When Andrew Broder started booking his Back On Our Bulls*** residency last summer, COVID-19 vaccines had been available to Minnesotans for months. Broder had held January residencies at the Turf Club from 2017 to 2020, and he intended to resurrect the series after a pandemic-forced year off. But in the past several weeks, Minnesota’s daily case counts have climbed into the thousands, and Broder and the Turf have already canceled two of the three 2022 shows. (Update 1/12: All of the Andrew Broder residency shows are canceled.)

Such is the current live event predicament. While past years’ residencies have felt like an oasis in the cold, dark winter months, each upcoming show feels tentative. Lately, First Avenue has canceled or postponed several concerts — including an entire Blossom residency — on a case-by-case basis. Nonetheless, Broder and many other musicians are maintaining “the spirit of trying.”

A few Twin Cities venues hold residencies all year long. But most save them until winter, when touring slows down, musicians lose patio and festival gigs, and Minnesotans start fighting the winter blues. “[Residencies give] everybody a little bit of purpose when things can feel a little unpurposeful,” Broder says. “Not everybody loves the holiday stretch. So to have something to look forward to coming out of that is nice … Even rolling the dice on the weather, that's fun in a perverse way, too.”

Ellen Stanley, who performs as Mother Banjo, is set to host a residency at the 331 Club every Monday in January. Stanley has seldom performed since giving birth to her first kid in 2019, and she misses musician pals and audience sing-alongs. She has booked Emily Haavik, Ted Hajnasiewicz, Taylor James Donskey, and her husband Ben Cook-Feltz as special guests — and potential bandmates, depending on others’ COVID exposures and quarantines.

“We all know that anything can change at any time, but we're going with the flow,” Stanley says. She says she has seen herself and others get more flexible throughout the pandemic. “We all need something to look forward to, and musicians need the work,” she says. “So all you can do is make the plans, and if we have to postpone or shut them down, then we will.”

“I don't feel like we're in the same spot that we were in last year,” Stanley continues. “I mean, it's discouraging — this looming fear of this pandemic. But we have some tools. We know more. And we're better about taking care of each other in some ways.”

One of Stanley’s back-up plans is a livestream. “For folks who can't get out, or who live further afield, or if there's a snowstorm one night, I do plan on live streaming some of these on the Mother Banjo Facebook page,” she says. (Update: Stanley now plans to livestream all of her 331 residency shows.)

Broder, on the other hand, seems more beleaguered. He started his residency tradition as a response to the 2016 presidential election. For years, each show benefitted a different organization, from Planned Parenthood to the ACLU. But this time around, he didn’t feel right asking musicians and venues to donate their time or space. He and First Avenue had considered capping off the series with a Mainroom show, but that, too, fell by the wayside as he scaled ambition down.

“Those previous residencies were so layered with stuff and information and thinking and talking and meaning and helping — it was a very earnest effort,” Broder says. “I think people are pretty overloaded right now, and have been so pounded with s***, that I was like, ‘Let's just do some good old shows here. Let's not overthink it.’”

Broder’s remaining show, on Jan. 19, features rising artists DNM, Ness Nite, and JIJA. His past line-ups have included Big Red Machine, Low, and Dua Saleh. “Booking these shows is a combo of relying on people that I have known for 20 years and reaching out to people who I've never met,” Broder says. “When I'm curating a show, I'm DJing or making a mix for people, in a sense. Like, ‘Check this shit out, check this shit out,’ and then [putting] it all together in a way that can make sense.”

Broder says he hasn’t attended many shows “post-COVID life change,” but he has enjoyed the ones he has seen. “There's always going to be some awkward thing about it,” he says. “You're gonna see somebody who it's really weird that you haven't seen them for two years, and you don’t know what the f*** to say. Or you're gonna forget your mask. [But] it’s a good reminder that music is still cool. People still want to hear it loud in a room together. That is good to know.”

So even if Mother Banjo has to switch things up — even if two out of Broder’s three shows are already canceled — it makes sense to start somewhere. With people and rooms and music.

“I'm really excited to get out there again, if the fates allow,” Stanley says.

January residencies

• Charlie Parr on Sundays at the Turf Club

• Mother Banjo on Mondays at the 331 Club

• The Cactus Blossoms on Mondays at the Turf Club

• Kinda Fonda Wanda on Tuesdays at White Squirrel

• Butter Boys on Wednesdays at Mortimer’s

• Yeti Steady on Fridays (1/7, 1/14, and 1/21 only) at Keg & Case

February residencies

• taylor james donskey on Tuesdays at the 331 Club

• Erik Koskinen on Thursdays at Icehouse (Feb. 10-Mar. 3)

March residencies

• Kiss the Tiger’s Stone Baby on Wednesdays at Icehouse

• TBA

Canceled or postponed

• Gully Boys week 4 (postponed)

• Andrew Broder at the Turf Club (canceled)

• Blossom at the Turf Club (canceled)

• Yellow Ostrich at Mortimer’s (canceled)

This feature is part of The Current’s 89 Days of Winter series, helping you enjoy the best of the season with weekly guides to events, entertainment, and recreation in the Twin Cities.