Today we’d like to introduce you to Jason Garriott.
Hi Jason, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself
When I was 12, I lost my dad very unexpectedly during summer break. Being a teenager, I was pretty lost and mad about the entire situation… I just couldn’t wrap my head around any of it. That’s when I found music. I remember specifically, I was watching MTV and a live music performance for the song “Outside” from Staind. I was into Limp Bizkit at the time, and Fred Durst was onstage with Aaron Lews from Staind, who I haven’t heard of before. I remember watching Aaron play his acoustic guitar and singing with so much raw emotion. I just remember I could feel the pain he had performing that song, and I realized I wasn’t alone… and that maybe playing guitar would be an outlet for me. I needed something to vent out all of this negative energy I was feeling and create something positive out of it.
I started talking to my mom about wanting to play guitar pretty much right after that. I’ll never forget that Christmas. I was expecting it to be one of the worst memories of my life. Little to my knowledge, my mom wasn’t going to let that happen. After we opened up what I thought was all of our gifts, my mom walked out of the room and came back with my first guitar. I don’t know how to explain how ecstatic I was; I just knew right then and there my life would change forever in a positive way. I now had a beacon of hope to continue living.
I started taking guitar lessons that winter and learning the basics. My guitar teacher put on “Voodoo Child” from Jimi Hendrix. I just looked at my guitar teacher and said, “I didn’t know a guitar could sound like that!”. I remember hearing all of the authentic, raw energy, and soul Jim put into every lick of that song. It was heavier, fast, and so authentically emotional. The way that guitar sounded struck a chord in my soul in a way that was incredibly moving. I knew right then and there, I had to learn how to play that song, how to use my guitar as a channel for my emotions. When I finally learned that opening riff and stuff, it felt so good!
During college, I did a lot of community service. It felt so good to give back to the community. I remember doing a food drive for the local Muncie Mission Shelter located in Muncie, Indiana, where Ball State University is located. It felt so good to look in my rearview mirror and see my Ford Explorer’s trunk full of food for people in need. I did a Toys For Tots drive too, and it was so amazing to drop off a bunch of toys for underprivileged children. It felt good to give back to my community and help people out.
Nashville was on my radar for a long time, as in high school I choose Jimi Hendrix as my American Hero for a book report we had to demonstrate to our class. In his biography, he was quoted saying, “I really learned how to play guitar in Nashville.” Jim was my hero and is still a legend to this day. So, I knew I had to make it down there at some point because of that.
My wife, Chelsea, and I went on vacation down to Nashville and fell in love with the city. We went into Gruhn’s Guitars when it was still on Broadway, in the heart of downtown Nashville. I just grabbed a guitar and was fiddling with it, when a lady in her 40’s came in. She sat down with dobro and started playing slide guitar. It was seriously incredible! I knew right then and there; Jimi was 100% right about the talent in Nashville. We had tickets for a show at The Exit/In to see Joshua Radin. We couldn’t believe how amazing that music venue was, and we’re like there’s a real community here in Nashville and amazing music. Without going to the Exit/In, we probably wouldn’t have moved to Nashville, as Broadway is cool but a little to chaotic and touristy for our everyday tastes.
Before we moved to Nashville, I had the idea for Music Neighbors, of supporting the local music community. I always wanted to give back to music because it honestly saved my life. Since I really enjoyed helping people in college through community service, I was like Music Neighbors is the perfect marriage of giving back to music and helping others. We’ve been running the nonprofit since 2015
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Honestly, it’s been a pretty smooth road so far besides acquiring funding.
The music community in Nashville is so welcoming and appreciative. We’ve really been focusing on building our foundation, tweaking our format and programs, and improving the structure of our organization. We’re in the process building out our fundraising arm to find corporate sponsors, grants, and developing pledge drives to increase revenue so we can make a bigger impact in our community.
Our entire organization is currently volunteer-based. Any money that has come into the organization, is put directly into building the nonprofit and making improvements. I’m the Executive Director and haven’t paid myself anything to date. In fact, my wife and I refinanced our house to start the nonprofit in the first place. We figured we’d take the money that our house accrued and reinvest that back into the community to start Music Neighbors.
It took a bunch of trials and improvements to fine-tune our flagship programs. We’re now conducting Free Live EPs for local Nashville music artists that incorporated live music videos with each song. We are also featuring these musicians in our Multi-Genre Artist Showcases that feature a wide variety of music on one bill… such as hip hop to country music and everything in between.
Nashville is becoming an increasingly expensive city to live in, and musicians building out their careers don’t usually have too much money to spare. It’s expensive to record an album, and many artists and bands put all of the money they do have into creating amazing albums, EPs, and singles. However, many don’t have any money left to create videos and promotional materials to connect their music to more people. That’s where we come in 😉
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Music Neighbors Inc.?
Music Neighbors is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit whose mission is to strengthen Nashville’s music culture by educating and connecting the community to performing arts while providing support for the growth of local music.
Our main focus is supporting Nashville music artists through a variety of our programs with a specialization in content creation services including producing live music videos, Live EPs, and curating multi-genre artist showcases.
We are building a more inclusive and equitable music community for all music artists of every genre by encouraging music exploration. We believe music has the power to bring people from different backgrounds and communities together and make a more connected and culturally diverse Nashville. Music is closely tied to culture, and if we can showcase all of the different styles of music in Nashville, we can build a stronger and more accepting Nashville. That’s why we support all styles and genres of music from artists from all demographics and backgrounds.
In July of 2021, we recorded and filmed Free Live EPs at Welcome to 1979, an independently owned recording studio located in The Nations in West Nashville. We booked 2 full days at the studio, paid for the engineer, and brought our own in-house video crew. There were no costs to the artists to participate in these sessions. We later featured 3 out of the 4 artists from that weekend in our Artist Showcase Concert at The East Room. The sessions were amazing and so was the concert. It was so successful, that we decided to make this our flagship program moving forward.
In early 2021, we established our first Artist Committee. We wanted to give the community more of a voice in who our organization features and to improve our organizational structure to better reflect the different types of people that live in Nashville and reflect the diversity that exists in our city.
Also, in 2021, we created a new video series called Good Neighbors Listen. This series gives music artists a platform to talk about issues within our community and how they’re using music to overcome those challenges, whether it’s personally or to help build a better community. Our first video talks about equity issues within the music scene where hip hop artists, especially black hip hop artists and rappers, and their ideas for solving these issues.
How do you think about luck?
I tend to have bad luck for some reason. hahaha. For some reason, the universe just tends to make things a little more difficult on me. However, it’s taught me to persevere through it, learn creative ways to solve problems, how to evaluate voids and issues in the community and develop programs to address those needs, etc.
I’ve had some good luck too… like getting our first grant application accepted through Metro Arts and our first artist showcase being featured in Nashville Scene and WPLN.
Contact Info:
- Email: jason@musicneighbors.org
- Website: www.MusicNeighbors.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/musicneighbors/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/musicneighbors
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClDPO_1pd9VOo351nPMe1xw
