Clarksville Family Magazine — May 2007
Only its second edition, the May 2007 Clarksville Family Magazine lands an interview with the nationally charting band Building 429 and reflects on what very young children are capable of.
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Barely two months old, the young magazine pulled off a genuine coup: Cliff Lavergne's interview with Building 429 — Jesse Garcia, Jason Roy and Michael Anderson — the Christian rock band that had broken through nationally with “Glory Defined” and would later win a Dove Award. Catching a rising national act for issue number two was an early signal that this magazine meant to cover the community's music and culture in earnest.
The arts coverage carried on with a look at the work and thinking of artist Billy Renkl, who is quoted on his conviction that “art can contain real information,” alongside a discussion of composition, color use and color relationships — substantive writing about art from a publication only weeks old.
A reflective parenting piece turned over the surprising competence of small children, recalling that Russian children were once taught to fold and put away their own clothes by the age of two — the kind of thoughtful, lived-in writing that gave the magazine its early warmth.
Additional feature and community coverage round out the issue, steering readers toward the local culture and creativity the magazine would go on to champion.
As only the second issue ever printed, May 2007 holds particular weight in the archive: it catches the exact moment a brand-new magazine set out to prove it could last — landing a national band, engaging seriously with local art, and earning the reader trust it would keep re-earning for years. That a publication this new could sit down with a band climbing the national charts says a great deal about its ambition, and about a Clarksville arts scene with deeper roots than outsiders might guess.
That a magazine barely two months old could sit down with a band then climbing the national charts, and give a working local painter the same serious attention, said a great deal about its ambitions from the very start.
Table of Contents
- Interview The Fridge (p. 8)
- Feature (p. 14)
- Arts (p. 17)
