This piece was originally published in the Memphis Mirror, now known as DH Online.
There’s no denying that Memphis is a city rich in music and culture. But when Elizabeth Cawein’s job as a local music publicist took her to countless conferences across the U.S., like South by Southwest in Austin or Americanafest in Nashville, she couldn’t help but notice a pattern.
While many other cities and states were being represented at these events, whether that was through their office of film and music or their tourism bureau, there was always a Memphis-shaped hole. Luckily for Memphis, however, Cawein was just the person to fill it.
“I felt like there was a real missed opportunity, that Memphis could be doing something like that,” Cawein said.
Through attending these events and network conferences, Cawein said she became aware of the idea of export offices, which exist around the world to spread the culture or music of a country to other territories.
Thus, in late 2014, the seed of an idea that would quickly blossom into Music Export Memphis was planted.
Fast forward now almost seven years after Cawein first conceptualized Music Export Memphis (conveniently shortened to MEM, the city’s airport code), the nonprofit has created many opportunities for local Memphis artists to share their music with the rest of the world, in turn drawing tourists to Memphis, through three core programs: experiences, ambassadors, and the export bank.
MEM’s experiences program is Cawein actively trying to remedy the lack of Memphis representation at festivals or conferences. “We go to other target cities and produce events that feature live Memphis music as the centerpiece,” she said. “We really like to think about all five senses when we're producing experiences.”
This means giving people the “holistic Memphis experience,” as Cawein calls it, which includes things like providing festivalgoers with beverages from local breweries, as well as a Shangri-La pop up shop for browsing vinyl records.
Through the ambassador program, MEM primarily provides tour grants to artists, provided they meet certain requirements, who can use the grants on any element of touring, whether that’s gas, van rentals, hotel rooms, or boosts for their social media profiles.
One musician who has taken advantage of the ambassador program’s benefits is Marion, Arkansas-based singer-songwriter Bailey Bigger, who showcased with MEM at Americanafest in 2019 and at Folk Alliance in 2020, which ultimately led to several paying gigs and Bigger landing her first record deal.
“That was probably the best experience of my life,” Bigger said of playing Folk Alliance. “We don't have many people like [Elizabeth] who want so badly for these local musicians to succeed and to have these opportunities. A Music Export Memphis does not exist in Nashville or Austin. It's just such a unique thing for such a musically rich city.”
MEM also recently launched a merch fund as part of the ambassador program for artists to collaborate with Memphis-based businesses on items like T-shirts, vinyl records, and more.
The third core program, the export bank, allows MEM to say “yes” to potentially career-altering performances for their artists, like when it paid for plane tickets to send singer Talibah Safiya and her band to Sundance Film Festival last year.
By being sent out to share their music with the world, the musicians aren’t the only ones gaining exposure. The city of Memphis is too.
“We want to leverage music as an economic driver,” Cawein said. “We want to attract talent and tourists to Memphis, and we believe that when our musicians are out on the road representing our city, that's exactly what happens.”
However, we’re now living in a time where musicians can’t be out on the road. Like most music industry organizations, MEM hit a wall because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cawein’s solution to aid Memphis musicians was to start a COVID-19 relief fund.
“All of 2020 for us, instead of being focused on getting artists on the road and producing showcases, we were focused on running this fund,” she said.
According to Cawein, by the end of last year, MEM granted out more than $300,000 to 450 individual musicians and music professionals in Memphis, including singer-songwriter Abbye West Pates.
“They’ve supported me by awarding two rounds of artist grants after so many of my 2020 events were cancelled, resulting in lost income,” West Pates said.
Despite the pandemic halting touring for the time being, the spirit of Memphis music and Cawein’s advocacy for it can’t be dimmed.
She has a set, “Straight from the Source,” every Tuesday afternoon on WYXR 91.7 FM where she highlights new music from some of her favorite contemporary Memphis musicians.
She also writes a monthly column for the Daily Memphian, in which she includes specially curated Spotify playlists featuring local artists.
Although she seems like the ultimate champion for Memphis now, there was a time when she thought she might want to follow a different path.
Like a lot of Memphians, Cawein didn’t realize the magic of this city until she moved away for a period of time. Always a lover of music, she studied journalism at Murray State in Kentucky and then moved to New York with dreams of becoming a writer for Rolling Stone. But she was called home by the roots Memphis had planted in her (and the unfortunate event of moving during the housing market crash in 2008).
Nevertheless, she was determined for her dream of working in the music industry to come true, this time in Memphis.
And she made it happen, first by working with the Memphis Music Foundation, then starting her own music PR firm, and, as you know by now, starting Music Export Memphis with a seed of an idea in 2014.
Photos courtesy of Elizabeth Cawein
After a successful meeting in Jan. 2015 with then-president of the Greater Memphis Chamber, the late Phil Trenary, who Cawein said saw great potential in her vision, she and the newly founded Music Export Memphis produced their first showcase in Sept. 2016.
“That was a really, really critical first step,” Cawein said of the showcase. “I felt that this was something that could work and no one else was doing it and I could figure out how to do it.”
She, indeed, figured out how to do it. And she can be confident in this because of what she said happens when she glances around at the faces in the crowd at a showcase in a different city.
“It always feels like I know a secret that I'm letting them in on and I love it,” Cawein said. “I love that moment because I'm always so proud to be from Memphis and to get to be a fly on the wall and watch a roomful of a few 100 people experience it for the first time is pretty cool.”
Comentários