A trip to Nashville might be my chance for a big break into the music business, I told myself. I mean, how hard could it be to get noticed and launch a professional music career?
Each year, members of our community invade another city to learn, look, smell, feel and, let’s be honest, steal their best ideas and learn from their mistakes. These annual trips – expertly planned and orchestrated by the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce – have probably had more impact on our community than any other group activity during the past two decades. From IDEA Commons to the Community Focus Report, we have borrowed ideas from other cities. The Sept. 12–14 trip to Nashville was our city’s 20th community visit, and I think I’ve attended eight.
There were nearly 60 professionals on the 2013 Community Leadership Visit, representing public bodies, private interests and nonprofit entities – from Greene County Administrator Tim Smith, to Metropolitan National Bank President and CEO Mark McFatridge and Care to Learn Executive Director Morey Mechlin. Each organization is responsible for its participant’s travel costs.
Nashville has been deemed the current “it” city with several national rankings and accolades supporting – or generating – that designation. And you can tell when you’re there. I’ve said before that I believe Springfield vibrates at a different frequency; I felt a similar buzz in Nashville, just on a larger stage.
It helps when you have a major network television series named for, and hosted within, your city.
While the people of Nashville certainly embrace and celebrate their musical heritage, the city has also become fertile ground for entrepreneurs. We paid attention and observed they do a good, but firm, job separating the wheat from the chaff.
Nashville was the first major community in the country to merge city and county governments. The result? Combined services and a 30-member city council. Our Joint City-County Planning Task Force already has the merger topic on our list for analysis.
As with any community, there are also thorns. Nashville is wrestling with homelessness, diversity tensions and other challenges. But for me, two key issues were the city’s laser focus on a few challenges and a noted flight from public schools to private schools that occurred decades ago. The result: Nashville’s public schools are struggling with high poverty and low test scores.
All of this made me even more appreciative of Springfield Public Schools and the support the organization receives from our community. Let’s not take that for granted. If that support is ever lost, it may never be regained.
We heard continually from Nashville’s community leaders about their key focus areas of education, transportation, public safety and economic development. They’ve set priorities and agreed to shift resources. For example, their workforce development program has stopped training bartenders in order to focus their training in other areas, such as technologies.
So what about breaking into the music business? Michael “Supe” Granda (bass player for the Ozark Mountain Daredevils) moved to Nashville many years ago and attended the community reception during our first evening. I jokingly referenced that I had brought my guitar and was only planning a one-way trip since I was sure I’d hit it big. Supe told me something Nashville Mayor Karl Dean also confirmed: on average, 50 people arrive in Nashville every day in hopes of hitting it big in the music business. Most are either gone in nine months or working as waiters, waitresses and bartenders, while waiting for that big break. The downtown clubs don’t even pay for bands; they play for tips, just hoping to be discovered if the right producer will be in the audience that night. The place just oozes with musical talent. It’s both energizing and humbling for an amateur musician.
In the end, I took the return flight and didn’t even audition for my big break. In a city full of professional musicians, I didn’t have the guts to practice my guitar outside my hotel room.
Springfield City Manager Greg Burris can be reached at gburris@springfieldmo.gov.
