We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Teja Gerken. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Teja below.

Teja, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

I pretty much knew as a child that I wanted to play guitar, but I was never accomplished enough to follow a traditional path toward being a professional musician. I ended up going to an international liberal arts college, and by my senior year, I was pretty sure that I had to figure out a way to create a life around the arts, though I had no idea what that would look like. I ended up getting a job in a guitar store while also starting to cut my teeth as a performer in the San Francisco Bay Area, and 30 years later, I’ve done almost nothing but combining playing music with other directly related work.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I began playing guitar as young child in Germany, mostly because my father and some of his friends played. I became somewhat serious about it as a teenager, but really didn’t pursue it with any professional ambitions until after college. I was lucky to attend an international liberal arts college (the unfortunately defunct World College West in Petaluma, California), through which I ended up living and studying with a guitar maker (luthier) in the instrument-making town of Paracho, Mexico. After I graduated in 1992, I got a part-time job at Tall Toad Music, a great guitar shop in Petaluma, where I worked for 5 years. I learned a lot about guitars and other instruments during this time, started going to trade shows, meeting industry reps, etc., while also being exposed to a lot of great musicians. At the same time, I began specializing in playing and performing solo guitar, first studying classical and flamenco guitar, later getting into the niche of steel-string fingerstyle guitar, which is what I’m known for today. I began studying with two great Bay Area guitarists, Peppino D’Agostino and Duck Baker, and I consider these two to be my mentors. Because I knew that making a living solely as a niche-market musician is very difficult, I started looking beyond working at the guitar shop, and I ended up being an editor for Acoustic Guitar magazine, a publication that I was on staff for from 1997 – 2013. Having a magazine gig at a time when print publishing was still going strong was really great. I got to meet all of the important players and guitar makers in my field, which not only opened a lot of doors for me as a player, it was also just great and fun work that never felt like a “day-job,” as it was directly related to what i’d do anyway. During this time, I released my first two solo CDs, “On My Way” in 1999, and “Postcards” in 2005. I began playing most of the established venues featuring acoustic guitar music in the Bay Area, and I did some international touring, including a ten-day tour in Hungary and an International Guitar Night tour in Germany.
In 2013, the job at Acoustic Guitar magazine came to an end, and I co-founded my current company, Peghead Nation (www.pegheadnation.com) with two partners who were co-workers at the magazine. Peghead Nation is an e-learning website specializing in video instruction for stringed instruments, we now have about 70 courses and work with around 30 instructors. I shifted my day-to-day emphasis from being a writer and editor to being a video producer, and I shoot and edit the majority of our courses. As was the case with my work at the magazine, Peghead Nation is an integral part of what I do; it’s not just a job to support my career as a musician. it’s incredibly satisfying to work with some of the finest players in roots music, to provide a service for thousands of musicians who want to improve on their instruments, and also to be supporting the instructors that we work with. This was especially great during the Covid years, as we continued to be a source of income for our teachers whose performances and in-person teaching had gone away from one day to the next.
I continue to perform and record guitar music, and I released an album of guitar duets with another Bay Area player, Doug Young, in 2020, and my third solo album, “Test of Time,” earlier this year. “Test of Time” is getting great reviews, and I’m performing the repertoire around California, with plans to do some international concerts as well,

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

I’ve been very fortunate to have been able to build a professional life where everything I do is directly related to my passion for the acoustic guitar. I learned early on that you have to be able to roll with the punches and adapt to different situations, and also to not let uncertainty get in the way. There’s no doubt that that being comfortable with uncertainty made the pandemic years a lot easier for me to handle than they were for a lot of people. Probably the most rewarding aspect has been the people I get to work with every day, whether it’s performers who I might share a gig with, our instructors at Peghead Nation, my two business partners, or countless other folks who I’ve met through one of the many different aspects of my work.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

I think the most important thing is that people need to learn how to appreciate art and to make time to enjoy it. This starts with parents exposing their kids to art, schools treating art as something important, and people learning that art is something that can be part of your life regardless of skill level or the need to be accomplished. Going out to hear live music, visit galleries and museums, taking note of public art, reading, etc. are all things that make a society thrive, but for many folks, it isn’t something that comes automatically. I’m cautiously optimistic that with AI becoming something that makes it ever more impossible to tell the real from the fake, witnessing art being made in intimate venues is something that society will not only value, but possibly crave.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.tejagerken.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100061781719527
• Youtube: youtube.com/tejaguitar
• Other: www.facebook.com/pegheadnation/ www.pegheadnation.com