warner music nashville’s fount lynch is still like a kid in a music candy store

as senior vice president of publicity, lynch’s love of music helps him shape the careers of some of country music’s top artists.

janel shoun-smith | 10/23/2023

when lipscomb alumnus fount lynch (bs ’03) had the opportunity to meet with country music star jo dee messina to discuss her rejuvenated career in 2022, he took the opportunity to let her know that he saw her perform on lipscomb’s campus, as an 18-year-old freshman in 1998.

messina, a beloved country star who had a string of hits in the 1990s and early 2000s, remembered the performance. “she is a believer, so we had the most spiritual conversation,” said lynch, who described the moment as a thrill, even for a guy who spends his days promoting the careers of country artists such as cole swindell, dan + shay and ashley mcbryde.
 
it’s all just another day at the office for lynch, who became warner music nashville’s senior vice president of publicity in june 2022. even for a lifelong music publicity man, the months since his arrival at warner have been a whirlwind, he said.

the popularity of cole swindell’s hit, “she had me at heads carolina,” an ode to messina’s 1990’s super hit “heads carolina, tails california,” led to a successful campaign by lynch and his staff to book messina and swindell to sing a memorable duet of his song at november’s country music awards (cma).

swindell’s hit landed at no. 7 on billboard’s year-end country chart and was the second-longest-running no. 1 song on country radio in 2022. lynch’s department also coordinated publicity to promote cody johnson, who won his first cma award for music video of the year and single of the year, and to promote mcbryde, who won a grammy for best country duo/group performance in february.

all that and he coordinated publicity for the release of dan + shay’s fifth album, bigger houses, including the hit song “save me the trouble.”

not bad for a guy who grew up on a farm in fosterville, tennessee, in rutherford county, who says he can’t sing or play an instrument, but he did have a passion for discovering, listening to and talking about music.

even in his childhood, “i consumed music at a rate that most people don’t,” said lynch, describing how his mom would send him off to turtles music in murfreesboro for him to buy cassette tapes. “she saw that my candy store was the music store,” he said.

“i remember the first time i heard a song, it just grabbed me. it was a guitar riff in a rock song, and i just knew that was me. it just fed me in a way,” he says. “i realized pretty early, i was not going to be a rock star, but i really was interested in the music business… whether i was working in this business or not, i would still be talking about music anyway.”

as a teen, he took the initiative. he walked into a small record label in murfreesboro called sponge bath records and asked, “what do i need to do to work here?” they brought him on as an unpaid intern to pass out stickers at shows and other small tasks. so at lipscomb, when the marketing major needed an internship in his junior year, he knew he wanted it to be at a record label.

through the mentor of his college roommate, aron wright, now a successful songwriter in nashville, lynch got a list of marketing contacts at nashville record labels and began working the list. mercury records was the first to call him back. he became an intern for tom lord, who was the manager of marketing at the time.

and thus began a career filled with generous people whom lynch refers to as mentors, who taught him the ins and outs of a career in music, even as the industry was changing and evolving all around them. a year after his internship for college credit began, a part-time position opened up at mercury’s publicity department, which focuses on relationships with mass media outlets, and lynch jumped at the opportunity.

“there i was. i didn't really know anything about pr, but i started learning how to make press kits. really it was all the mundane work of making copies of press articles, press releases and bios, but i had some really great mentors there. when given the opportunity, they would include me in events or take me with them to media days,” said lynch. “that work really clicked with me; it made sense to me, having a cause and effect… so at that point, i said, ‘yeah, this is my path.””

upon his graduation from lipscomb, jim flammia, then vice president of artist and media relations at lost highway records, a subsidiary of mercury records, and the man lynch says taught him the most, hired lynch to be his assistant at lost highway. “he told me, you're going to be answering my phones, doing my expenses and coordinating my travel, but i'm going to teach you, if you want to learn… he really held true to that, and he trained me for 10 years… still to this day, i do things the way he taught me,” said lynch.

coming along for his climb up the music business career ladder was lynch’s wife, krystal hollingshead lynch (bs ’03, bsn ’08), now a nurse practitioner, whom he met as a senior at lipscomb.

lynch entered the music business at a time of technological and corporate upheaval. in the chaos stirred up by music piracy and the advent of itunes, mergers and acquisitions of record labels were frequent. lynch’s home base, mercury records nashville/lost highway records, merged with mca nashville, then mercury/mca/lost highway merged globally with emi/capitol, eventually forming what is present day universal music group nashville.

he remembers as a teen seeing the staff at sponge bath records huddled around a computer watching a presentation about something called an “mp3” and how it could hold an entire song in a small  digital file. “of course, we all thought, ‘yeah, that’s crazy!’” he said.

he remembers a representative from apple presenting to universal executives how itunes and the ipod were going to be the answer to piracy. “of course, we're all looking at each other like, ‘that's never going to work,’” he said. digital technology proved to become a much larger slice of the music industry, but traditional television is still something labels still rely on to validate the success of an artist and “get us through the doors for those big performances,” lynch said. 

over the span of almost 14 years, lynch’s role had climbed to the director level at universal music group nashville. he worked with a large roster of artists including luke bryan, eric church and lady a (formerly lady antebellum). his first high-profile campaign was the launch of kacey musgraves. it was his work with musgraves that caught the eye of sony music nashville, where he became a vice president of media in 2014.

at sony he worked with kenny chesney and miranda lambert and helped launch maren morris. his work with morris led him to leave sony in 2018 to work with red light management, managing the careers of morris and a few other artists. he continued with a blend of artist management and publicity until 2022, when warner music nashville came calling.

warner music’s nashville branch represents about 40 artists. it takes an army to promote each artist, said lynch. one department focuses on obtaining radio play, another department focuses on social media content, one group develops merchandise and marketing materials, and lynch’s publicity team takes on pitching stories to media, booking media appearances, working with artists on talking points for interviews and coordinating features in magazines.

all with an overall strategy in mind, he said. “my approach to anything in media is that it’s got to be at the right time. does it fall within the overall plan? we’ve got to keep our artists relevant, while working with the landscape we have in front of us for that artist.”

two decades into his career and overseeing a staff of publicists, lynch still feels the thrill of working with music stars. “you know, in college i listened to kenny chesney just like everyone else, and now i’m getting to work with the guy!” he said.

many times lynch was listening to those music stars along with his friends in sigma iota delta (sid), whom he says took him under their wing, made an impact on him spiritually and emotionally and “helped me come out of my shell.” he counts many of the club’s members among his dear friends to this day.

“those guys were my support group, and hopefully i was theirs,” he says of his clubmates, with whom he still plays golf and fantasy football. “we know that when something bad happens, at least one of us is going to be there. i don't think you get that anywhere else. i think that is something lipscomb really promotes: relationships.”

lynch went on to become the president of sid and focused on mentoring the younger lipscomb students joining the club during that time. 

“those guys did that for me,” he said of the sid men who welcomed him when he was new to campus. “i couldn't have gone out and just made all these friends on my own. i had really great people and that has carried me to this career.

“great people mentor you, and then move on, and then you can do that to others. but no matter how far up the ladder you go, or how old you get, that ladder continues to move, and there are always people there who can help mentor you, if you just allow them to do it.”