In a community full of world-class musicians, Dave Isaacs is known around Music City USA as the “Guitar Guru of Music Row”. The New York native has called Nashville home since 2005, and has built a reputation as an ace guitarist and top teacher, mentor, and musical coach.
Dave has helped countless aspiring and pro musicians, songwriters, and performers expand their musical knowledge, improve their performance skills, and achieve dynamic new levels of success.
A big picture instructor who maintains a bustling private studio practice in the heart of Nashville, his creative and effective approach trains not just the hands but also the mind and ears. Dave’s finely-tuned methods teach his students to develop real musical skills: not just how to play, but how to continue to learn and grow.
Dave is a 1993 graduate of the Manhattan School of Music in NYC with an advanced degree in guitar performance, and performed and taught across the New York area before moving to Nashville in 2005. In the formal academic realm, he held a full-time appointment in the Department of Music at Tennessee State University and an adjunct position at the Art Institute of Tennessee-Nashville before leaving to pursue his private work full-time. Dave’s private teaching studio Nashville Guitar Guru offers private instruction, coaching, workshops, and performance opportunities to the local music community and beyond.
He has presented guitar and songwriting workshops for the Nashville Songwriters Association International, the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University, Southwest Regional Folk Alliance Conference, the Frank Brown International Songwriters Festival, and many others. As a performer, he has played on stages large and small across the eastern US, from Nashville’s world-famous listening room the Bluebird Café to New York’s Iridium and the Woodstock Reunion at Yasgur’s Farm. He has played the blues with Les Paul and opened shows for country, rock and folk luminaries like George Thorogood, Steve Miller, Martina McBride, .38 Special, the Flatlanders, and Leo Kottke. His 11-album discography provides a diverse showcase of his range as a writer and musician: eclectic singer-songwriter, exuberant roots-rock, ambient grooves, and melodic guitar excursions. With a vocabulary this wide, some musicians might simply come across as musical chameleons, but Isaacs’ distinctive writing, playing, and singing paint a picture of an artist who has carved out a niche all his own.
Discography
Renfree Isaacs, Hit The Ground Running (2018)
Late At Night (2015)
Medicine King, Medicine King (2014)
DI3 (2012)
Torch (2011)
Good Souls, Good Souls (2008)
Old King Crow (2006)
Flying (2004)
Prodigal Son (2003)
Jackalope Junction, Just Drive (2001)
Jackalope Junction, A Sense Of Direction (1998)
