Check Out Blake Mundell’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Blake Mundell

Hi Blake, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
My Dad had three claims to fame in my small Colorado hometown: he was the local high school’s math teacher, a football/track coach, and a Country Western musician who spent his weekends playing dances at venues across the Southeast corner of the state. I, like many teenagers, did everything I could in my formative years to create my own identity apart from him—and at times, over and against him. But his influence can’t be denied when I consider my life ambitions now. It’s eerie, actually. In a “history repeats itself” kind of way.

At 18, I moved from Colorado to Nashville to pursue songwriting. I cut my teeth playing countless writer rounds at the old Hotel Indigo on West End, peering over the lid of that red grand piano at the faces of my peers and my competition. Many of those faces I’d later see on billboards or magazines, or on televisions playing world tours and presidential inaugurations. I carved my own path—made a few records and started touring, realized the road didn’t agree with me. In 2012, I started looking for another outlet that would allow me to stay home and do what I enjoyed most: write.

That year, after a show in Austin, TX, a bandmate’s step-mom insisted that we drop by her deep tissue massage therapy clinic for complimentary sessions. I’d never received any kind of bodywork prior. To be honest, felt a great deal of reluctance about it. But I allowed myself to be persuaded, and after it was over, I got off the table changed. My shoulder, restricted from decades of competitive baseball tournaments, felt brand new. There was real therapeutic merit there, I thought.

I decided to go to massage school almost immediately. I was lucky enough to find an incredible institution: the Mind Body Institute. I would love it so much that I would later return to teach as an instructor. But while a student, I made sports my sole focus, my niche. I wanted to create for others the relief I’d experienced after my first session. The universe must have aligned behind me because within a year after graduating, I was approached by the Tennessee Titans to work on their medical staff, treating injuries, helping players recover, and filling in for whatever else needed done on the sidelines.

My years now are segmented. Seasonal. In the fall, I give my time to the team, and in the offseason, I continue to write songs and make records while teaching future licensed massage therapists how to pass their boards, as well as offering continuing eduction for current LMTs. I also co-own a sports massage business: Revive Sports Recovery, which is home to every pro sports massage therapist in Nashville. The 2024 season will be my eleventh in the NFL.

My music has evolved over time as I’ve undergone personal life changes. It started squarely in the Contemporary Christian Music scene, and then branched into folk, and later pop. Just about everything shifted for me after coming out as gay in 2019. It allowed me to finally create the kind of music I’d always wanted to. It was a process that gave me the permission and the strength to shed so much of the self-doubt and shame I’d carried for the majority of my life, and that had major impacts on my creative process. I’ve never felt more fulfilled in my artistic career, or more proud of what I’m putting out there. I’m confident now that no matter what, those things I make will find their ways to where they belong, and will make their homes in the best places for them.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
My twenties were REALLY rough. That’s not to say there were no shining moments—there were. But I spent that decade fighting myself, dampening myself, castigating myself. It was like emotional self-mutilation.

I was and still am a person of deep conviction—which can really bite you in the ass when the convictions you hold happen to be harmful. Because of the faith I held and the community I was a part of, I tried everything under the sun to change my sexuality. Everything. I voluntarily underwent conversion therapy, participated in and sometimes led group therapy sessions that I had no real qualifications or training in, saw various Christian counselors and pastors, and even consented to what was essentially an arranged marriage by the church where I was a member, an elder-in-training, and a staff member.

Reflecting on that period is difficult. The memories come back through an indigo-gray haze, as if I were seeing my world that entire time from under leagues of ocean water. It affected everything from my personality to my art. I was depressed, anxious, full of self-doubt, shame, and self-loathing. It led me to some extremely dark places, and it took hitting rock bottom emotionally before I began to reconsider the fruit that my faith was producing in my life, and to release myself from its shackles. But it wasn’t easy.

Shifting your entire paradigm like that, as anyone who’s done it can tell you, is hard enough. The community I’d come to love over several years rejected me. The lengths of abuse that my former church put me through in the excommunication process were horrendous. But I lost a great deal of fans too—those who were used to faith being a part of my music and didn’t agree with me coming to a place of self-love. I was also terrified to come out while in the NFL, worrying about whether I’d lose my job or about how it might affect long-standing relationships there.

The recovery from something like that isn’t a straight line. Old wounds still sometimes crack open. But to put things way to concisely, everything is better on this side.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Because I do a few different things, I’m going to tackle this question from each angle.

I make music these days under the artist name COURIER. The Courier era started with a project containing 13 songs about the life stories of 13 of my friends at the time. I wrote them in secret, invited my friends to a show, and surprised them with their songs that night. It was one of my favorite moments of community I’ve experienced. That record, called the Present Tense, came out in 2017. The projects since then have mostly consisted of other peoples’ stories as well—though now, they’re primarily folks who live in the margins of American society. I’m most proud of my more protest-heavy songs, like White Tears, which helped to influence and motivate a constituency of Coloradans from my hometown to help write and pass a bill eliminating racist Native mascots in the state, including the one from my high school. I’m proud to have been an organizer in that movement—a movement that Native activists had been working on for decades. My most recent single, Someone Better Than Me, is a love song (my first) about my partner and I learning to thrive while exploring ethical non monogamy.

As for REVIVE SPORTS RECOVERY, I met my business partner after he graduated from the massage school we both attended. We started the sports massage company so naively, just the two of us, sharing one room in the back of a whole body cryotherapy office. It’s now grown to a team of ten incredible licensed massage therapists who work in various facets of the sports world in Nashville. In fact, every pro sports massage therapist in Nashville practices under our roof! I feel indescribable pride in my team—many of whom were my students while they attended school. They’re so sharp, intuitive, and talented. My favorite part of my job is learning and growing with them. Revive is located in Melrose, off 8th avenue.

When I teach at MIND BODY INSTITUTE, I’m primarily an instructor of Ethics and Anatomy & Physiology. I also teach Ethics and Sports Massage continuing education classes for licensed practitioners or practitioners from other states seeking reciprocity in Tennessee. Those classes can be found on the Mind Body Institute website.

Last, it’s a dream to continue work with the medical staff of the TENNESSEE TITANS. Employment in the NFL can be volatile and the next season is never promised. I’ve been able to work with incredible medical professionals during my time with the organization, including co-writing an article with our Physical Therapist for publication in Massage Magazine. They’ve been nothing but supportive in every season of life, and I’ve made memories in this industry I’ll never be able to forget.

So maybe we end on discussing what matters most to you and why?
I have an unscratchable itch to leave the world a better place than I found it. When I was younger, I thought that perhaps that might take the form of some great piece of music or writing that would get it’s own note or sentence in some future music history book.

These days it mean taking my clients on my table, or my listeners—no matter if it’s just one—from point A to a hopefully better point B.

Also, as we collectively move forward, it matters to me deeply that we learn how to establish communities of care, to make meaning together that accounts for everyone’s needs, to interrogate our socialization and fight for better ways of being and communing. In the businesses we create, in the music we make, in the lessons we teach to and learn from each other.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.therealcourier.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blakeamundell
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/CourierMusic
• Other: https://www.revivesportsrecovery.com