Today we’d like to introduce you to Curt Henderson.
Curt, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
From a young age I was surrounded by music. My dad was a bassist, and though his musical endeavors had slowed after he had kids, he would take me to his band rehearsals so I could hang out with the musicians and hear them play. I remember as a kid I used to wait for my parents to go to work so I could sneak into their bedroom and take my dad’s bass out of its case. I would just stare at it with curiosity and an odd reverence and then put it back in its case.
I started to become serious about music and playing guitar as a teenager, and ultimately went on to study music in university. Though I was a very dedicated student, I waffled on the idea of pursuing music professionally. Being from a working-class family, I prized a certain security that I felt a career in music might not offer. I began working at a law firm after I graduated, with the intent of perhaps going to law school as my next step. But over the course of the next year, as music became a smaller and smaller part of my life, I grew pretty miserable and decided to quit working at the law firm and dedicate myself once again to music. I became very serious about bettering myself, practicing and performing as much as I possibly could. I set my sights on moving to Nashville, TN and made the move in 2018.
Nashville was a huge inflection point in my career. I found myself quickly embedded in a scene with many of the most talented, creative, and purposeful musicians I’ve ever met. I was so impressed by the Nashville community’s willingness to invite new musicians into the scene and to make everyone feel welcome and supported. It’s that same spirit that I try to foster myself today as I enter my eighth year in the city.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I alluded to it earlier, but one aspect of my journey that has been a little rocky has been my own internal battle with the idea of pursuing music at all. I recall growing up in a family that loved and supported music-making, but my dad was quick to add reminders that “music is just something we do for fun,” and to suggest that I need to always be prioritizing finding a conventional career path. That led to me finding myself vacillating between a feverish commitment to music, and then abandoning that pursuit for a more “stable” path, and then growing miserable and finding my way back to music, and so on.
Now, in retrospect, and with the added perspective of having found myself in a fruitful music career, I look back on that uncertainty and wish I’d had the confidence to go headlong for the goal and pursue music with reckless abandon. That’s the advice that I would offer to my own children, if given the opportunity.
There were other ups and downs along the way, like the covid pandemic entirely obliterating all of my live performance and touring work for example, but honestly those obstacles feel less meaningful than the mindset challenges I wrestled with in my earlier years.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
My work touches on a lot of different areas of music. I’m a guitarist, producer, songwriter, and educator. Day-to-day I find myself recording guitar parts for artists I work with, or helping to write and then bring a song to life through the production phase. I’ll play shows with friends in Nashville, or head out of town for short tour runs with artists. I also teach private lessons and write curriculum for guitar students to use in pursuit of their own guitar proficiency. I feel like these days being a professional musician requires that someone can wear many hats and be of service in many capacities.
I feel that those projects where I’ve used my creative talents the most are the same projects I’m most proud of. My forthcoming album with my friend Shannon Lauren Callihan, titled “Good as Gone,” is the body of work that I feel reflects my best effort. I was involved from the ground up, including cowriting through to producing and playing guitar on many of the songs on the album. That album will be released in October of 2026 and I could not be more excited to have it out in the world.
Another career highlight was playing Bonnaroo Festival in Nashville with that same group (Shannon Lauren Callihan).
In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
I think the obvious and unsettling black cloud on the horizon for the music industry is the emergence of AI-generated music. I’m not dark on AI as a whole—I’m optimistic in general—but I feel that if there is any area where human provenance ought to matter it’s the arts. I would hate to imagine that the music industry becomes overtaken by AI-generated music that waters down the perceived value and importance of the great art being made every day by humans in this space.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/curthenderson_
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@curthendersonguitar
