Road to Nashville 2

It sits above Nashville's Music Row, at the Row's south end, like a beacon on a hill.  

Music Row is itself a trip. Drive north along its streets and you see signs boasting record labels you easily recognize -- RCA Studio B, EMI, SESAC -- and others you don't, like Love Monkey.

(For a slide show of what I saw and know, click here.) 

But south of it, high up, sits small Belmont University.  And man, you would swear it's going to burst. Because within Belmont lives a bubbling mass of youthful music talent.  No, I don't mean performers, although there are plenty here. I'm talking young, high-energy, blue-jeaned entrepreneurs who have grown up with Itunes in their ears and see -- just down the street -- that this is where that stuff is born.  And they want a piece of it. 

It's a marriage of interest and intellect:

Music Row is known as country music's Madison Avenue.  But today it's much more, representing an array of musical styles and studios.  It's always on the hunt for business talent. 

Belmont is a historic Baptist school that produced Grand Ole Opry's Minnie Pearl and Vogue Magazine's Clare Booth Luce, among others.  But it, too, is much more.  For starters, it boasts a music-business curriculum considered second to none, and its graduates leverage Music Row internships into full-time jobs.

(Less musical, but ... you may recall that Belmont also hosted the Oct. 7th debate between Obama and McCain. Thus the banner, top.) 

It's not clear that Zach is going to wind up at Belmont.  Mizzou has proven too big and too crowded to satisfy.  So he's on the hunt for an alternative. He thinks Belmont's music-business program might be the ticket. 

Friday, we spent the day checking it out, and Nashville, too. 

Nashville ... wow.  More on that later. 

Belmont?   Quite the place.   What we saw:

- Students absolutely amazed at the networking opportunities given all of the artists and studios nearby.   Riley (left), a friend of a friend to Zach (right), is an ex-KU music student who transferred to Belmont's music-biz program.  He joined us for lunch ... and laid out in much detail the contacts he's made in the trade in just three months.

- Amazing facilities, including the lower floor of the university's business school, which is tricked out with state-of-the-art music-studio space.  (Zach gets a demo, right.) 

- An enthusiasm shared by all of the students that they're in a special place, at a special time in the industry. 

- That bass players -- and Zach is one -- are in high demand among the students who like to play in bands while they pursue their professions. Guitarists are a dime a dozen on campus. Bass players? Coveted like gold. 

Next: Broadway and more.