You can have all the talent in the world. Sometimes, you just need someone to put an instrument in your hand.
Morgan Wallen was 5 years old when he got a violin, akin to the fiddle that’s echoed through East Tennessee hills for generations. It’s an instrument that has been a key part of the soundtrack for another famous East Tennessean whose career has been just as much about the music at is has been giving back.
This isn’t to say Morgan is the new-age Dolly. After all, the country megastar has always done things his own way. But when Hurricane Helene wreaked havoc on God’s Country, the neon star from Knoxville by way of Sneedville, Tennessee, packed his things and headed home.
Collecting donations and making his own six-figure contribution for those uprooted by Helene floodwaters is a drop in the bucket among the many ways the Morgan Wallen Foundation has poured money into causes identified by the singer-songwriter, whose fourth album, “I’m The Problem,” comes out May 16.
The foundation reports its efforts through 2024 in Tennessee alone exceeded $2 million given to refurbish ball fields, donate instruments and restore a museum, among other efforts. And at the foundation of all Morgan’s efforts is his own upbringing, perhaps like yours and much like mine.Need a break?
Hopefully, you had a Lesli Wallen – a mother who supported her son through piano lessons starting at 7 years old, as well as through 13 summers of baseball.
That is, until his long-term shortstop plans dissolved from an injury and fermented into a longshot, moonshine dream. There it was … music again, paired with a passion for poetry he’d been writing since childhood and that was beginning to find a bigger purpose.
But with his first song written at age 18, no one could have dreamt that young man on the diamond would one day be approaching diamond status on the charts in his 20s, much less the Billboard status of this century’s top album so far at age 31. (Post Malone, “Hamilton,” Taylor Swift and Adele are further down the list.)
“He just persevered. Grit is the word that keeps coming to mind,” said Morgan Wallen Foundation Executive Director Kathleen Flaherty, who in 25 years in the entertainment industry has worked with various philanthropic organizations, from Bono’s (RED) to Thorn, cofounded by Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore.
After 30 years as a teacher, Lesli considers it a “complete blessing” to work alongside her son as program director of the Morgan Wallen Foundation. She gets to watch as the passions she supported throughout his childhood grow as pillars of the nonprofit’s mission to increase youth access to sports and music with $3 from every concert ticket sold.
With his two-year “One Night at a Time” tour confirmed as the highest-grossing country music tour ever, you can imagine how the gifts add up.
“The foundation work makes me prouder of Morgan than anything else,” Lesli told Knox News. “He is a man who wants to give back to those in need. It’s hard for me to put into words how much that means to me.”
The foundation hit a home run last month when Knox County approved renaming the Gibbs baseball diamond “Morgan Wallen Field” as a thank you for a $1.2 million dollar donation to improve the high school’s sports facilities.
“Giving back is one of the most meaningful things I get to do,” Morgan told Knox News. “Growing up, my parents were always giving, even though we were not wealthy. So, from an early age, I was able to see how impactful you can be toward people who truly need it.”
He’s always thinking of his roots, but the unfortunate reality is the “people who truly need it” are in every city Morgan visits.
But like an old oak, his roots have reached wider than most trees could under the ground where they were planted. So, when Morgan branched out on his most recent tour, the foundation donated $500,000 in musical instruments to underserved schools in the states where he was performing, Flaherty said.
The tour before that was all about donating money to refurbish baseball fields in cities including Boston and Nashville.
Flaherty remembers a stop in Chicago, where Morgan presented a $100,000 check to revitalize a baseball field at the historic Bessemer Park on the city’s South Side. That was combined with a donation from a charity organized by the Chicago Cubs, the parent organization of Knoxville’s own Double-A Smokies, for a total of $250,000.
But it was the students invited to the ceremony, as Flaherty recalls it, that connected most for Morgan.
“It had nothing to do with cameras and press or anything,” she said. “But meeting those kids and getting to talk to them and know the difference he was making in their lives … I’ll never forget when we walked away, he said to me, ‘This makes me happier than pretty much anything in the world.’”
That’s saying something for a guy who took over Neyland Stadium with a record-breaking 156,161 fans across two Knoxville nights in September.
Then again, maybe not.
Being from a small town, you realize that seemingly little things are worth taking the time to cherish – like high school pride and school colors, from the baby blue of the Gibbs jersey Morgan wore on stage to the baseball bleachers and Eagles regalia he displayed for all of Neyland to see.
For the second concert, Tennessee legend Peyton Manning accompanied Morgan on stage. And the night before that, it was Vols baseball coach Tony Vitello who, in leading the real UT to its first College World Series championship led Morgan to tease the big stadium shows as a homecoming celebration.
Once again, Morgan delivered with a $140,000 donation to the Gibbs Youth Sports program while he was in town for the sold-out September shows at the Big Orange cathedral of college football.
“So many folks at UT have embraced me and my music, and I appreciate them more than I can put into words,” Morgan told Knox News. “Tony is a great friend (pretty good coach too) and … reaches out often to see how he can help. He brought the Vols baseball team to our food drive for Hurricane Helene. I’ll never forget that.”
And that has become the third pillar of the foundation: “Helping communities in the time of crisis.”
Comedian Theo Von also was on hand in Knoxville to lend his name to a drive to spur food donations at West Town Mall for East Tennesseans devastated by Helene. Morgan recently joined the comedian’s “This Past Weekend” podcast and opened up about the struggles he’s had with fame, sharing that he hasn’t “been in a bar since the last time I was in a bar that everybody knows about.”
Hunting has become an escape from the “parts of (fame) that I don’t like,” he said, adding that “you just find ways to supplement it.”
“A lot of people helped me out along my path, and I want to do the same,” Morgan told Knox News. “I’m just doing the best I can with my music, my shows and the foundation.”
The mall food drive, in tandem with a virtual food drive held in partnership with Second Harvest Food Bank of East Tennessee, was preceded by the announcement of a $500,000 gift from the Morgan Wallen Foundation to the American Red Cross.
That six-figure announcement, one of the first of its kind from any celebrity in the hurricane’s aftermath, even preceded Dolly Parton’s announcement of her own philanthropic donations − not that we’re trying to stir a pot at the supper table.
“Dolly is a force of nature, man,” Morgan told Knox News. “Her music career and the way she gives back. She’s a role model of the best kind. I’ve never spent any time with her, but I think she has inspired everyone in country music in some way or another – including me, absolutely!”
There are at least some mutual influences, as Dolly’s manager in 2023 told Billboard that Morgan’s rise on streaming charts was catching his eye.
“What Morgan is doing, I want to take and see how I can apply that to Dolly,” he said in the December 2023 article, published one month after the Smoky Mountain Songbird released the 30-track “Rockstar.” It was Dolly’s longest album of her career and the same length as Morgan’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” released nearly three years prior and since named Billboard’s top album of the 2000s.
Influence, inspiration, lending a hand across generations – it’s all been at the root of the foundation’s mission since it was founded in 2021. Sports and music are the channels for connecting, just like a song or a show.
“We supported our kids in all their passions, as best we could,” Lesli told Knox News. “It was not always easy. The fact that Morgan has created a foundation that focuses on these two specific areas really warms my heart.”
Whatever the need may be, Flaherty said, “the first phone call we get is Morgan saying, ‘Guys, we need to do something.’”
“This is his heart, really,” she added. “The formation of the foundation really came out of the giving heart and soul of Morgan Wallen.”
To keep up with Morgan and the foundation on Instagram, follow @morganwallen and @morganwallenfoundation. For more information, visit morganwallen.com and morganwallenfoundation.org.