You should Follow Haley on Instagram
Do you follow Haley Powers on Instagram? You need to. Not only will you see beautiful, sun-drenched videos of her playing guitar and sharing her board setup; you’ll be inspired to be a better guitarist and all-around person. Haley Powers is a guitarist/blogger living in Nashville. She shares her work to help guitarists learn how to play better and build their brands. Aside from playing with a number of bands, she also is a social media guru and provides inspirational messages for all of her followers.
As a guitar teacher, I am huge fan of Haley Powers and her platform. So, I was thrilled when she agreed to give us an interview! Social media is so important in music education and we need to be better about using the space for good. Check out Haley’s thoughts below. Want to know more about what she does? You can visit her website and sign up for her course, A Guitarist’s Guide to Instagram.
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Tell us about being a guitarist/writer/teacher. What does your day-to-day work look like?
Haley would buy ALL the vintage guitars if she could
Right now no day looks the same! Sometimes I will have to spend a lot of time practicing for gigs, sometimes I will be working on filming/ creating content for online students, sometimes working on demos and sometimes I will be traveling to a gig… It really changes day to day which is really fun for me.
How did you get into your position? What led you there?
I had played guitar for a really long time and always wanted to do something in music. I went to Belmont for music business/entrepreneurship but got a little discouraged out of school and thought I wasn’t the type of person who would be able to do something like that. Long story short, I had a revelation that I needed to retry music and started my Instagram account and blog to encourage other guitarists. Soon, I started getting in bands and was offered gigs after posting guitar videos on my account!
Who were the biggest mentors in your field?
Haley is channeling her inner Slash
My dad was definitely my biggest mentor! He is an insanely good guitar player and has been in at least 5 different bands at the same time ever since I was born! He taught me to not take gigs and guitar too seriously, to practice a lot, and to genuinely enjoy playing music and make sure it stays fun!
What is the hardest part of your job?
The hardest part for me is staying organized to create content consistently and not worry about the future. The paths to doing music and blogging are both really unclear and happen differently for everyone, so figuring out how you want things to look for you and how to make that happen can take time and be confusing. Also, I don’t love driving super long and some gigs require sitting in a car/van/RV for long periods of time.
What is the best part of your job?
I absolutely loved getting to connect with other musicians! I think my favorite moments are 1) when you see someone excited about something they’ve learned or succeeding at something you helped them with and 2) playing with a band that connects and gets along really well.
Did you have any influential music teachers in your life? Tell us about them.
I had an amazing teacher in high school that was a killer British musician and did a lot of cool rock lessons especially in styles of players like Lindsey Buckingham, Eric Clapton, and Mark Knopfler. He made guitar/ theory concepts instantly relate to songs! They were group lessons (I highly recommend these!) and we had a mini-show at the end of each class. It was super helpful!
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