ABOUT US

OUR HISTORY

I (Founder/President) met Camren Hall (Co-Founder/VP) in the spring of 2019 on a trip to the mountains in Gatlinburg with an organization called RUF with Vanderbilt and Wake Forest students. During that trip, we bonded over our mutual love for music and had an all-night jam session with the Wake Forest students during our last night there. Everyone broke out their guitars, cajons and ukuleles, and someone found a keyboard for us to play so we spent the entire evening singing and writing music. Camren and I both left that trip with one question on our minds: Where can we find this kind of community at Vanderbilt? With Nashville being affectionately called “Music City,” I expected that our college’s campus would be littered with students playing guitars on the lawn and holding impromptu shows or jam sessions at night, but I never encountered anyone casually playing music publicly outside of Blair, our music school. Throughout freshman year, I kept meeting people of all ages who were extremely creative and talented in the music field, whether it be in producing EDM music, songwriting, playing instruments, or even in concert photography or album graphic designs. I wanted to create one place where all of these passionate students could meet each other, collaborate, share their art and just find support for their talents — and I also just desired a group of musicians to casually play music with like how Camren and I did at our Gatlinburg trip.

The next fall, Camren and I met in my apartment and decided to create The Music Room. Our idea behind the name was that our community would be a hypothetical “room” in which students of all skill levels and interests could be comfortable enough to come and lounge, and just play or listen to music. In October of 2020, both of us spontaneously posted on our personal Instagram pages: “Calling all Vanderbilt music lovers and creators – come meet us on Wyatt Lawn at 5pm! Bring an instrument, your laptop, some friends, and any songs you want to sing. Let’s jam out together!” Walking to the lawn that afternoon with our guitars in hand, Camren and I expected to be greeted by only a few of our friends. To our surprise, however, we were met by over 60 students, eager to find a community to make music with. From there, The Music Room grew exponentially with each jam session.

Soon enough, our weekly jam sessions turned into a full fledged artist management and live entertainment operation. We saw a need from our artist friends at TMR for someone to give them a platform to perform and play live gigs, so we appointed an executive team to help us curate events. We saw a desire for students to promote their own music, so we started a successful Instagram page to highlight our artists. We saw people who loved music but did not play instruments or sing itching for a way to be involved in the music business, so we recruited photographers, graphic designers, and more to join us in an official capacity. Soon, The Music Room spread far beyond Vanderbilt, as young people from all different Nashville colleges and even recent graduates joined our community in droves. Now we stand proud as an organization that deeply loves and supports the young music community of Nashville, and we hope to continue to be an inclusive, vibrant, and creative “room” for anyone to share in their love of music and arts. 

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- Tia Gatbunton

Founder of The Music Room