‘Sometimes you need a sermon, sometimes you need a song’
David Nix’s education and experience in accounting have served countless clients from the Rome-Floyd County area very well for decades. But Nix’s education and experience in music have served countless others — and himself — for his whole life.
He keeps an old wooden metronome in his office. It’s a little dusty, but it still keeps perfect time. It belonged to his first piano teacher — Imogene Pyle — who started training him in 1964.
Nix was the full-time pianist for the North Rome Church of God from 1970 to 1999, beginning at age 13. Prior to 1970, he was the pianist for the junior choir and children’s church at North Rome. Now he attends gospel events around the country, seeing friends and encouraging their talents in music.
“To me music is life,” Nix said. “I can’t imagine life without music. God forbid, if I had to give up my vision or my hearing, I think I could live without my vision. I don’t think I could live without my hearing. Music gets me through horrible, rough days and it makes the good days that much better.”
Nix pulls out a piece of paper with lyrics from a new song he recently heard — “Sometimes You Need a Song,” written by Marty Funderburk and Sue C. Smith:
“Sometimes you need a sermon to remind you of the truth. Sometimes you need a song to help you make it through. So often it’s a sermon that brings you to your knees, but when your heart is broken you need a melody. One can’t replace the other — you need both to carry on. Sometimes you need a sermon, sometimes you need a song.”
Songs offer Nix a muchneeded retreat and respite from his daily routine. His job is the kind that often produces a lot of pressure and stress.
Nix graduated from Berry College in 1978 and became a certified public accountant a few years later. He spent his first seven years with Haynes & Moore CPAs, then two years with Finney & Moore before joining the Rome-Floyd County Parks and Recreation Authority, where he worked as the finance manager for more than 17 years. He bought Coffman’s Bookkeeping & Tax Service at the end of 2004 and opened his own business — David L. Nix, CPA, LLC — in January 2005. At age 60, he is still in full-time practice.
While he is thoroughly devoted to his trade and to his clients, Nix’s love and passion are for music,
David Nix finds himself right in the middle of a bunch of his music friends and heroes during Gaither Fest in Myrtle Beach, S.C. Pictured from left to right are: Ronnie Booth and Michael Booth, of the Booth Brothers; Joy Dyson Gardner, formerly with the Downings and Christ Church Choir; Jim Brady, formerly of with the Booth Brothers and now with the Jim Brady Trio; Mike Allen; and the late Ben Speer, who sang with the Speer Family.
especially gospel music. It is a love that was nurtured from a very early age by his mom and dad and other members of his family and it centered around the piano.
“Daddy’s mother died when he was four years old. She played piano,” Nix said. “Mother’s family was a musical family based around piano. Mother’s daddy played piano. When they decided to buy a family instrument, mother and daddy bought a piano.”
“They said they took me to my first concert when I was 11 months old,” Nix said. “It was the Speer family and the Lefevres. They took me to concerts. They bought me record albums. They encouraged me in piano and church music. Music was just part of my life.”
He and his cousins would go to concerts to hear artists like the Lennon Sisters, Andy Williams, Wayne Newton, Bobby Vinton, Kenny Rogers and Glen Campbell. The Glen Campbell concert is an especially sentimental event for Nix, given Campbell’s recent passing.
Nix said he did have to talk his parents into getting him his first album by the Carpenters. There was a song on the album called “Superstar,” which he said his parents thought was tied to the musical “Jesus Christ Superstar,” of which they did not approve.
His family always surrounded themselves with music — mostly church music and gospel music, but also country music and the pop music of their day — like Perry Como and Lawrence Welk.
“Mother and daddy liked any music that was good music,” he said.
Nix vividly remembers sitting with his parents in church, listening to
music and being ministered to and uplifted by the hymns and familiar songs. It was something he was not able to do when the church opened its new sanctuary in 1990 as musicians remained on stage for the duration of the service. When Nix retired from playing, he went back to being with his parents, who were getting older and needing more care — sitting with them in the pew as he had so many years earlier.
It was time he was grateful to have had. His mother, Helen, passed away in 2002, and then his father died in 2003.
Now that Nix is a little bit older, he has greatly reduced his playing and singing. Instead, he travels around to different gospel concerts, seeing old friends and making new ones in the gospel music world.
“I look at myself now as an encourager,” he said. “Mother and Daddy’s passing freed me up to go places where I couldn’t go before. I had always been afraid of flying. Then I realized I wasn’t afraid of flying, I was afraid of leaving them alone … I spend a lot of time going to concerts and with music friends because I believe in what they do.”
One of his favorite activities is going on gospel music cruises — many that include Bill and Gloria Gaither and singers from the Gaither Vocal Band, as well as other well-known Christian gospel artists.
“When you spend a week on a cruise ship and people realize all you want is friendship, it brings a lot of doors down,” Nix said. “And it opens more doors to other artists … We have become friends, and these friendships have become family.”