I started Cool Strummer because I love playing, and I want more people to get to have the experience I get every time I pick up a guitar. Fair pay and honest conditions for instructors are how that gets passed on — a way of respecting the people who carry knowledge and experience forward. Everything else is up to the people who show up.
Why we need this
I've been singing and playing guitar for over 30 years. I started as a singer, learned to play guitar to accompany myself, and now I actually lean more into playing than singing.As a kid, I took piano lessons the standard way — method book, proper technique, one right way to hold your hands. Fine as far as it went, but it wasn't until I closed the book and started making stuff up on my own, just because I liked how it sounded, that something clicked.That's the moment I actually started learning. Not the drilling — the playing. Finding my own way into the instrument turned out to be a real path, not a detour from the real one.I don't think I'm the only one who's found that. The goal isn't to go it alone — it's learning to be self-directed without going it alone. You still get guidance, a teacher, a community. You just don't have to hand over the wheel.Cool Strummer exists for people who want room to find their own voice on an instrument — and for teachers who want to help them do it.
Core beliefs
Practice is the point. Not the price you pay for a future performance — the playing itself, mistakes included, is the reward.
Your taste matters more than the charts. We won't tell you to learn what's popular or marketable. Find what's actually yours.
Playing for yourself is a complete goal. No crowd, recording, or following required. If it makes you happy, that's the job done.
Enjoying it is how you learn it fast. When a lesson feels like play, you learn faster — and it barely feels like learning while it happens.
You have time for this. Whatever story you're telling yourself about being too busy or too far behind, set it down for a lesson.
Fear is normal, and you're not doing this alone. Our teachers help you work through it, same as they had to.
Listen to who you are, not just the music. The instrument is a way of finding something out about yourself.
Making music keeps you curious about music. Creating instead of just consuming is the antidote to musical stagnation.
However you want to play is the right way to play. Vent, leave a song unfinished, play alone or with a band, go acoustic or deep in a DAW. No wrong configuration.
There's something quietly countercultural about just picking up an instrument and playing — a real moment, fully felt, with zero expectation that anyone will ever hear it or care. In a world that measures most things by audience, that's worth protecting.
Our instructors
Our teachers are touring musicians, recording artists, lifelong players — people whose authority comes from the life they're actually living, not just a credential. They know what it means to lose yourself in a song, and how to help you find that too.There's a version of guitar learning that feels like homework. We're not that. There's a version that's two hundred YouTube tutorials deep and still can't get you through a song. We're not that either.
Fair terms for teachers
The same philosophy applies to how we treat the people teaching. Instructors set their own rates, keep clear and fair pay, and know exactly what the platform takes and why — no hidden cuts, no fine print designed to confuse. Teaching shouldn't be a hustle stacked on top of a platform tax. It should be sustainable enough that a teacher can actually enjoy teaching, the same way we want students to enjoy learning.
The dream
I dream of a Chicago where more front porches have someone playing guitar and singing on a summer evening, and neighbors wander over and start jamming. Not a performance. Not a following. Just people making music together because it's Tuesday and the weather's nice and someone brought a guitar out.Every lesson here is a small bet on that city.
Welcome to the family
If any of this sounds like what you've been looking for — as a student or a teacher — you're in the right place.Brian Kerr
Founder, Cool Strummer
July, 2026