A travelling musician’s guide to the pandemic

- Elisha Asif

An artist wandering aimlessly through the night, city to city, to

find new inspiration--the latter is a romanticized story of an artist told in films and fiction.

But Jules Renato, 23, has lived similarly to this fiction--and then the pandemic happened.   

 

Renato is a singer, songwriter, and a guitarist, born and raised in the small

village of Oriskany, New York. Though she's from a small village, Renato has lived

and travelled through various states all to follow her passion. 

 

“I started as a singer then got into theatre which brought me into acting and that coupled with dance,” said Renato. She attended Interlochen Art Academy in Michigan and travelled around the state of Michigan with her boyfriend just to find local bars/restaurants that would allow her to play music. In 2017, she moved to St. Louis to attend Webster University’s Conservatory of Theatre Arts. But soon she realized that her real calling was music. 

 

“I was going through some stuff in my personal life that was a little difficult and I found myself picking up my guitar,” said Renato.  

 

Without any second thoughts, Renato packed her bags, grabbed her guitar, and returned to New York to study music theory and philosophy at Stony Brook University (SBU). 

 

Renato finally found some success as a musician on Long Island through busking. Busking is when musicians perform on streets and accept tips. She was busking mostly around the SBU campus until one of her friends suggested she go to the village of Port Jefferson and try her luck there.  

 

“I thought on Long Island it (busking) was lucrative in a way because it was unique,” Renato said. She believes that it’s because of Long Island’s conserative majority that busking isn’t as popular as compared to NYC’s busking scene.  

 

Renato made enough money through busking to make ends meet, but near the end of 2019 she found another stream of income when she heard back from Due Baci, an Italian Restaurant that became the venue for her first gig. 

 

As graduation was waiting around the corner for Renato, she began saving money to move out of Long Island because after graduation, she didn’t see her music having any scope near SBU.

 

Then the pandemic happened.

 

“It was difficult because I did lose my busking and I was able to do that as a full-time job,” said Renato.

 

The gigging and busking part of Renato’s journey ended as quickly as it started because of the COVID-19. All of her gigs, which at the time were only a few lined up, were cancelled. Eventually, Renato found a job at the India Studies Center at SBU during the lockdown. 

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“I actually kind of went off social media during the pandemic,” said Renato. “I was interested in philosophy and the way it would provoke my mind… so I took some time off.” 

 

Renato took off from playing music and focused on her classes. But her main reason to take off from music was to philosophize her troubled family past and her relationship with her boyfriend. A month later, Renato had written up a massive amount of material. She never shared that music publicly because the content was too personal to her. 

 

Another thing she had philosophized was what her next move will be as an artist.

 

Renator started playing music again around late April, but she had lost her interest in performing, mostly because of the pandemic. However, she had been listening to a lot of new music and had found inspiration in an artist she had heard on Spotify, Jordan Lenning.

 

“I just loved his singer/songwriter stuff that he threw out on Spotify so I messaged him, ‘I love your stuff, can I somehow study with you?’” Renato messaged Lenning on a whim and she heard back within a few days. Once again, Renato was packing her bags and heading down south to Nashville, Tennessee where Lenning is based out of.

 

Since August 2020, Renato has been interning with Lenning, learning the ins and outs of the music production industry. She has also been busking and networking with other musicians, in hopes of forming or joining a band. But the thing she’s most excited about is her internship and her newly found interest in composing.

 

“I think a lot of people had negative experiences with the lockdown. I actually really enjoyed it,” said Renato, “I really liked that life slowed down for a little while.” Renato credits the pandemic for keeping her home and giving her time to focus on herself and her music. She believes that if it wasn’t for the pandemic, she wouldn’t be making the strides in her music career that she is now.