Our Story

Our Inspiration

A smiling man in a purple sequin-covered jacket stands in front of a crowd during a concert at 5 Points Music Sanctuary

Tyler Godsey smiles at the camera during a 5 Points Music Sanctuary concert

We celebrate sound, we embrace it, and we explore it. While our live events and concerts unite audiences from far and wide, they also serve as a platform to promote and support our music therapy, hearing loss advocacy, and accessibility efforts. 5 Points Music Foundation, a recognized 501c3 organization, launched in January of 2017 with a simple mission: “To pursue the power of sound in all its glory.”

The story began when Founder/Director Tyler Godsey’s two children were each born deaf. At the age of 11 months old, they were lucky enough to celebrate the gift of sound when receiving cochlear implants. It’s this gift that serves as the inspiration for 5 Points Music and all that we do.

 

Our Programs

Music Therapy

5 Points Music Foundation provides free music therapy to clients of all ages with a variety of special needs. They range from 3-year-olds with Down Syndrome to veterans with PTSD. Since beginning in 2017, we have provided nearly $30,000 worth of therapy to clients. The program is available to individuals throughout Southwest Virginia including Roanoke, New River Valley, Martinsville, Rocky Mount, and the surrounding region.

Hearing Loss Advocacy

5 Points Music’s hearing loss advocacy efforts are multi-faceted. Our goal is to encourage and support a more sound-friendly world. We work with our artists to maintain safe decibel limits during their performances, provide free ear protection for all guests, and work to explore ways to reduce the risk of hearing loss, advocate for those with disabilities, and explore the many ways to make our world more sound-friendly.

Accessibility

At all of our events, we provide wearable SUBPAC devices for those with hearing loss. These “backpacks” feed into the PA system wirelessly and send vibrations of the music into the user. While we provide these as an accommodation for those with hearing loss, anyone can wear them. Our goal is to remind audiences that the power of sound is more than what we hear. It’s also about what we feel, what we see, and what we share together.

 

Our Soul

A magazine cover featuring a mother, father, their son, and their daughter standing in front of a stage flanked by red and gold curtains

Tyler Godsey with his wife and children on stage at 5 Points Music Sanctuary

We define our mission by looking at a spectrum. On one end, features the apex moments of a live experience. It’s that moment when the lights, the band, and the audience all come together. It’s for these sometimes fleeting and rare moments that we are all on the same page. The questions of who we love, what god we worship, where we come from, all vanish as we unite in the “moment” that we share. At 5 Points Music, we chase these “moments” for all that they are and for all that they stand for.

On the other end of the spectrum, the power of sound is a much more innate idea. When turning on his children’s cochlear implants for the first time, Godsey often talks about the moment that his wife, Kristin, leaned over and said “I love you.”

In that moment, three simple words, vibrations passing through the air, impacted him emotionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually. At its core, this is the power of sound. It’s about recognizing and celebrating the idea that it’s often the little things that have the most profound impacts on us.

By understanding that the simple words we say to each other can have a profound impact on what we do, how we feel,  and where we go, we can use that very idea to create impacts on the world that are equally profound.

Between those two ends of the spectrum lies the playing field for what 5 Points Music does as a non-profit organization.

With each event, we bring artists and audiences together to celebrate the moments that define our worlds. Many who have come together in The Sanctuary leave knowing that we are unlike anywhere else in the world and they are eager to return and be a part of our ongoing story.