AUSTIN (KXAN) — Live music will pick up again soon from the well-known venues across downtown that closed on New Year’s Day. The people who will keep those shows going in the future can also focus more on working on themselves in 2026, thanks to a new effort getting off the ground amid a more shaky outlook for health care.
The SIMS Foundation in Austin recently announced the launch of The Dick Chalmers Music Venue program, named in honor of a beloved ambassador for the Red River Cultural District who died in November. Conrado Markel, the foundation’s director of operations, said this program will now open up mental health care support and substance use recovery services to music venue employees across the city.
“Music venues, the people that work there oftentimes don’t have health insurance, or it’s very difficult for them to get health insurance,” Markel explained. “They’re working long hours. They’re in those bars. They’re usually a little bit younger, and we want to make sure that they have the possibility to get mental health or recovery resources just like everybody else does.”
The start of this service comes at a time when certain pandemic-era subsidies ended Thursday for millions of Americans with health insurance bought on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace. Markel said that factored into the foundation’s thinking about expanding support beyond the musicians it normally serves…