CJW: I’m working toward that. So do you hang out with a lot of other musicians here?
TLC: Pretty much. I mean, it’s a good chunk of friends are musical – either they’re people who are the musicians themselves, or they’re the people that are in the band that tour. Like one of my friends isn’t in any band, but he tours and plays with bands all the time. Like, he’ll go out on the road with a different band every month. That’s one of the hard parts about being here, because you want to have a party or whatever, but “Oh, we have to figure out when so-and-so’s going to be in town, and it has to be within two days of him getting back in town because that’s when this other guy’s going to be leaving” and that kind of thing. It’s pretty crazy but it’s pretty much a lot of independent musicians, sort of that kind of circle. I’m not hanging out with like Charlie Daniels or anything like that.
CJW: Darn! I was going to have you get his autograph or something!
TLC: We do tend to run in pretty creative circles, which is not that hard to do in Nashville because pretty much everyone is creative.
CJW: As much music as there is here, what do you guys do for fun?
TLC: Usually not go to shows.
CJW: That’s your life, your job.
TLC: We’ll go see our friends play, but most of the time it’s one of those things where you go and you just talk to the people who are there. You don’t even pay attention to the show. Shows have to really command your attention here. People get bored so quickly – they could see this on any bar stage in Nashville. I have a group of friends here, we just have a really fun time. Like for Valentine’s Day, we had a big dinner where everyone kind of dressed up, candlelight, dancing, all that stuff. It was awesome. There were about 25 of us there. I think the next thing that we’re planning is – I don’t know what they’re going to call it, but it’s like where you’re going to (laughs) you dress like you did in high school and (laughs) go to this party – like you have to try to dress like you did in your high school yearbook picture. We just come up with stupid entertaining ideas. But we also take vacations together, we always go to Florida in the summer.
CJW: What part?
TLC: Destin. We’ll go to Destin, rent out a couple condos, we’ll go down there and forty of us will go or whatever.
CJW: Awesome. Destin’s got the largest outlet mall in the country.
TLC: Really? Good to know. We just got back last weekend from – one of my friends who is a musician has a lake house in Virginia. So we’ll pack up a few cars, go over and spend the weekend at the lake house. I love to wake board, we’ll go wake boarding – jet skis, stuff like that. Just getting away, having a break. We love that. We go out to dinner a lot. Sitting around and playing music is not a big thing that we do. We do that occasionally – like, okay, let’s just hang out and you play something new. What are you writing lately? But we don’t tend to talk about music a lot. (“I Wonder” plays again.) Kind of like if all your friends were lawyers, you might get sick of discussing law cases all the time.
CJW: Understandable. Sounds like a fun group, though!
TLC: It’s so much fun, it’s so much. We have a blast.
CJW: I haven’t found a real community, faith-wise, in Tuscaloosa yet, which is frustrating because I’ve been there for just over a year now. It’s weird being out of college but still in college because you either have the singles group with all the 40-year-olds or you could go to the married class, if you were married, but I’m not, so I’m excluded – or you can go to the college group with the 18-year-olds. So I’ve been going to a Methodist church – which is funny because I’m not Methodist, it’s really funny learning from another denomination’s perspective – but it has professionals and grad students and law students. But it’s still really different at the same time. So that sounds really cool.
TLC: Getting involved in my group of friends here was the best thing that could’ve happened. ‘Cause I knew a lot of people before I moved here. The day I moved here, 30 people were at my house when I pulled up, ready to unload the truck. That night, by the time I went to bed, all my clothes were hung up in my closet. Pictures were hung on the wall, all my furniture was in place, dishes in the cabinet, they came and cleaned my shower. I had a whole 15 foot Ryder truck full of stuff, and they were all just at my house ready to unload it. They are amazing, they are amazing. That is why I moved to Nashville. There’s a whole bunch of single people here. In our group of 40 or 50 friends, there’s one married couple and one dating couple. Everybody else is single. We have a list-serv e-mail thing, and everyone has access to it. You can be like, “Hey, it’s a beautiful day outside today, let’s go to Centennial Park for lunch and throw a Frisbee,” and send out the e-mail at ten o’clock in the morning. At noon, there will be 15 people there hanging out for lunch. It is so great.
CJW: That is absolutely incredible.
TLC: It really is. We have so much fun.
CJW: I am so jealous!
TLC: You’ve got to come here!
CJW: Okay, so I’m moving next week… I should probably finish the semester. Next month.
TLC: It’s amazing, we have a blast. They’re all super supportive of just everybody – everybody’s music, everybody’s gift. People who aren’t musicians…
DB: Tara?
TLC: Yes sir?