From classroom to country: Grady Flinn’s road to music

BY HELENA KNUTSON

Marketing Executive

Nashville, Tennessee, can be a scary place to move to from Stephenville, Texas, but for Grady Flinn, it was a crucial decision for his music career.

Flinn, originally a student at Tarleton State University studying economics, recently moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to jump start his music career.

Growing up, Flinn had always been an adamant music lover. His love for the art had run in his family, and because of that, it helped him nurse his passion into purpose.

“Growing up, I had kind of a musical background, I guess, on my mom’s side,” Flint said. “My grandpa was in a band called the ‘Swing Kings.’ I’ve been in love with music since I came out of the womb. It means everything to me.”

Flinn believes music is his true calling. Through music, his abilities and confidence have been able to flourish. 

“I think it definitely has something to do with God — how quickly I got better with the guitar and singing and just understanding music and generating it from myself,” Flinn said. “It was definitely something of a calling from God. I think I was born to do it.”

Flinn decided to leave Tarleton to move to the “Music City” after realizing his purpose.

“I couldn’t imagine myself doing anything other than singing,” Flinn said. “It didn’t matter to me if I was sitting on a stage with nobody there, barely supporting myself, or whether I was selling out a stadium — regardless, it’s what I'm going to do.”

Flinn moved to Nashville over Christmas break, and since then, he has been working, writing music and playing open mics and bars to promote his music.

“It’s the ‘Music City,’ which is phenomenal, you know,” Flinn said. “It’s so fun to go to Broadway and explore and listen to music everywhere you go. Music is seeping out of the cracks around Broadway.”

Many may recognize Flinn from his performances around Stephenville at establishments such as Fuzzy’s and even the Whataburger late at night. You also may have seen him strumming his guitar around campus. Whatever it may be, Flinn’s music and time in Stephenville played a role in making him the performer he is today.

“My first week in (at Tarleton), I had my guitar, and I was playing in some random girl’s dorm,—her and 20 other people—and we had such a good time. It was like a concert in there, and it was so much fun that it boosted my confidence,” Flinn said.

However, Flinn hasn’t always been so confident in his musical abilities. His roommate, Joseph Cook, a junior accounting major at Tarleton, remembers when he first met Flinn and how nervous he was to play for him.

“I was in the Austin area, and I knew he was going to be my roommate,” Cook said. “So, I reached out to him, and we had talked a little bit… He was in Liberty Hill, which was really close. So, he just pulled up to where I was at, and he just brought his guitar, and I was like, ‘Okay, so I guess you’re really into this.’” 

Cook could tell Flinn was a little nervous to play that first night of meeting. 

“It was just me and three of my friends, and he was kind of nervous, but he obviously wanted to do it,” Cook said. “By the end of the semester, throughout the year, he was singing in front of 20-50 people and wasn’t nervous about it at all.”

Flinn’s musical talent and success grew throughout the semester. He went from being scared of performing in front of a few friends to filming covers of him playing songs in the student center; one of his most popular videos being a cover of “Sailor Song” by Gigi Perez.

“He didn’t really like college that much, he was more focused on music,” Cook said. “We’re so close, so we were just talking all the time, and then I was like, ‘If you really want to pursue music, you need to start pushing out videos and have a plan,’” Cook said. 

One of Flinn’s most popular platforms to promote his music is TikTok.

“Him and some other guys would play, and he just started making more TikTok videos,” Cook said. “And then whenever he saw the response to that, that’s when he kind of decided to go to Nashville.”

Abril Barrientos, a freshman nursing major, has followed Flinn through Instagram and is a huge fan of his covers after meeting the singer through a “Big Little Basket.”

“I met Grady Flinn through Instagram when I found out he was the one who sang to my friend for a ‘Big Little Basket’ outside of D-hall,” Barrientos said. “He sings really beautifully and one of my favorite covers that he’s done is ‘Do I Wanna Know’ by Arctic Monkeys. He posts on Instagram pretty frequently, and he has a pretty high following amount. I’ve been following him on Instagram since October.

Flinn doesn’t only do covers — his songwriting ability grew during his time in Stephenville, and the environment of Nashville is sprouting that growth even further.

“In Nashville, there is literally music seeping out from under the concrete,” Flinn said. “Like, it’s everywhere. Personally (for my music), I come up with little melodies just to kickstart the whole thing. It's really just like poetry.”

Flinn continues to write music everyday while in Nashville.

If you are interested in listening to some of Flinn's songs or following his journey in Nashville, you can follow him on Instagram @flinnmuiscofficial