In this mean, shady, Bernie-Madoff-tainted Rotten Apple, there is only one pure, solitary man whom you can trust with a promise: Dan Smith.
Dan Smith will teach you guitar. No lie.
The Newton, Mass., native has been tirelessly posting his humble, straightforward flyers in your path of vision for almost two decades now. There is not a bodega, bulletin board, coffee shop, newspaper box or telephone pole that hasn’t offered his steadfast oath to you.
Don’t confuse the medium with the message, though. It’s not about the marketing; it’s about the magic.
“I just wanted more students,” Smith tells me when asked, probably for the billionth time, about the inspiration for his rather aggressive and unceasing advertising plan. “The more I did it, and the more consistently I did it, the more people would call me. It’s really a matter of numbers on a certain level, but I also want to convey, in a kind of unspoken way, a sense of validity about what I am doing.
“It’s easy to have a perception of somebody teaching guitar: somebody who is just doing it on the side and not really taking it seriously. When I’m teaching, that’s my focus. That’s something that I take very seriously. Through the consistency of the campaign, I wanted to really address that concern that people would naturally have. I know I would have it, looking at somebody’s flyer. I would want to know who this person is.”
So who exactly are you, Dan Smith?
“I came to New York in 1987 or 1988, I forget which,” he says. “I went to NYU and studied acting at the Tisch School of the Arts. I’ve been here pretty much ever since. I spent a year in France early on, but New York is where I always wanted to live.
“After NYU, I was working in restaurants, and doing what a lot of people do post-acting school. I knew that I wanted to do something that was going to allow myself to develop. I was really into guitars, and really into the process of learning. And I knew I wanted to do something that was going to separate me from everybody else, regardless of how I applied it, whether it be music or whatever.”
Music, so it turns out, was and is his life.
“[Teaching guitar] was a great way to make a transition out of what I was doing,” he says. “At that point, I was managing a restaurant, so I could be somewhat fluid with [the teaching]. I could first teach just a couple of people while getting it going, and still keep my day job, as it were. Eventually, I would just be really pumping, really putting a lot into the flyer campaign. I was teaching more and more and eventually I left the restaurant.
“Not to sound hoity toity, but it was a transition that had an organic truth to it. It just kind of made sense for me to do it.”
Smith can certainly teach you guitar, but he admits that with him, it’s more like a duet.
“I’ve learned a lot from playing with other people,” he says. “One of the things that I always try to impart to my students is that, ultimately, you really teach yourself to play guitar, whether you realize it or not. If you are really going to do it, you have to take an intuitive approach to it, where you learn by experimentation.
“The best image I can think of for learning to play guitar is learning your first language. You didn’t really learn out of a book or a set lesson plan, you learn by being around people who speak that language. But also you learn by experimenting with yourself. You see little babies doing that. They’ll experiment with sounds and they’ll try to put words together. I learned a lot that way as well.
“When I teach somebody, I really think of it as collaboration. For me, it’s a way to get a groove happening. When I’m teaching somebody, that’s my whole goal, to get them to experience music first hand. So if I’m creating something, whether it’s a Beatles song or a groove with chords, they can experience that with me and they can learn to apply that for themselves.”
Smith’s students come from all walks of New York life, but he does notice a particular trend, and he rides it.
“A lot of my students are really into writing their own songs,” he says, “and my teaching is really geared in that direction, toward creating your own music and recording and actually performing it. It’s different from the way most people think of guitar lessons. In fact, I don’t even call them guitar lessons. I prefer to think of it as a session. I really think of it based on spending time in recording sessions.
“To me, the whole idea of learning is that you learn by doing. You learn through experience. I don’t want my students to become good guitar students; I want them to become musicians and artists.
“The main thing that I really learned was that music comes from your personality. It’s not a question of how much virtuosity you have or how much knowledge you have.”
Smith’s technique is attitude free, but he is tuned in to the feelings of his clients, which are oft repeated.
“Sometimes early on, people will say, ‘well, I don’t want to play music professionally; I don’t want to play Madison Square Garden,’” he says, “ but I explain to them that it doesn’t really matter. It’s the same issue whether you want to play on your couch at home or Madison Square Garden. It’s kind of like playing tennis. You still have to hit the ball over the net, whether you are playing at Wimbledon or if you are just playing with your friends in the park.
“At the heart of my teaching is this idea that music really comes from who you are as a person, so that means that anybody can do it. People have a lot of misconceptions about music: [they think that] either you are talented or you are gifted, or you are not. It’s really a matter of: you get back what you put in. If you put your heart into it, you will get music back.”
Smith also gets back a solid notoriety from more than just ordinary locals. His oft-seen and simple flyer has been parodied by singer John Mayer to promote his album Continuum (“John Mayer Will Teach You Guitar”), and by Daily Show host John Stewart, for his Rally to Restore Sanity event. Smith’s flyer has also been mimicked as a marketing tool for the Mike Myers film The Love Guru (“Guru Pitka Will Teach You Sitar”), as well as for 30 Rock’s Judah Friedlander’s book How To Beat Up Anybody (“Judah Friedlander Will Teach You Karate”).
Smith is flattered by the imitation. He says, “in New York, you recognize a lot of famous people. But what’s really awesome is when they recognize you.”
You surely already know this by now, but for more information go to Dan Smith's website.
