Full Sail Stories
Published Mar 06, 2025
This Grad Became an Entrepreneur and Created ‘Music Night’
Recording Arts grad and entrepreneur Dean Sell is the creator, producer, and executive producer of Music Night.
Full Sail University Recording Arts graduate Dean Sell created Music Night™, a show that will broadcast live from Nashville, Tennessee, on Saturday, March 8 in more than 600 movie theaters across the country. Hosted by iHeart Radio’s Bobby Bones, the show combines music and cinema, giving viewers an inside look into an exclusive listening room to meet the songwriters behind many of radio’s biggest hits, such as Brett James who co-wrote “Jesus, Take the Wheel,” sung by Carrie Underwood.
In addition to developing Music Night, Dean is its producer and executive producer, managing the logistical side of the project as well as the creative. He also secured the show’s partnerships with brands including the Country Music Association, Gibson Guitars, and Coca-Cola.
Dean has always been creative. As a kid growing up in Pennsylvania, he fell in love with music, television, movies, and radio. At 17, he booked a one-way trip to San Francisco to chase a rock ’n’ roll dream. But after hitting a dead end, he decided to prioritize his education by going to Full Sail to study Recording Arts.
“Full Sail felt like a good launching point,” Dean says. “When I got there, I realized that I was technical enough in order to be successful in the program, but I wasn't a ‘gear head’… I was always more drawn to the bigger picture creative process and the merger of creativity and the business side.”
After graduation, Dean hopped around to different cities including Columbus, Ohio, and Austin, Texas, before settling back in his hometown in Pennsylvania to work as an audio engineer and producer at a recording studio. The studio had several advertising agency clients, so in addition to working on the music side, he was introduced to the world of advertising and brand development. Dean was intrigued by the merging of music, storytelling, and creativity with business and strategy, and spent the first 10 years of his career in the agency world.
The next 10 years of Dean’s career involved working for a live entertainment company, where he managed art, media, and creative services and eventually became the Director of Brand Development. When the COVID-19 pandemic put live performances on hold, Dean decided he needed a change. An opportunity in Nashville opened up for him to be the Chief Marketing Officer of a media company, so Dean took it, and he and his family moved to Nashville in the summer of 2021.
Three years later, Dean felt his time at that company was coming to an end, and he wondered what was next. That’s when he decided to use all of his past career experience to start his own company, Red Leaf Brands. Red Leaf Brands was named for a tree in Dean’s front yard that symbolized hope and endurance for him and his family. Dean describes his company as “one part serving clients with brand development, marketing strategy, product development. And then the other part of it is creating our own projects — and that's where Nashville Music Network and this project Music Night came from.”
The idea for Music Night came to Dean after a neighbor invited him over for a night of live music called a Nashville Writers’ Round.
“A Nashville Writers' Round,” Dean shares, “is this format where you have these songwriters that, one by one, tell the story behind the life events that led to them writing these songs, and their story of coming to Nashville and chasing this dream and hitting heartbreak and heartache and rock bottom. Then all of a sudden, a song [they wrote] gets [recorded] and their life gets changed.”
Dean was so struck by this phenomenon that he wanted to share it on a nationwide stage. Thus, Music Night was born.
“The hope is that we create something really unique, really different, and really special,” Dean says. “There are lots of places where you can go to see the stars, you can go to concerts, you can watch award shows on television. But what really captivated me were these people that are in Nashville and nobody has any idea who they are. They go and they write [and co-write] songs every day, and they've lived remarkably ordinary lives. But they have this ability to tap into life and put life into words and melodies that most people can’t.”
The live show — which Dean hopes will become a monthly occurrence featuring different songwriters and their stories — will be broadcast from The Analog in Nashville on Saturday, March 8, at 7 PM CST, along with an encore re-broadcast on March 11.
