When it comes to the year-old Songbirds Foundation space on Main Street, new executive director John Dooley is quick to point out, “We don’t really advertise it as a museum anymore.”
At first glance, though, that’s exactly what it looks like. Thirty rare guitars, along with vintage pedals and amplifiers, dominate the displays in the intimate venue. A sprinkling of celebrity-owned instruments, including the Fender Dolly Parton used to write her most recent album, punctuate other exhibits.
Hanging nearby are a classic electric Hofner Beatle Bass – the type Paul McCartney played in the 1960s – along with Grand Ole Opry star Judy Lynn’s leather-wrapped Martin. Mannequins wearing brightly-colored, rhinestone-studded suits stand sentry next to the stage, and a 1967 sea foam green El Camino, cut in half, is mounted to the wall above the sound console.
“The headlights work and everything,” Dooley says. “Pair that with stage lighting and – I’m a little biased – it’s probably one of the best sound rooms in the city for both acoustic and full-band instrumentation.”
What’s more, he adds, “The place has a kind of warm, old-building musk to it, in a good way. If you could smell warm light, that’s what it would be.”
Despite Songbirds’ eye-catching memorabilia, the thing Dooley is most proud of is the foundation’s contributions to children who might not otherwise have a chance to even get near a real guitar, much less train with some of the best professionals around.
To date, Songbirds has donated more than 2,500 guitars and over 250,000 hours of free music lessons to children in 150 schools in 11 Southern states. Elementary students create lyrics alongside professional musicians, producers and writers, while high schoolers learn how to develop their work from song draft to final release.
“It’s such a privilege to run a nonprofit that has a strong mission geared toward access for students who need it,” says Dooley, 40. “We get to share art. We get to be a hot spot for culture. But everything that happens there goes straight toward funding our mission. There are other models for this, like Dollywood or Goodwill. But very rarely do you find something like that in such a tight-knit, small city like Chattanooga.”
Since late 2024, when the previous executive director stepped down, Dooley has been working to align the foundation’s mission away from simply addressing the underfunding of arts education in schools to building a “creative economy” that will, in the future, be fueled by the very students Songbirds serves.
“Our programs used to focus entirely around musicianship training and music therapy, things like that,” he says. “Now we’re actually in a position to offer skills that create a direct pipeline into the creative economy. … And when you go to see a show and support our local music economy, you also get to see the guitars.”
Broken finger alters course
A Collegedale native, Dooley has been following his own musical path since childhood.
“One of my favorite pictures of [my dad] that I still hold dear to my heart is him playing in the ’70s in a little cafe, doing singer-songwriter stuff. And I learned to play acoustic guitar pretty early, from him and from some folks that I grew up working on a golf course with.”
But a rock-climbing accident left him with a broken left index finger and stymied his ability to play. To satisfy his passion for music, he provided photography and videography for musicians, but not before an 8-year stint in South Korea after college.
The international adventure that began as a backpacking trip through Southeast Asia took on new meaning when Dooley met a Canadian couple who told him about their work teaching English there. After flying back home to earn his education certificate, he returned to a small town near Seoul, started an “edutainment” company with several like-minded individuals, and helped create a YouTube channel and curriculum for toddlers.
Homesick for family, in the summer of 2016 he moved back to Chattanooga and became executive producer for a local film company, helping his employer land a television show and falling in love with the camera again in the process.
Later striking out on his own, he began writing, shooting, editing and creating graphics to tell stories for nonprofits, from The Chattery to the Lyndhurst Foundation and the Trust for Public Land, and giving a voice to causes with no budget for a full film crew. One of those clients was Songbirds, which had opened as a museum at the Chattanooga Choo-Choo complex in 2017.
Dooley felt at home in his role as storyteller for the facility. Then COVID hit and slammed the brakes on public visits. At the same time, the museum’s nonprofit counterpart, the Songbirds Foundation, was seeing great success with its Guitars for Kids program and drawing increasing support from school systems across the region. It only made sense for the Foundation to take over, eclipsing the physical gallery.
In 2021, Dooley oversaw the museum remodel and its transition to a smaller guitar and pop-culture museum that still exhibited up to 70 guitars. But when the Choo-Choo changed ownership, he says, “Our rent tripled within the course of a year or so. It just wasn’t sustainable for us, a nonprofit.”
Time for another change.
Speaking easy through music
In the spring of 2024, Songbirds moved to the site of a former private club on West Main and turned the “secret” bar into a charming listening room with a retro vibe and headquarters for youth music programs from elementary school to college.
At the end of the year, when the previous executive director stepped down, the board of directors offered Dooley the job. “And,” he says, “I humbly took it.”
The compactness of the new venue not only sets the stage for a mix of eclectic concerts; it also allows Dooley to enjoy the types of conversations he craves. “I’m the guy at a party who’s going to seek out the one-on-one. I’m not going to go out of my way to hold the attention of the group, but I’m going to have a very sincere and earnest talk with you on the side.”
Such personal connections bode well for Dooley in other areas too. Parton’s niece, who runs her famous aunt’s Dollywood Foundation, sometimes loans dresses from the entertainer’s wardrobe, while Parton herself recorded a video endorsing Songbirds and its mission. “We just always look for any opportunity to work with her when we can,” Dooley says.
A different type of opportunity recently led to a merger with Dynamo Studios, a nonprofit music education organization in South Chattanooga. Songbirds remains the umbrella brand, but Dynamo will headline its programs.
The partnership came about by accident, during an experiment trying out joint pilot programs. “We put together this afterschool program that mixed students together from schools all over the city and the county, and put them in one of our private studios with a musician and two different producers and a songwriter, and we documented the process,” Dooley says. “We interviewed each of the kids at the beginning of the program … and we just let the kids tell their own stories.”
By the time the program wrapped up, one female vocalist was considering studying music production in college. Another student who initially struggled to grasp the concepts of video editing mastered the lessons and is now making his own money using those skills.
They’re both likely to become part of the creative economy, Dooley points out, explaining more about how it works. “Let’s say you’re a fourth grade student at East Side Elementary. We’ve got a songwriting program for you, where you get to try your hand at working with actual music professionals, writing a song that will be produced into a fully-formed idea and published to Spotify and performed in front of all your friends and teachers. That same student, when they get to middle school, we’re waiting on them there and they can continue their music training but also pick up a camera for the first time and find out what it means to be a photographer in the music industry.
“Or they could learn how to produce a song with industry-standard software on MacBooks that we supply the schools. They could go into high school and suddenly be producing their very own music videos or short documentaries. We’ve got equipment and pathways for everybody.”
Many of Songbirds’ high school programs are also aligned with Chattanooga State classes that allow students to earn dual-enrollment credits.
“The creative economy is booming and one of the large, growing sectors in the world, but also in Chattanooga,” Dooley says. “We’re just aligned to create the actual workers to fill those jobs that are being created along the way.”
Shifting programs, literally
Dooley still dabbles in guitar – “I don’t play, I plunk,” he admits – and, a few years ago, was bitten by the trail-running bug. “Chattanooga has one of the most vibrant, well-maintained trail-running communities I’ve ever been a part of, so it’s pretty consuming for me. I don’t do that much [rock] climbing anymore, but I do hang out with a lot of climbers.”
In an effort to expand its art repertoire beyond music, on Sept. 22, Songbirds will launch its first independent film screening series. The twice-monthly open-mic night will continue, and plans are in the works for a music-and-food annual fundraiser in December, complete with a Dolly Parton tribute show.
“Obviously, my role has changed a lot,” Dooley says, reflecting on the journey that led him here. “I went from spending most of my time in Photoshop to spending most of my time in Excel. It’s been a big shift for me. Now the best part of my job is when I do get to work with some of the interns, some of the high school students who are showing a lot of promise and really growing the skills that it took me 15 or 20 years to learn, or even get my hands on some of the equipment that these kids have immediate access to now.
“It’s a really fun thing to watch them light up and develop the skills, but also to play that game of wonderment when I’m like, ‘Man, where’s this kid going to go? It took me forever to get to where I am, but he’s got a short track to it.’”