This program was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

I am Mike Galligan with the law offices of Galligan and Newman in McMinnville, Tennessee.

I support WCTE, the Upper Cumberland's own PBS station, because I believe it is important to create entertaining TV programs that also promote lifelong learning and understanding.

When I support WCTE, I know that I am helping our Upper Cumberland community for generations to come.

The law offices of Galligan and Newman provide clients with large firm expertise and small, firm, personalized care and service.

In this episode of Where Stories Live, we journey to Sewanee, Tennessee to explore the life of Todd Mayo, the creative mind behind the beloved PBS music series The Cavern Sessions.

And now author.

Todd reflects on his idyllic childhood filled with outdoor adventures in play.

Sharing insight into his role as a middle child in his family.

I was born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1972.

I shared a womb with.

I call him my womb mate.

But I came into this world just in front of my twin brother, Justin.

And there was an older brother there, Denton.

A younger brother came later.

Griffin and my sister.

We wanted a point guard because one more we would have had the basketball team, but mama got a girl.

And so Katie was born in 1980, so grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, and in the 70s.

And then I was eight years old in 1980.

So I'd say my childhood and formative years from 8 to 18 was literally during the 80s.

So I was a child of the 80s.

Growing up in Memphis, I grew up, it felt like it was one big backyard.

There was no fences, and we just grew up, you know, outside playing, you know, you hear that's kind of a cliche now.

It makes you feel old, but it was just like you'd leave in the morning.

You'd come home at night.

Just as idyllic a childhood as one could imagine and just filled with with play, pleasure and play.

Just having fun in the neighborhood.

So I am a middle child and, middle children, I guess.

They try on a lot of hats because they're not sure where they fit in the family dynamic.

I wasn't the oldest, I wasn't the youngest, I wasn't the youngest boy.

You know, it was interesting because I would, you know, I could kind of be the comedian in the family at times.

Or I could be, somewhat of a of a leader.

Being a middle child, I think has informed, my perspective in life because I didn't really have a defined, role.

So I just would sort of just roll with the flow.

My passions in life.

When I was a child, I loved sports.

I loved the University of Tennessee, I loved playing backyard football, and I played organized football up until middle school.

I love to read, I loved music.

I was a big fan of J.R.R.

Tolkien and, the Lord of the rings.

And, going down that rabbit hole into mythic tales.

As a boy, I remember loving King Arthur and, you know, reading.

And I love just hanging out in the neighborhood.

You know, video games came out when I was a kid and just, playing games and hanging out with my friends.

I never had anything I was really good at, I was, very average, in my grades, and in sports, but I would say upon kind of reflection or was something I was, really good at and that was, daydreaming.

I was always my head was always kind of off somewhere else, untethered from, the present moment.

And I always did have some kind of a little hustle or, you know, entrepreneurial streak.

You know, people were always trying to temper, my, optimism and enthusiasm.

So, I did not that I thought this at the time, I was more, hushed and shushed and, that I wasn't anything else.

But looking back on it, I'd say I probably was pretty good at just, you know, being optimistic.

I never really wanted to be anything when I grew up because I never wanted to grow up.

I really didn't.

I think when I reflect and contemplate what I thought at the time, there never was a time where I thought, I want to be this or be that or anything.

I definitely had that kind of Peter Pan syndrome where I just didn't want to grow up.

I was happy, being a kid, and I didn't really, you know, some kids who talked to, you know, they have a path.

They can see the future.

They can see growing up.

They're on a path of growing out.

There can be responsible, and they're just like, whether it's their grades.

And I'll go to this college and I do this.

They're just thinking about the future, as children, which is fine and which is great.

It's the way that they're born.

And I think that sets a lot of people into a path of accomplishing their goals.

That was not me.

I was the exact opposite of that.

I never really fit in much.

I kept about it, and when I did, I didn't want to think about it.

Life can throw some challenges.

Yet Todd reveals how he found hope in difficult times at the age of 29, he shares how caring for a family member instilled a renewed sense of purpose in him.

This feeling was amplified in May of 2008 during a visit to a cave in Middle Tennessee.

Upon reflection, some of the, significant events, from my childhood, were, rooted in, tragedy.

My best friend in fifth at five years old, Kevin Davis.

Miss Crutchfield was the school bus driver, bus teacher.

And she was we would all laugh because she would hit the same mailbox every single week, you know, at the same place.

And she was just an old woman, but she wasn't paying attention.

And unfortunately, one day he wasn't paying attention either.

And he got run over and killed.

It was very traumatic.

And again, I don't I remember vividly, describing it, but I don't remember, it affected me, but I was told it did.

My mother said my twin brother and I had very, bad dreams about that.

And so she sent us to go spend the summer to go be with our, grandmother down in Florida.

And that's first time I ever saw the ocean.

And I was like, oh, my God, what is this like?

So, like, I don't really remember.

I think it was a wonderful thing that she did because I think the trauma of that, was transmuted into like these wonderful memories of my grandmother and seeing the ocean for the first time.

And just like it was wonderful.

So it's like, I know that it was a defining way and thing in my life at that age, but what it really was, was finding light out of darkness.

And so I really appreciate my mom and my grandmother, who's passed away for for doing that because, I don't I don't think it had a major psychological effect on me.

I think what it really was, was it gave me a love for the ocean and like, and the healing power of the ocean.

So, and then a couple of other things from my childhood, negative things.

When I was ten, you know, we went to these private schools.

I used to have a Izod on my shirt, you know, or a polo.

You know, we'd take family vacations, we'd go down to Myrtle Beach, we'd do this.

We're kind of living a lifestyle I don't think we could afford.

And that became apparent when, my father was, arrested and went to jail for embezzling.

And so that led, a year later, to my parents getting divorced.

You know, those were some of the tougher defining moments, but, again, back to that sort of theme of finding light out of darkness.

While those were tough situations to go through as a child, I found, you know, it was very soon after that that I started really getting into music.

My life changed, dramatically.

And, on a very specific day, a point in time.

It was January the 28th, 2001.

I was 29 years old.

There's a great mythologist, Joseph Campbell, and he talks about the hero's journey and how in literature and mythology, across all human beings, across all time, it follows this certain mythic structure and that mythic structure.

There's 12 stages of it, and funny enough, you know, one of them, the sixth one or eighth one or whatever is called journey to the end.

Most cave like literally, where the hero goes inside of a cave and has this transcendental experience, you know, in the darkness to the light.

And there's even a, you know, famous saying that the, the cave you fear often holds the treasure you seek.

And that literally happened to me and metaphorically happened to me.

And I actually experienced something on that day.

In January 28th, 2001, I got down on my knees and I said, God, I'm not living the life I'm supposed to be living, I know it, it's about me.

And I just would, like, show me the way, please.

And it didn't just happen, like, with one thing, but like, within, like a month or two, I was actually a full time caregiver for like, four different people.

And it was very humbling in the sense that I was 29 years old, and I thought I was trying to set the world on fire and make money or whatever, but it wasn't about me anymore.

And the darndest thing happened.

My heart happened and it changed me profoundly forever.

Because in my book, I called the chapters.

It's one of the last ones.

It's called Leggo My Ego, but I sort of cease to exist.

And an ego sense, meaning that I wasn't on any kind of a quest for self enlightenment or self-realization.

It wasn't about me anymore.

And when that happened, everything just changed.

And I got everything I ever could have dreamed up.

It took years that did happen, but, my heart was so open.

I got married then I had a child, and then I had another child.

And those children just gave me such a sense of purpose to, like, make the world a better place.

And even though I always had this wonderful, optimistic streak, I also kind of had a little black cloud that was always following it.

And a lot of choices I made.

My own fault were things that were keeping me from maybe my fate or destiny, or what I was supposed to be doing.

My purpose in life is another way to say it.

And so I found that purpose by just literally taking care of other people, not thinking about myself.

And so that's really how I got put on the course of, finding my destiny.

My whole life has had a soundtrack of music, passively just riding around on my parents station wagon.

In the 70s, there was a soundtrack of all sorts of different things, but music, is something that I experienced this early.

I'm not a musician, but it has profound effects on me.

Emotionally and viscerally.

There's nothing that I feel, more in life than what music has the capacity to make me feel.

So to have walked into a cave on this, you know, hero's journey and had an idea to turn it into a music venue, was just one of those wonderful, serendipitous things that really combined, what I loved and what I was, you know, had enough what I was good at, you know, because by the time I walked in that cave, I had spent years in the advertising industry and years kind of as a hustler and, you know, you know, making things happen and trying different entrepreneurial schemes.

So if I would have come in that cave, you know, five years before, ten years before, I might have had the idea, but I wouldn't have really had the confidence, audacity, experience to actually pull it all together in like six weeks, which is what happened.

So, and what I didn't know was as important as what I did, because I had no experience in the music business at that time.

And so, yeah, that was that was a wonderful, wonderful day.

Todd shares his journey of going cave deep, a concept that helped him build valuable partnerships that led to his inaugural music concert in 2008.

Fast forward 16 years, and his dedication to music has earned him multiple Emmy Awards, nationally recognized PBS series, and a globally renowned music establishment.

So here we are today, and we're at the Caverns in Grundy County, Tennessee.

We've been here since 2018 March of 2018 we opened up with Billy Strings.

It's a continuing theme of my life where one sort of maybe potentially negative thing leads to another, or one challenge is overcome by pivoting.

And so where we were at before was wonderful, but it wasn't ideal.

We didn't I didn't own the cave.

I wasn't there for business.

It was very hard to get things in there to do shows.

You couldn't have a beer.

There was no alcohol there.

And so it was just it was too small.

We had outgrown it.

So many reasons that I needed to find my own cave.

And in 2016, my right hand man, Joe Lurgio, the general manager of the caverns.

And the best decision I ever made was to hire him.

He heard about this cave in Grundy County, Tennessee, and we moved here and officially opened the caverns.

Todd and I have worked together for about 12 years.

We go deep cave.

The, kind of what he would call his right hand, helped build the caverns with him and now help manage the caverns on a day to day basis.

I describe Todd as, laser focused on, achieving goals and having an idea of what something is going to end up like, and then making sure that, we all get it done.

So it was quite evident to me early on in the history of Bluegrass Underground that it had the potential to really be what I visualized it as, which is a world famous music venue and a world famous event.

Very soon two things happened early that, kind of made me think that way.

One, the very first show that we did on August 16th, 2008, a guy came to interview me because he had seen in the Cookeville Herald Citizen, and I came down to do a radio story about a guy I'd read about in the paper who was doing, a concerts in a cave a quarter of a mile inside of a mountain, 300ft beneath the top of the mountain.

I thought, well, you know, he said, what's your real vision for this place?

And I had already, conceived of it as a radio show.

But I grew up on PBS.

I love PBS and Austin City Limits and all that.

And I said, you know, imagine doing a show on PBS like, Austin City Limits, but unplugged, you know, from this cave.

And he said, and I said, well, just matter of fact, that's what I do.

I produce shows for PBS.

And he said, what was your name again?

And he said, Todd and I just laughed and laughed because I said, that's my name, you know, and I can remember that.

And so we shook hands that day and he followed up with me.

It took us a couple of years, but I just early on said, man, this is going to be a TV show on PBS and it's going to it's going to be a big deal.

But finally, Todd Jarrell said, you need to go with me to Cookeville to meet Becky Maghera.

And I remember I met Becky and I remember what a dynamo she was.

And she had just gotten a brand new, like a half $1 million high definition video rig.

And we literally said to Becky, how about we on its maiden voyage, take all of this equipment down and do a dirty hole in the ground and do a pilot.

And she said, yeah, let's do it.

And then all of a sudden, the director, Jim Yockey, said, I'm in, who's a famous director and the great lighting designer that Todd Jarrell knew from Cookeville that somebody introduced him to, is Allen Branton, and he's one of the most amazing lighting designers in the history of music on television and Super Bowl halftime shows.

And he says, I'm in.

And again, it was like moth to a flame.

It's like this whole crew came together of people.

The artists, Mike Ferris and McCrary sisters came out.

We shot a pilot, showed it to PBS.

They loved it, and it was just like, wow.

And the power of television, too, you know, it's like having your dreams come true.

So take this guy that's a 11 year old boy.

He's dealing with his parents and scandal and his parents getting divorced and, you know, darkness.

And he is sitting there, listening to U2 and the red rocks and under blood red sky and watching PBS and, you know, all of a sudden it comes full circle.

And so in that sense, when I think about the fact that I never really did dream of what I wanted to be when I grow up, I think if you really want to nail down that, that little 11 year old me and says, now what do you want to do?

And you give them an option of, well, be the coach of the University of Tennessee or, play center field for the Yankees or, own the Magic cave, or people come from all over the world and, produce television on PBS for he'd have taken that one.

So I don't think I was even able to dream of what ended up becoming the reality.

It's the cave of my dreams.

It holds 1200 people.

We have an amphitheater that holds 6000.

We have a show cave.

It's kind of like red rocks meets Ruby Falls.

We have a campground.

We do music festivals.

We have the art village.

The culture at the caverns is is really.

And it comes from Todd is purpose driven.

The whole idea of even combining music with a cave is because he's purpose driven.

329 00:18:35,547 --> 00:18:39,785 He could have bought a theater or opened up a black box theater in any city, Nashville, wherever, and had a nice little music venue, and there would have been a lot easier than trying to go convert a cave into a music venue.

But he knew that it had to be a deeper connection for for it to work.

And that's how everything that we do really evolves, you know, and there's deeper passion to it.

And that exists beyond just the two of us or myself.

You know, it goes to everybody that works there and everybody who comes, they see it's it's a bigger it's bigger place in all that.

That's the first thing that everybody says or feels when they go into that space.

It's it's kind of like when you go to Red rocks or, you know, you go to the pyramids or something.

This is something beyond us.

It makes you question things and think differently about the world and time and space and, and that is, that, that purpose, I think, is really core to what we do.

Yeah.

I mean, everything that we do, I feel like it's it's not just work.

It's based on friendship, family, the values that he holds so much deeper than just this is not just a job.

And that and that culture exudes through the entire business.

And I think patrons that come to the caverns feel that as well.

And then to top all that off, we've won I honestly, this sounds hubristic, but I've lost count of how many Emmys we won on the show.

I was there for many Emmys, not the first time, you know, every time we were acknowledged for those, it's just.

But acknowledge what we all knew, something, you know, we were still new at the time.

So something somebody above and larger than us was recognizing how special what we were doing, really was, whether it's for lighting or directing or entertainment or audio, we, you know, won multiple Emmys.

And it's wonderful to have, you know, I guess objective recognition for subjectively, what I consider to be, the finest presentation of music that there's ever been on television.

And that's not just for the fact that it's in a cave.

That's for the crew, that we have, the music that we present, and just how beautiful it looks.

And television is obviously a visual medium.

And, it's just it just gets your attention and it never.

I can't watch this series, without going, wow, you know, just it just doesn't it never stops.

I can't be in the cave at a show and not look around at least once and just be like, wow.

You know, I never lost that.

Even though I had the idea or whatever.

It's just like, it's like being a kid sitting around watching how beautiful it is.

You know, there's something about caves and music, you know, it's just, you know, very, very special.

Todd envisions his legacy will be that he created a space on Earth where people can unite through the power of music, and that his family will always find a sense of belonging long after he's gone.

So these days, the caverns, the big major thing we're working on is because 73% of our patrons come from outside the state of Tennessee.

We're really working on having a place for them to stay and other things for them to do a caverns lodge.

And, you know, really, transforming the caverns into just instead of a weekend destination.

Something that could go more all year round.

And that's something we'll spend the next few years working on.

We're working on infrastructure and water and sewage.

Myself personally, you know, there's somebody said there's different phases in life.

There's, self service and surrender.

And I don't know which order I'm at right now.

I know I'm kind of done with myself, but, sort of in that service and surrender phase of life, I have all my dreams that I love the caverns.

There's different projects that come up, but I'm trying to just, enjoy.

I enjoyed writing the book.

I like to, take walks.

In nature.

I'm surrounded by this beautiful campus up here in the domain, so on, and take hikes and I'm writing more.

I enjoy it so much that I write a lot, little essays or poetry or haikus or whatever.

It's something I never just I never did until I did it.

And I really enjoy expressing myself that way.

But there's a lot to enjoy.

You know, where my kids are at.

I'm very conscious of the fact that we've got a couple of years left out of that.

And so the future, for the caverns I see just really growing and ways that we can provide and continue to accommodate people literally.

You know, I do have a saying, that, I judge myself by I judge my children by.

And every employee of the caverns hears the speech.

And I'm a very nonjudgmental person.

But this key to life and what I've learned, is truly free.

Thanks.

Be cool, try hard and grow.

And I think I was born with the be cool part, meaning be optimistic, have a good attitude.

I don't have to try to do that.

Try hard.

There's definitely times I write in my book.

One of my chapters is called Riding Shotgun in the Effort mobile.

And there's been there have been times in my life I have not had the best attitude in terms of that, but I hope, just to continue on a path of growth and, you know, personally, and I think if people, read my book or listen to it on the audible, they'll say, that's really kind of what it's about.

And I hope to, just continue to, have that feeling.

And that feeling is when you're where you're supposed to be with who you're supposed to be there with, doing what you're supposed to be doing.

And as long as I can continue to have that feeling, that's the greatest feeling in the world, wherever that is, is where I want to be.

The end goal would be to have a place where our families, it's a legacy, something that my kids can can call a second home.

His kids would call a second home.

But not only that, it extends beyond just us.

Where the families that helped us build this can also come back to year after year and year after year, and come back and be proud that they were a part of building this thing.

You know, I suppose, it's interesting, I don't think in terms of legacy or anything like that, but it has occurred to me that cave is not going anywhere.

People will be coming to this cave 100 years from now, a thousand years from now, 10,000 years from now, to hear music and to think that you sort of, you know, had a vision for something and then found a bunch of other dreamers and doers to help make that a reality.

That's a huge legacy.

And I think the other thing, if I think in terms of a legacy, is when you come to the cave, it's right there on the front doors.

Most people don't see it because the doors are open when you, come to a show.

But it says in the Korean script, welcome to the caverns, where the Great Spirit brings all people together through music.

I think the power that music has to bring people together is profound.

And I think that the spirit in this world that is holy, the Cherokee called it the Great Spirit.

Christians call it the Holy Spirit.

There's many other names and many other religions for it.

Music has that ability.

So I think, the legacy, for me is to have, found a place, and help to create a place on earth where people can come together, for music long after I'm gone.

And that's a that's really a wonderful feeling.

[♪♪] [♪♪] [♪♪] [♪♪] [♪♪] I hope you enjoyed Todd's story.

You can watch the cavern session on WCTE PBS, or consider embarking on your own spiritual musical adventure in the cave throughout the year.

We look forward to seeing you next time when we go where stories live.

[♪light music♪] I am Mike Galligan with the law offices of Galligan and Newman in McMinnville, Tennessee.

I support WCTE The Upper Cumberland's own PBS station.

Because I believe it is important to create entertaining TV programs that also promote lifelong learning and understanding.

When I support WCTE, I know that I am helping our Upper Cumberland community for generations to come.

The law offices of Galligan and Newman provide clients with large firm expertise and small, firm, personalized care and service.

This program was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.