Bio
My name is Nathan Savage and I was born and raised in Houston Texas. I started playing guitar when I was about 13 at a summer camp that my dad was volunteering at for about a week. I was bored out of my mind and he had his Martin D-18 with him. I figured "what the heck, I may as well learn to play the guitar". I can still remember the chord chart that he bought me from a music store in Austin. I figured I have nothing else to do so I may as well learn how to play the guitar. I know what your thinking, “you started learning on a Martin D-18?!”. Yeah but it only lasted a week. After the summer camp, my dad and I went hunting for a $25 pawnshop special acoustic guitar.
I played that guitar for about four months before getting my first electric. It was a used Washburn with a primer finish. My dad and I used car paint to give that guitar a nice bumpy finish. I’ve been addicted to guitars ever since. Probably owned 35 or so guitars since then.
My family has always been very musical. Growing up, my dad and I were always going to music stores, bluegrass jams, or local music shows. Once I started learning how to play guitar I was always playing at local churches, my school, or my friend’s houses.
I had 2 or 3 lessons from a great guitar player and friend of the family named Scott Deal. Scott turned out to be a big inspiration and a big reason that I kept on playing the guitar. Other than that, until I got to college I was pretty much self-taught. I remember learning most everything I could play by nearly burning through my CDs over and over again. Fun Times!
After I graduated from high school, it was a no brainer for me to go to music school because I had absolutely no interest in anything but music. I decided to go to San Jacinto College North to learn as much about music as I could. During that time I met Dr. Randy Snyder. Dr. Snyder has been the single most influential person on my music education to date. That is a bit strange because Dr. Snyder is a trumpet player. My college guitar teachers taught me about the guitar but Dr. Snyder taught me about Music!
During my time in college I had two incredible classical guitar teachers, Mark Moore and Jeremy S. Garcia. Mark was more of a “classical” guitar player who taught me the fundamentals of the guitar and how to read music. Jeremy was more of a Spanish Brazilian classical player who taught me about technique, how to learn songs, and how to tackle the physical aspects of playing the guitar.
San Jacinto College was a community college but dollar for dollar it has been the best money I have ever spent on education. I learned mountains about music through jazz ensembles, theory and ear training classes, private lessons, and more. I highly recommend taking a few music classes at your local college if possible.
After graduating from San Jac in 2000, I decided to go to guitar summer session at Berklee College of music in Boston. I figured it would help me to get some perspective on what I wanted to do with my life, and more importantly, what role I wanted music to play in my life. It wasn’t very expensive but I decided to try out for a scholarship just for the heck of it. Well, thanks to Fender Guitars I got the scholarship. That just goes to show that hard work can compensate for lack of natural talent.
That Berklee summer session turned out to be the biggest musical highlight of my life. I got to learn from, meet, and hear more phenomenal guitarists that week than I have in my entire life. I highly recommend a Berklee summer session if you don’t have a ton of cash but really want to boost your guitar playing and overdose on inspiration.
In 2000 I started going to The University of Houston to get a “real degree” so I could get a “real job”. I decided to major in “Graphic Communications Technology, Leadership and Supervision” Long story short, I spent 3 ½ years and way too much money for a piece of paper that was supposed to get me a “real job”. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I finished school but I probably would have done things differently if given the chance.
After graduating from U of H I started looking for a job. After 2 days of interviews I thought to myself “this is not what I want to do with the rest of my life”. I was already in a suit, so I stopped by Guitar Center and asked for a job. They hired me on the spot. There are not a lot of musicians that show up at Guitar Center in a suit and ask for a job. The job did not pay much but I was close to music so I was happy.
I had been working at Guitar Center for about a year when I got a call from a guy named Perry Springman from the band Perry and the Poorboys. He was a singer songwriter from Canada who was looking for a guitar player for an upcoming Texas tour. I had not played with anyone for about four years so I jumped at the opportunity. This first tour is actually where I met Jared Falk of Railroad Media Inc.
For the next four years I would tour the world with Perry and the Poorboys while working at Guitar Center when I wasn’t on the road. We played all over the continental US, Hawaii, Canada, Europe, and Africa.
While playing with Perry I also played with several cover bands and picked up as many church gigs as I could for extra cash. During that time I met a guy named Joel Wetzstein who is the worship director at Salem Lutheran Church. Joel showed me how to be a good leader and how important it is to do things right the first time.
In 2009 my friend Jared Falk presented me with the opportunity of a lifetime when he asked me to head up GuitarLessons.com. I could not resist. I moved to Austin and started to get busy. Working with Jared has been the ride of a lifetime. GuitarLessons.com is a community based website for guitar players that is focused on offering the best free online guitar lessons, guitar gear reviews, guitar jam tracks, guitar forum, and famous guitarist bios on the net.
In late 2009 I released my first guitar instructional package through Railroad Media Inc. entitled the Beginner Guitar System. I am currently working on my second guitar package and there are many more to come.
Check back to NateSavage.com for updates on GuitarLessons.com and all of my new guitar DVD based guitar training programs.
