Playing good music for good people

Alumnus Jalen Anderson rocks Nashville as one of its most popular Djs and budding music producer.

Posted on June 24, 2025

What if your whole job was just to have fun?

That’s pretty much the way Jalen Anderson (BBA ’19), better known as DJ RIO, feels about his job.

“I gained traction early in my career and the most frequent sentiment from the people I worked with was always, ‘You really look like you want to be here,’” said Anderson, who cut his teeth in Nashville playing tunes at many Lipscomb events. 

That passion has earned him jobs as the DJ for the Tennessee Titans and for the Mrs. Tennessee America/Miss Tennessee for America organization. He frequently performs for the Nashville Predators, and in The Nashville Scene’s annual Nashville’s Best competition, he has been voted in the top three of Nashville’s Best DJs between 2020 and 2025, reaching the No. 1 spot for three of those years.

He performs locally at a variety of club, corporate and private events at various venues in downtown Nashville on most days of the week. In addition, he is moving into producing his own music, with his second song, I Can Be the One sung by Nashville singer/songwriter Bella Rose, released this summer.

Anderson began DJing at events in 2014, during his high school days in Columbia, but he really cut his teeth playing tunes in Nashville at student events at Lipscomb, where he was studying corporate marketing and management in the business school.
 

The first event he played at Lipscomb was the Wednesday Night We Eat cookout held by Mike Smith (BS ’82, MBA ’04), retired head resident of High Rise residence hall. After returning from studying abroad in Florence, Italy, in 2016, he began playing Lipscomb University social club formals and Lipscomb Academy events as well as other events around Nashville.

Today, when he plays around Nashville, he’ll meet Lipscomb graduates who attended those events, and they share their memories together. “I meet people who I have played all of their events or all their Greek club formals. It’s awesome to think I have helped create the soundtracks to their lives, and have been part of their lives for a number of years now! It’s cool to look back and see that,” he said.

Today, Anderson still plays the university’s annual Student Formal, held for three years now. “It’s nice being connected still,” he said of working the event. “These are the next group of young professionals, and it’s refreshing to work with them.”
 

In fact, his reputation often precedes him on the Lipscomb campus, he said. Today’s students have often heard of his DJing and activities while he was studying at Lipscomb. In those days, he performed in Singarama, was a tour guide for Admissions, became an Aspire Fellow in the business college and was a member of Sigma Iota Delta. He also met his wife, Taylor Abeita Anderson (BSN ’20), now a NICU nurse at Vanderbilt Hospital, at Lipscomb.

Upon graduation, Anderson planned to pursue a career in business, despite his busy schedule DJing every weekend, and he accepted a job in corporate marketing, but it took only a few months for him to realize that his heart was really in music.

So he quit in February 2020, and found himself trying to build a business built on social interaction in the midst of the COVID-19 social distancing shutdown. That was certainly his slowest year, but he was blessed enough to continue pursuing his career in music, he said.

“Someone [God] was looking out for me, for sure,” he said. “That was a heck of a year to start something like that, but the change of career was decently calculated. I knew I had the clientele to back what I wanted to do, and I ultimately concluded it would be feasible.”

His business degree from Lipscomb was a major part of building his business to success, he said. “There are a lot of intangible things it helped me understand, like how to be a professional and the importance of finding mentors and advisors who were already successful. It exposed me to people who were influential, and it flowed over into my DJ life.”

A regular gig at The Ainsworth, an upscale sports bar in Nashville’s Midtown, provided a firm foundation for his initial career success, and his relationship with Cole Buttrey (BA ’19), a SID pledge brother, alongside his relationship with the founders of ROOTED, Lipscomb alumni Jaime Bacalan (BS ’05), Alexander McMeen (LA ’08, BS ’13, MBA ’15) and Aaron Morrison (BBA ’20), led to many events, including the initial connection with the Tennessee Titans.

“I thoroughly just enjoy playing music for people. I typically am blessed to party and celebrate with people who just want to have a great time. I’m catching people in some of the highlights of their lives.”

Anderson does plenty of research into the latest tunes and trends on social media platforms during his off-hours. The most important skill of a DJ is “connecting” with the audience, he said.

“DJing is like fishing,” said Anderson. “I have an idea, I throw it out there, and if you don’t get any bites, you try something different. It’s a challenge every night because every night is different.”

His work with the Titans is a little different. He stays prepared with four to six songs picked out for any potential moment in the game. One may be an energetic crowd pleaser, another may be good for a downer moment for the fans. His preparation enables him to quickly perform when the game situation calls for it. At the Predators’ games, he is more of a hype man, getting fans excited out in the plaza as they enter the arena.

His latest venture is producing and releasing his own music. He has released two singles, Diamonds, and I Can Be the One released just this past June. 

“To go to another level, you really need to produce your own music,” said Anderson. “It’s easier to build a brand and have people keep consuming you as a product if you have your own music. It’s a pretty natural progression.”
While Anderson has big dreams of producing and playing music in Miami, Las Vegas or New York City, his musical career really all comes down to one thing for him:

“I’m just after playing good music for good people.”

Anderson can be contacted for gigs at thedjrio [at] gmail.com. His Instagram site is @thedjrio.