by Kelly Dean | Mar 11, 2013 | News Slider
It’s not every day that a college student gets to spend time “babysitting” hundreds of children before those kids took the biggest stage of their young lives. And the opportunity for Lipscomb students surely wasn’t taken for granted. “The best part about coalescing with the Country Music Association for this benefit concert was witnessing the dreams of these children reaching a platform to the community. Especially that of Nashville’s renowned, unique community of music, and camaraderie of dedicated country music stars, like Scotty McCreery,” sophomore Linnea Berg said. The Country Music Association annually sponsors the Keep the Music Playing All Stars concert at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center. This year the event is hosted by young country music phenom, Scotty McCreery. The fund-raiser featured the best elementary, middle and high school singers from the Metro Nashville public schools. Several Lipscomb students were a part of these kids’ big day because of a volunteer opportunity provided by CMA. They were able to volunteer because of a new club on campus known as CMA EDU, which supports students interested in the music industry by providing networking opportunities and experience in the world of country music. Freshman Alex Justice, sophomore Berg, juniors Kelly Dean (the author of this piece) and Teresa Piquette were among the CMA EDU members representing Lipscomb. Volunteers got there at 11:30 a.m. to prepare for the rush of kids one hour later. Volunteers were divided into groups and assigned a school. Since the performance didn’t start until 6 p.m., there was plenty of down time for the students. Volunteers were in charge of watching the kids and providing the...
by Stewart Williams | Dec 15, 2011 | News Slider, Opinion
O.K., so I’m sitting there and here comes Keith Urban. And Eric Church … and, well, it’d be easy to lose count after spending the evening of Nov. 9 as a seat-filler at the 45th annual CMA Awards here in Nashville. Freshman Megan Anderson and I were two lucky Lipscomb students, among students from other schools, chosen to be seat-fillers because of our involvement in CMA EDU, a country music program that meets monthly on campus. Several hundred seat-fillers met outside Bridgestone Arena where their IDs were checked, and they were given wristbands and directions for the night. Of course, the purpose of seat-fillers is simple: to fill the seats. Those seats are empty when the stars go onstage to perform or to present awards, so our job was to keep the arena looking filled up for network cameras. A group of aisle-fillers wore pink wristbands, and the seat-fillers wore blue wristbands. Each group was assigned a general area to sit or stand throughout the show unless they were separately asked to go somewhere else. Megan and I sat in the back-upper section of the arena with a clear view of the main stage. About eight rows in front of us was a small stage, where several artists such as Church, Urban, Chris Young and Scotty McCreery performed throughout the night. As seat-fillers, we weren’t allowed to bring phones or cameras to the show to be as professional as possible. Going from watching the CMAs on TV to seeing it live on stage is amazing. Megan and I couldn’t believe our eyes. The biggest country award show I watch every year on TV,...
