The track record of the Memphis Music Foundation has been one of false starts and misplaced priorities, but it’s on the verge of falling convincingly on its face.

That’s because Memphis Music’s pioneering digital outpost – http://www.livefrommemphis.com/ – will in all likelihood close up shop at the end of the year.

And if there’s anything that will speak volumes about the philosophy and approach of the Foundation – and the Memphis and Shelby County Music Commission, for that matter – it will be the failure of our most innovative music initiative. It will also come at the time when Memphis Fast Forward claims that music is a major priority in the much-ballyhooed economic growth plan.

Guilty

Worst of all, it will be an indictment of a foundation has too often in the past unveiled music strategies as something to be thrust upon Memphis musicians rather than as something to be built on the organic creativity that has always been at the heart of the Memphis Music.

Live From Memphis is just such an exercise in creativity. Long before it became clear that the traditional music business models – something akin to the company store for musicians – were collapsing, Christopher Reyes, the founder of Live From Memphis, understood that a change is gonna come.

As a result, years ago, he eliminated the cumbersome business model and connected Memphis bands directly with their customers. In the emerging world of customer customization, he founds ways to get on the leading edge of the change.

Bottom Up Works Best

He did it in a uniquely Memphis way, characterized by an unwavering attention to the interests of musicians and to getting to the grassroots of creativity, where the greatest Memphis music has always been found, away from the city’s mainstream and in musical cauldrons where originality and authenticity are their own rewards.

That much has never changed in Memphis, because the unique musical styles of our city are just as alive today as when they burst forth from Sun Records and other studios. And just as it was then, it happens largely unnoticed by the private sector, because it has no experience with the kind of independent, free spirits who are heirs to our music tradition and the exact kind of people whose talents must lie at the heart of our music strategies.

Looking back at our history, the burst of genius that produced rock and roll came from the convergence of the musical talents of outsiders and advances in technology. The same could happen today, but it would require us to turn our attention from pipe dreams like the MTV Awards, ill-conceived ideas like relocating the Voodoo Festival, and other big ideas that never quite seem to live up to what was promised – Justin Timberlake’s Memphis operations.

It’s About Money

Bold ambitions are always welcome in Memphis, but perhaps, what we need now is some incremental progress that is built steadfastly on local musicians. The measure of whether a new idea is a good one should be simple: If it’s not putting money into the pockets of our own musicians, it’s not a priority for now.

In other words, music can benefit our economic growth, but not by treating it as an industry cluster or in traditional economic development thinking. Perhaps, if we treated music as a creative force that could have economic benefits and we aligned our incentives and our investments to build our unique talent, we’d have greater chances for success in the long-term.

There’s a feeling among some musicians that the work of the Music Foundation doesn’t really affect them, and it’s a hurdle that’s at the top of the to-do list for its new president. He also moves in the right direction by opening up the work of the organization, by listening to musicians’ opinions and by exploiting the national connections of all Memphis musicians, not just concentrating on the one who thinks it’s all him being sexy.

Taking Action

Memphis musicians are a creative bunch, and many show the same kind of futuristic thinking as Mr. Reyes. After all, everything that he said eight years ago has come to pass. The traditional music business model is in melt-down, and while we seem intent on chasing grand plans and throwing millions of dollars at them, Live From Memphis is likely to shut down for want of thousands of dollars.

If it happens, we need to come to grips with a reality about our city. We’re all talk when it comes to Memphis Music. When it comes to actually doing something to prove that our music isn’t just about the past and that great music is being played and recorded in this city, we’re awful slow to take action.

If Live From Memphis shuts down, we all need to quit bragging about our music legacy and we need to throw away all the brochures about our proud heritage. If we can’t figure out how to continue the website that links current musicians and bands to the world, our failure becomes a stark demonstration of the attitude that confronted so many music innovators throughout our history.

Respect Yourself

There’s the mythology that somehow, these musical innovators were recognized for their genius and were strongly supported by the mainstream of Memphis. Nothing is farther from the truth. If we can do anything to prove that we’ve learned the lessons from our history, it would be to show that we are tapping into the kinds of organic creativity that lies at the heart of our music in the first place.

If the Memphis Music Foundation and all the rest of us want to show that we “gets” it, the perfect place to start is in saving Live From Memphis. If we allow Live From Memphis to go dark because Mr. Reyes can’t continue to finance it himself, it will be the kind of failure that will come to define our city. Again.

We thought of this recently when we watched PBS’s Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story. It was troubling to contemplate whether we’d learned anything from the painful collapse of that legendary Memphis label. Watching the documentary, it was striking how cavalier most Memphians were about whether Stax lived or died and how much the top-down thinking doomed the label.

So far, we haven’t shown conclusively that we learned anything from that tragic experience. Live From Memphis gives us our chance.

Tomorrow: The State of Memphis Music