuals are just trying to weather the storm, too. If you lose your job, you probably need to reduce your spending, rely on your savings, maybe rely on help from friends and family, and start looking for a new job. In a situation like that, you are just trying to weather the storm. You need to get through this until you get a new job again.

It often refers to an economic situation, but not always. Let’s imagine you are caring for a sick relative. It takes a lot of your time and emotional energy. You want to do it for that relative, but it also comes at a personal cost to you. During that time, you’re not able to concentrate on yourself, on your own family, your own relationships, your happiness, your future, your job—you’re just trying to weather the storm, to do the minimum to hold on until the crisis passes. It doesn’t mean you quit your job or leave your family, but it means you are not dedicating the time and energy you need to other parts of your life while you deal with the emergency, in this case caring for a sick relative. Hopefully, the relative recovers and you can then rebalance things. But until then, you’re just trying to weather the storm.

You can imagine the other types of situations that might require you to just weather the storm—just survive a difficult time. You or your business might be subject to a lawsuit. You have to defend yourself from the lawsuit, and all your energy (and some money) goes into hiring a lawyer to defend yourself.

If you own a business and lose an important customer, you will have to weather the storm until you can replace that customer.

If you’re working in the emergency room at a hospital and all of a sudden the ER gets very busy, the ER staff needs to weather the storm. They know they’re not going to be able to dedicate all the time they want with each new patient, but they need to just weather the storm: deal with the most urgent cases first and work through the caseload until things calm down. Try to get through the tough time without too much damage.

Quote of the Week

Today’s quote of the week is related to our main topic. It’s by the owner of an independent music venue in Michigan. He’s worried that big companies like LiveNation or others will look to buy up all the struggling independent venues for a low price, taking advantage of the bad economic times. Before I read you the quote, I want to give you the definition of one word. “Homogenization” means, everything becomes the same. So here’s the quote: “You can’t serve artists and fans if money is the main driver. It doesn’t work. I would hate to see the homogenization of live music.” And that quote is by Scott Hammontree, the owner of a live music venue in Michigan.

What he’s saying is that he doesn’t want big companies to buy up all the small independent music venues. He’s worried that if that happens, the big companies will just operate the venues with the sole objective of making money, rather than on serving the local community. Venues like this are often a way local bands can be discovered, can get exposure they need to become popular. So the venues perform a service by identifying the local bands that have talent and that fans would want to see. If those concert halls are instead just owned by large companies, this owner thinks those concert halls would be like factories pumping out homogenous, boring music.

So once more, here’s what he said: “You can’t serve artists and fans if money is the main driver. It doesn’t work. I would hate to see the homogenization of live music.”

See you next time!

That’s it for number 300! We do two lessons a week, so each time we hit another hundred, it means we’re just about another year into this project. So we’re heading into our fourth year here at Plain English, can you believe that? We started back in December 2017. We had no idea how long we’d be doing this, but it has been so much fun, and we’re looking forward to our next three hundred lessons.

JR mentioned at the beginning that he’ll be publishing an extra audio for you all. He’ll count down his five favorite lessons of all time, and he’ll include an extra message from some Plain English listeners as well. You can find that in your podcast feed in Spotify or on your podcast app.

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Story: Live music venues