Nashville and the Challenge of Real Relationships

I have been living and working in Nashville in the Christian Music Industry (CMI) for almost two years now. Through the course of our time here we have made some interesting discoveries concerning the way things work in the South (we are from the Midwest) and more specifically in terms of the CMI in general.

One of the first things that came to my attention is the challenge of true authentic relationships.

By “authenticity” I mean the kind of Biblical relationship where there can be true honesty, real conflict and resolution, challenge, accountability, vulnerability, an owning of and showing of personal weakness, etc. I lament the fact that this type of relationship seems to not be the norm between people working in the CMI.

In a community where everyone is a potential employee, or employer it become very difficult to achieve this type of true authentic community. Why is this? I believe it primarily has to do with the mingling of a highly relational context and a strict business context. In most aspects of the CMI it’s easy to become very informal informal and "friendly" with people, but at the same time, a bottom-line business mentality is firmly in place.

For example, a musician may spend hours and hours on a tour bus traveling the country with a band. This context is great for fostering relationships due to all the free time spent together. But at the end of the day, there is still an "employer/employee" structure in place thus an honesty and realness that is at times not very comfortable, but proves to grow true relationships is often missing. Why? Because there is always the underlying fear that if I show my true colors or speak a word that might be viewed as confrontational or too honest, I could get fired from my job! It’s like we operate under the false assumption of a community of friends, but at the end of the day, it’s all business, thus there is a mixed message in place that everyone comes to terms with.

Lack of realness in relationships is the offspring of the marriage between the informal relational context and the business mentality.

Just like any other job, relationships are the key to success. If people know you and like you then you will most likely be successful in your pursuits. Maintaining relationships is your lifeblood of success in CMI. If you are talented, but even more, if people know you and like you, then they are more likely to refer you to a gig, writing session, or some other opportunity, etc. Thus there seems to be a lot at stake in terms of relationships.

For example, when I signed my songwriting deal, one of the first things that I was told was that success will be partly found in my ability to make relationships with other great writers in town, thus getting them to like me and what I do, so that we can produce great songs that equates to big money. In one sense, if these relationships work, then there is a pretty good chance that my career as a songwriter will be a success.

What this can lead to, for lack of a better term, is a community of serious "butt-kissers" who wallow in surface relationships built on a cheesy, “I need to get paid” mentality, thinking we are really engaged in true relationships but all the while it’s just a faint echo of what true community really is.

This may or may not be something that people are consciously aware of, but I believe that most people abide by this instinctively if they are going to be successful.

One of the great drawbacks that I see in all of this is that there is a great power in a “most honest” ethic in our relationships. We are all sinners and need people in our lives who love us enough to tell us the truth about the things in our lives that we are blinded to. In fact, I think that all believers in Christ should seek out people who they choose to submit to and they ask them to speak into their lives at any time. Anyone who has been married for very long knows this as they are being sanctified through it, or they are being crushed by it cause they are fighting against it. Some of the most life changing times in my life that have proved to grow me into the image of Christ in deeper ways has been when true friends were honest enough with me to speak truth into my life about an area that I needed to work on. The point is this, if a very talented person surrounds himself with people who can easily cash in on their success then this most likely has a much smaller chance of taking place to the great detriment of the growth of that person.

I have another fall-out theory that may or may not be true but I think it might be worth pondering. When I moved to town I was shocked to find so many men in the CMI that were near my age (30) and single. It seems that where I was from this was not the case. It might be just that I am living now in a bigger city and thus there is a bigger population of people of all walks of life, but something just seemed weird about the sheer number of men in the CMI that I keep meeting who were single. This could be due to the fact that guys in CMI are frequently on the road, thus it’s hard to maintain a relationship. This could be one answer.

I am wondering if the deeper reasons lies in what I am talking about here. If you have been raised in this type of community where there is a great hindrance to true authenticity in relationships, then moving to a deep marriage commitment where a true authentic Biblical relationship is mandated for success can prove to be a huge challenge. I can understand why all these guys are still single. The relational context of their career has proved to be a disadvantage to their ability to enter into the relational demands of the marriage covenant.

I could be way off my rocker on this one, but I think it is worth considering.

Everyone wants to see change in the CMI, and I would submit that analyzing and understanding the context of relationships with each other might be a great place to start.