But New Zealand country artist Kaylee Bell has continued to rise to the challenges Covid-19 presents her and, collaborating with Canadian singer Lindsay Ell, has made it happen.
The pair worked together online from opposite sides of the world, and their new music video for Living Free, which was recorded at at Omarama’s Clay Cliffs and in Nashville, was premiered by Country Music Television (CMT) this week.
The exposure on CMT was a huge coup for Bell, and for the Waitaki district, the music channel reaching more than 92million households in America.
Bell, who grew up in Waimate, wrote Living Free in Nashville about five years ago, with Grammy-nominated writer and producer Sam Sumser and Michael Lotten. The three writers were strangers at the time, and relatively unknown in the industry.
The song sat around in unpolished demo form until New Zealand went into lockdown, and Bell started looking back through her old work with
producer Simon Oscroft.
"During lockdown, obviously, songwriting was really difficult. So I was going back through a lot of like old demos to see what I actually had in the pile," she said.
"We found [Living Free], and I was like, ‘I really want to do something with this’."
Bell had pictured it as a collaboration, so she reached out to Ell to see if she would like to be part of it.
"I’ve always been a big fan of hers, so I just reached out to her, because it made sense to me, and she was really cool about it and loved the song and wanted to be on it."
From opposite sides of the world - Bell in Auckland and Ell in Nashville - the two women started working together to record the song.
"Then we decided we’d have a crack at making a video from two sides of the world, which was pretty crazy."
Bell loved any opportunity to showcase New Zealand scenery in her music videos, and chose the Clay Cliffs as her backdrop, while Ell shot her scenes against the "epic" Nashville skyline.
The New Zealand scenes were shot over three days in the middle of winter last year, and were directed by Bell’s good friend Kate Wilson, who grew up in Omarama. She was thrilled with how it had all come together.
Pre-Covid, Bell spent a lot of time travelling between New Zealand, Australia and Nashville - and not being able to travel and perform over the past two years had been "really tough".
"I mean, for everybody in the music industry, it’s pretty heartbreaking," she said.
It had been important for her to have projects to focus on, and recording and shooting the music video for Living Free had been a "life-saver".
"Also, I just feel like it’s been such a nice way to still be connected to people, because it’s been ... a very lonely, isolating time as a musician, with our lives really put on hold in lots of ways."
Living Free features on Bell’s album Silver Linings, which she released last year. She has more new music being released next month, including a collaboration with a Swiss artist.
This year, Bell plans to continue to work on new music, and is set to travel to America again in June.
"Then we’re going be playing a lot of shows next summer in Australia and here in New Zealand."
