It all started with an idea – a dream to give students a place to further their musical education and talent, while growing as an artist and a person as well.
Now, years later, Lipscomb students can do just that. With the newly renovated Music Row styled house sitting on the corner of Caldwell Lane and Granny White Pike, music students have a place to write, practice, perform, study and otherwise advance their skillset.
“This is a place that creative people show up every day to do meaningful work in the business,” artist-in-residence Charlie Peacock said.
Peacock began his career in the music industry back in the ‘70s between the ages of 14 and 15 and has since produced hundreds of albums.
Among several other credits, Peacock co-wrote the popular Christian hit “Dare You to Move” alongside Switchfoot, worked on the soundtrack for the Oscar-winning production Twelve Years a Slave, produced two albums for The Civil Wars’ and continues to work in the industry today.
“It’s all I’ve ever done and all I’ve ever known,” Peacock said. “A whole trajectory of things involving the music business, all of this experience was sort of brought together with my natural inclination to teach.
“For 25 years, I’ve been speaking on university campuses all across America but being brought in for one day. I love students. I love to teach. It was just the right moment for this to happen. I’m just grateful that the dean and the administration thought it was the right time, too.”
In addition to Peacock, contemporary music students are under the direction of several other music faculty members.
Upon enrollment, students are given the choice between two music education tracks – songwriting and music production. There are currently 21 majors in the department; the contemporary music ensemble has 24 students total.
“Of course you have to have a tremendous amount of talent to succeed,” Peacock said. “But this is all about becoming a human being and what kind of person you’re becoming on the planet. That’s actually the stuff that makes the music work and helps you to be successful.”
The idea is for the juniors and senior students to focus on building their portfolio and song catalog, mainly working on recording and performance advancement. The freshman and sophomore students still have the opportunity to perform and record, but will inevitably spend more time in the classroom setting.
“We do start performing together immediately,” Peacock said. “I didn’t want to have a program where you had to wait to make music. That didn’t make sense to me.
“Because it’s a new program, it rolls out almost sequentially,” Peacock said. “In four years it will start wrapping on itself over and over and be very dense. But right now, every semester it’s like ‘we haven’t taught this course yet, so here we go.’”
The contemporary music house is located across the street from the school, two doors down from The Well and Copper Kettle. The first floor features a control room, tracking room, classroom, student lounge, kitchen and Peacock’s office.
Mike Fernandez, the dean of the College of Entertainment & the Arts has an office upstairs alongside Steve Taylor, Jeff Fincher and Scott Baker, other CEA faculty.
“The reason this is so important is because you don’t want to find yourself conquering the world and the music business and incrementally becoming less like Jesus,” Peacock said. “The goal is to incrementally become more. Character is a huge part of making the gospel real in your day-to-day lives, being a part of seeing the kingdom come.
“They’re real, these are real life events. We want to see them taking place in the students lives while they’re learning all this about music and the music business.”
Photo courtesy of Charlie Peacock