June of 1987 Amy and I moved to Nashville with our college degrees in hand. We rented a condo (Four Seasons) at the corner of Hillsboro & Harding in Green Hills and hit the pavement. Amy got a job at Wal-Mart on Charlotte Pike and I got a job at the Belle Meade Kroger Deli. It was our introduction to “Southern-ness” and to southern summer heat. It was HOT. Amy eventually worked for Target for over 10 years and I worked a year at the Transition Learning Center (TLC).
In hind-site, it was a terrible move on my part, but I felt I really needed a salaried job with benefits. TLC is an alternative school. At the time we served high-needs students with behavioral and emotional disabilities. These students could not be in a regular public school. Many of them were in group homes and facilities and they had deep, complicated needs. In addition to that, we were under-staffed and rented space at the Boys & Girls club. We had little to no curriculum, just a room full of random books. All of the students were hostile towards authority. I was not emotionally ready to move far away from home, have the pressure of making actual money, and then face the emotional, verbal, and physical onslaught from those students. All of their stories were incredibly tragic and sad. Many of them were actively in imminent danger. They took it out on us.
It was not a healthy or safe place for me. There were good, hard working people, but the whole concept of the program bit off more than it could chew. I was in physical altercations on a weekly basis. I would literally come home bruised and bloodied. I had so many shirts ripped and ruined that year, and I broke several watches. I got into a habit of slipping my watch into my pocket at the first sign of trouble. My mother would buy me cheap plastic watches as a joke, but I wore them. I became very on-edge and hyper-vigilant for trouble. Once I was in Target and I noticed the under-cover security guy following this would-be shop lifter around the store. I then saw the security guy radio for help at the front of the store as they went to confront the shop-lifter. Later when I went to look at the time I saw that my wrist was bare. I had unconsciously put that watch in my pocket during the shoplifting caper.
I don’t have any “fun” stories or memories from TLC like I do from KDS. I just have memories of a crazed girl pulling a large kitchen knife from her purse and an out-of-control boy who had left the building and had a piece of broken bottle held to his wrist and me sitting on the floor of the lobby cradling this high school girl as she shrieked hysterically and sucked her thumb. It was the hardest year of my life.
At the same time I was getting a hard dose of reality about my abilities as a songwriter, musician, and vocalist in Nashville. I had several songs I felt strongly about that I had written and been performing over the past seven years. I did everything Chris Christian had said in his “How to Succeed in Christian Music without Really Trying” book. I had each song on its own cassette. I had well-typed lyric sheets. I had the songs ranked from best to less-best so I could show my strongest songs first. I had my list of publishers and record labels and I was ready to go. I first made an appointment with a representative from ASCAP (the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) to get his take on some of my songs and who he suggested I see. I sat in his office after a hard day at school (I really needed some good-positive feedback in my life at that time.)
He popped in “We Have Won”, listened to about 30 seconds of it, then popped it out and popped in “You Are”, listened to about 30 seconds of it and said, “Is this what the rest of them kind of sound like?”
I stumbled around for a second and said, “Yeahhhhhhh, I guess.”
“Ok,” He handed back my cassettes and lyric sheets. “When you’ve written some more, come back and see me.” And with that, our session was over. Seven years of songs, over.
In retrospect, those songs pretty much sucked. The ASCAP guy was willing to meet with me whenever I had new songs. ASCAP-Nashville held regular songwriting workshops for Christian Music songwriters. They had panels that included established writers, publishers, and artists. They critiqued songs and were very helpful in introducing you to people. But at that moment, that first 6 to 9 months of being in Nashville, I was in a traumatic place. Every bit of emotional energy was drained. I had a poor attitude. I was overly sensitive and not open to suggestion or direction. My themes lyrically reflected what I was feeling. I was stubborn. All of that was a perfect storm for failure.
I guess if I could do it again, Amy and I would have found a cheap place to rent, We could have kept our hourly jobs and I would have focused my full attention to writing, performing, collaborating, and schmoozing. Instead, that first year I spent my time getting beat-up, being depressed, disillusioned, and being a crappy friend and husband to Amy.
When the school year ended I had the perfect out to not sign a contract for the next year at TLC, but I got scared. So I made a second terrible decision, I signed a contract to teach there the next year as well. I ended up flaming out two months into the next school year and I quit. So there I was, no job, Amy working full time at Target, a mortgage (we had bought a house in Bellevue), bills, and me being all depressed, medically depressed actually (I was even taking anti-depressants.)
Then God sent me Phil LaFleur and kind of saved my life…
chris
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