Bill recently revealed how the effects of not being able to tour are hitting bands. With no gigs to earn money from, the band are currently on unemployment benefits to pay the bills.
“There’s no money coming in,” he explained. “There’s no big royalty cheques that just come in every month. And that’s the truth… because people don’t buy the music. I mean, there’s a little bit of residuals from publishing and stuff, but it’s peanuts. It’s nothing. It’s quarterly payouts of a couple thousand dollars, if we’re lucky. And it’s all taxable money, just like everybody else.
“Just say to yourself, ‘Imagine if you couldn’t work for over a year. I mean, I’m on unemployment. Because I own a few businesses – Mastodon is a business and we have employees – we’re all out of work. And we had the option to apply for unemployment; we pay into it [via tax], might as well use it if it’s there because if I didn’t have it, I wouldn’t have any income at all.”
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