Year 10: New Home, New Music

In the fall of 2009, beginning our tenth year, with the move finalized for the school to a new campus in Midtown Memphis, not only did new students have to drive to Visible for the first time, they got to eat regularly at Young Avenue Deli rather than McDonald's. Although we had loved our unique rock and roll music school in Lakeland with Days Inn and Waffle House, we appreciated the Cooper-Young Festival, new studio apartments, and variety of good food at the core of Memphis. We became city folk with our 100-year- old campus church building, where Johnny Cash had started his career.

With every new home there are adjustments. Some require buildouts.

Tommy Lozure and crew built out and equipped the basement studio (dubbed “The Abbey” after having lost “The Chi” in Lakeland) and we made offices work for the administration of the college while the music department shared newly split Sunday School rooms from the 1920s under Dave Kropf’s leadership. We shared space with two churches and other ministries and took care of this new home with some unique college twists. For the second location, we worked to improve the space and save this building from becoming a parking lot and recognizing the historical significance in ministry and music. Swinging by there today, you will find a statue of Johnny Cash in front of some nice apartments next door which we wished for at the time. Back then, we had to clean this place weekly.

And the “chores" on Friday morning.

As the president, I was assigned The Abbey alongside students every Friday morning - but I only got to clean a couple times because they would finish early to not have to do it between classes. The Bonhoefferian idea of Visible Community was real and we tried to keep everyone working together on a level playing field, from freshmen to administration to board members to parents. Balancing ministry, education, business, and art will always be tricky but our best times were when we gathered for Pancake Breakfast (thanks to George Baldwin leading the Music Business department), the newly dubbed “A Visible Christmas” that was evolving over the two years in Cooper-Young from the “Rock and Roll Christmas Show” of Lakeland, and welcoming the large influx of 40+ new students every year (more Memphians, too) into Visible’s expanding programs. We worked together daily and it was a special time for many folks.

The new music was from old friends and graduates, with more tunes coming soon from the new kids.

Releases came through the Visible Media Group (soon to be Madison Line Records) label and everyone pitched in, especially Crystal Bergman. We had just releases Todd and Emily earlier that year and Jerod Wilson, one of the first 3 bachelor degrees from Visible. Appropriately, his record had three songs and was called, Three”. I still have it in my rotation in Apple Music. (Madison Line Records is redoing the whole catalog in this 25th year to make sure all the past students and staff get appropriate listings in the most modern format as so many things changed from 2000 to 2025 in music files types and platforms). Coming soon would be the Cayerio hiphop record and tours (and graduation) and the early Christmas records, ushejnrg in every genre of music from the new students of 2009-2010 from Vermont, Chicago, Michigan (folk guys), Oklahoma (rap), Ohio, Kansas, and everywhere. We began to see a lot of development of singer/songwriters and the rise of the female artists (and college attenders) in this era, which was very rewarding.

Our new home was complete with new music and new community (hint: marriages).