Meet Me at Midnight (TMS Version): A Night of Taylor Swift, Sparkle, and Community

January 13, 2024

Photo credit: Sarah Averill Photography

Friendship bracelets. Sequins. A room full of Swifties singing every word back to the stage. And at the center of it all, a Jackson-grown musician who credits Taylor Swift with launching her entire career.

"Meet Me at Midnight (TMS Version)" was a lot of things at once: a Taylor Swift tribute, a fifth anniversary celebration, a community gathering. But more than anything, it was proof of what Teton Music School has been building here since 2019.

A Full-Circle Moment for Missy Jo

TMS teacher and singer/songwriter Missy Jo (Melissa Elliott) didn't just lead this show. She lived it.

Growing up in Jackson, Elliott had an early eureka moment with Taylor Swift's music that changed everything. "I had been teaching myself guitar for a couple of years and I realized I could go online and look up the chords of Taylor Swift songs and I knew the chords," she said. "That was the biggest influence on my music-making."

To bring that same music to a stage in her hometown, backed by TMS faculty and students she works alongside every day, was as full-circle as it gets.

Before the concert, Elliott joined KHOL radio live in studio, performing a cover of Swift's "Dear John" and an original called "Snow in Wyoming" — a deeply personal song about returning to Jackson after college, staring down an October snowstorm, and wondering what she was actually resisting. "Being from here, I feel like I didn't get to choose to live in the snow and now I'm learning to love it," she said. "Do I not like it when the weather changes or is it the things that are changing in my life? What am I resisting?" It's the kind of songwriting that makes you realize why she's such a natural fit to interpret Swift's catalog — both artists mining the personal for something universal.

The Show

Doors opened at 6 p.m. to pre-show bracelet-making and a selfie photo booth. By the time the lights went down at 7, the Theater was full and ready.

Elliott led the band through a set of Taylor Swift favorites spanning the eras, with TMS faculty and students sharing the stage throughout. Dancers' Workshop's Junior Repertory Company performed and GAP! (Girls Actively Participating) provided preshow fun. The crowd sang along to nearly every song. It ran 90 minutes, no intermission, and flew by.

Five Years, and Just Getting Started

"Meet Me at Midnight" was the first of five events TMS planned to mark its fifth anniversary — a year-long series designed, as Executive Director Amanda Flosbach put it, to cover "the full gamut of who we are and what we do." Coming up: a New Orleans-style second line parade, a rock and roll pizza party, a 55+ ukulele concert, and a screening of This Is Spinal Tap followed by a live set from local rockers 86.

The through-line in all of it is the same thing that made this Taylor Swift tribute work: community. "Everyone's involved," Flosbach said. "Community making the show, community attending the show. And that's really, as far as I'm concerned, what TMS is all about. Building community through music."

That's not a slogan. It's what Saturday night looked like.

Thanks again to TMS partners in Swift: Dancers' Workshop, GAP!, and The Center.

Learn more about lessons, performances, and upcoming events at tetonmusicschool.org.