Not bad for a night’s work playing music.
Every night in Nashville, hundreds of musicians trek to the bars, hotels and street corners of Lower Broadway to set up their tip jar and hope they get enough in tips to pay the bills for the month. They usually end the night with a bunch of $1 bills, maybe some $5’s and $20’s on a good night.
But it’s not often that somebody finds a $10,000 check in their guitar case.
Well, that’s what happened to Morgan Clark on Monday after she finished performing at the Holiday Inn Express on Broadway. Clark, a New Hampshire native who moved to Nashville five years ago to pursue her dream of making music, said that at first she thought somebody was playing a joke on her (would have been a pretty shitty joke, tbh), but that she soon identified the man who had written the check.
As I turned around and looked back at my audience, a gentleman sitting at the back of the room stood up and headed towards me. When he identified himself as the person who put the check in my guitar case, I was speechless. He insisted on remaining completely anonymous and simply said: ‘I love your music, I love your voice and the way you entertain … and I just want you to do me one favor … Don’t ever lose your innocence.”
Pretty cool stuff.
Clark met up with the man the next day at a bank, where he sent her a wire transfer for the $10,000 tip. She says she plans to donate $1,000 to the Salvation Army in hopes that other people will match her donation.
If you’ve ever visited these Nashville hotels, you know how hard it must be for the performers who sit there night after night and play for the few people who are actually paying attention, while everybody else looks at their computers or cell phones. You really have to connect with your audience, because the only money you’ll be making is what’s in your tip jar at the end of the night.
It looks like Morgan Clark was able to connect with at least one person in her audience. And it paid off BIG time.
