getyourgoodnews/taylorswiftqc

Staff report
Get Your Good News.Com

From boarding the bus with Glenview Junior High School's band to perform
at Florida's Disneyworld as part of James Weir's award-winning band in 8th
grade to climbing aboard Taylor Swift's tour bus to travel to Minneapolis,
Des Moines and Moline less than 9 years later is a long and improbable
journey for a Quad City girl.

But Stacey Wilson (daughter of Connie and Craig Wilson of East Moline
and a 2005 UTHS grad), a new member of Taylor Swift's Management
Team, will be visiting Moline's U.S. Cellular Civic Center (formerly the Mark
of the Quad Cities) with Taylor Swift's show on May 8th, traveling aboard
the tour bus to Minneapolis, Des Moines and Moline before returning to
Nashville.

The tour group (dancers, musicians, roadies) sleeps on the bus while it
drives 12 hours to Minneapolis and after the show they drive to Des Moines
and play there, and then drive to Moline for the May 8th show, returning to
Nashville afterwards. (When Ms. Swift played Cedar Rapids after the 2008
flood, she donated $100,000 to the community for flood relief.)

Stacey's journey towards a career in Music Business began in 5th grade at
St. Anne's Catholic School (Our Lady of Grace) in East Moline, when she
selected the alto saxophone as her band instrument. Her passion for music
really began even before that, at 3, when, she was picking out the tune from
the movie The Little Mermaid by ear on the piano at home. Her early
interest in and talent for music led her to take private piano lessons for 10
years (from age 5 to age 15); she also took saxophone lessons from fifth
grade through high school.

Her mother Connie said, "One summer I rented a different woodwind
instrument every week of summer. Stacey would pick up the clarinet or the
oboe or the flute and teach herself to play it in a week." Stacey also took
acoustic guitar lessons and sang with her classmates at St. Anne's Church
and, one year, at UTHS.

Whether she was taking private saxophone lessons from Joseph DiUlio in
his office at the Montessori School (after his retirement as coordinator of
the music program for the Moline Public School System), taking piano
lessons from his wife, or performing with David Maccabee's award-winning
United Township High School band (1st Chair Alto Saxophone her senior
year), Stacey always knew that "music fills my soul." She wanted a career
in music, which has been her enduring passion.

The problem with music as a career was this: Stacey didn't want to
perform, teach or work in a nursing home. What other careers exist in the
field of music?

The remaining area was music production and talent management: Music
Business, as the degree is called at those schools that offer it. Thus began
the search for the perfect college to prepare a student for a career in this
area. The search did not go smoothly.

Most Midwestern colleges and universities either didn't offer the degree at
all (Roosevelt College in Chicago, for instance) or offered it, but had no way
to place students in a position to get real hands-on work experience in the
field, like that provided by Belmont University in Nashville.

After one year at the University of Iowa (where she made the Dean's list),
Stacey's older brother Scott, an engineer, heard from a fellow traveler on an
airplane about Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee…a school
reputed to be one of the three best colleges in the United States for Music
Business.

True, Belmont was far smaller at approximately 5,000 students than the
20,000+ Big Ten school (Iowa) Stacey had been attending, but sometimes
you have to go where the action is. And the Music Business action is
definitely at Belmont University, which was named one of the top two
schools to watch by U.S. News & World Report after its enrollment soared
80% between 2000 and today. The school offers 75 areas of study, with 20
Master's degree programs and 3 doctoral programs, but the music program,
with graduates like Brad Paisley, is the major draw. Belmont University is
also one of the few schools currently offering classes in songwriting.

A quick flight to Nashville took place in the spring of Stacey's freshman
year during March Madness and Easter break with Stacey and her mom
checking out the campus. The school and town were an instant hit. She
transferred to Belmont after completing her freshman year in Iowa City.
Now, she's fielding phone calls and working for Taylor Swift, one of the
music business' biggest stars. She's traveling with the tour, and, at 22 (and
just 8 months out of college), she is an entry-level member of Team Taylor,
126 members strong.

Belmont was originally founded as a Baptist Woman's College, and the
Belmont Mansion remains on campus today, the equivalent of Iowa City's
Old Capitol building. But the bustling school has long since outgrown those
parochial beginnings. Many famous Nashville artists have adopted the
school, and its Curb Event Center, named after successful record producer
Mike Curb (The Mike Curb Congregation), who was a former Lieutenant
Governor of California, allowed the school to build a state-of-the-art $52
million facility and to produce talents such as "American Idol's" Melinda
Dolittle.

The unique ability to place its students in actual internships within the
music business on Music Row has made Belmont University one of the
best launching pads for a career in the music industry. A certain number of
hours, per semester, are required to be spent by students within actual
music businesses in unpaid internships, but there is a limit as to how many
hours of interning credit can be used towards a degree.

The degree, when granted, is a business degree, with a music emphasis.
Students take all the normal business courses leading to a business
degree, such as accounting and calculus, but they are also the
beneficiaries of being located within one of the most musically active cities
in the nation, with guest lecturers like Ben Folds and Vince Gill often
stepping in to share their real-world experiences.

Stacey graduated from UTHS in 2005 and from Belmont University on
August 14th. She spent the spring of her junior year in New York City, living
in Brooklyn and interning in Manhattan at Broadcast Music, Inc. while also
taking classes at what is known as Belmont East. [There is also a Belmont
West in Los Angeles].

During her internships in 2008, Stacey made all the travel arrangements for
country artists Justin Townes Earle and Chris Knight, as an intern for Thirty
Tigers Artist Management. She also has worked as an administrative
assistant for American Songwriter Magazine, writing press releases and
assisting with their website. Happy Salmon Productions, a Nashville
booking, management and event promotion group, has employed Ms.
Wilson to assist with booking shows for local artists around the Southeast.
During her internship for Rick Clark Productions, Stacey assisted with
research for the XM radio show Marty Stuart's American Odyssey, and
earned a production credit.

Mr. Clark, who operates out of a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home in
Nashville, is a Music Supervisor who selects the music for movies. He was
the music supervisor for the Academy Award-nominated Jason
Reitman-directed film Up in the Air and advised on Juno. As part of her
duties, Stacey would read scripts for the upcoming movies Mr. Clark was
working on and would help suggest appropriate music for certain scenes.
She also organized and maintained Mr. Clark's private library of literally
thousands of CD's and records. While serving as his chief intern, Stacey
earned a credit for editorial work on his book Mixing, Recording, and
Producing Techniques of the Pros.

Stacey also worked in the Music Business Dean's office while an
undergraduate, as a Sprint sales associate, and has worked at such music
festivals as Bonnaroo, the Americana Folk Festival, the International
Bluegrass Music Association, the CMA Music Festival, and the Next Big
Nashville. While in high school, Stacey was among the writers for the
Dispatch's "South of Twenty" columns and was named Future Journalist
from UTHS in the Quad City Times graduation story that year. She was
also a member of Belmont University's Grammy University Network.

Now, Stacey may get to travel with her 2-years-younger boss as she wins
real Grammies onstage. Stacey called home to East Moline after her first
day on the job, asking her folks, "Guess what I have in the back seat of my
car?" The answer was 5 Grammies, just mailed to headquarters.

Taylor Swift's Fearless spent eleven non-consecutive weeks at Number One
on the Billboard 200. (No album has spent more time at Number One since
2000.) Billboard also named Ms. Swift Artist of the Year in 2009 and Taylor
Swift won Album of the Year honors at the 2010 Grammies. Both Rolling
Stone and Time magazine have hailed her as a bright new star. Miss Swift
was named the 69th most powerful celebrity by Forbes magazine in 2009,
the same year she earned $18 million.

With 4 million copies sold, Swift is the best-selling musician in the United
States, (according to the Nielsen Sound Scan) and the top-selling digital
artist in music history with over 24.3 million digital tracks sold and 10
million albums sold, worldwide. And Swift's efforts to stay on top of the
recording industry are being helped by a Quad City native.

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