When you feel like Checking Out.

by Dave Isaacs

30 pages, Paperback

Published May 2, 2024

About the author

Dave Isaacs has been called “a musician’s musician”, a master player with the command and knowledge of his instrument that can only come from a lifetime of experience. In his adopted hometown of Music City USA he has become known in the music community as the “Nashville Guitar Guru” for his work as a teacher and coach to professional performers, hit songwriters, and the next generation of Nashville’s rising stars.

Nashville might seem to be an unusual place to land for a classically-trained graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, where as a student he won the Rose Augustine Award for promising young classical guitarists twice. But Dave Isaacs is about as diverse as a musician can be. After a serious repetitive strain injury derailed a classical concert career, he started writing songs. Over 12 albums and nearly 25 years, he has explored a stylistic range from literate singer-songwriter folk to foot-stomping swamp blues, soaring harmony-driven country-rock, and jazz-inflected instrumental excursions. He has rocked a muddy crowd at Woodstock and played the blues with Les Paul, and has now recently added “author” to his resume.

Dave’s book “The Perpetual Beginner: a musician’s path to lifelong learning” is a look back at the author’s formative experiences as a student and young musician, and how those lessons paved the way for a remarkably diverse musical path. Most of all, the book explores how all players get “stuck”, and how a “beginner’s mind” – a return to a sense of eager possibility - leads to an understanding of music in terms of its simplest, irreducible elements. This understanding has no relationship to talent or experience, only the recognition that even complicated problems can be broken down to a collection of simple elements that can be resolved one at a time.