About Casey Ray Shaw
Years on guitar
Years on electric
Bands across his career
Casey Ray Shaw is a guitar teacher and author based in Livingston, Louisiana. He has been playing guitar for 49 years, 40 of those on electric. He wrote Thadeus Beginning Electric Lead Guitar Featuring the Nashville Numbering System to teach his oldest grandson, Thadeus, and to give other beginners a faster path into lead guitar than the one Casey took himself.
How It Started
Casey was born and raised in Hagerman, New Mexico. He learned to read music at 11 on the piano, played for two years, and decided he did not like it. At 15 his mom bought him an acoustic guitar. He bought a chord book and taught himself. It took him six months just to switch between the five open chords in the first position cleanly. He played acoustic for the next nine years and trumpet in the high school band along the way.
Picking Up the Electric Guitar
At 24, Casey switched to electric guitar. Three years later he formed his first band, Wild Ride, in Denver City, Texas. Wild Ride played country and rock and roll at local dances and once a month at the Higginbotham Jamboree, a community building outside Denver City where local bands played for the public. That run gave Casey his first real stage time on electric lead guitar.
Learning the Nashville Numbering System
Casey first heard about the Nashville Numbering System back in his Wild Ride days but did not understand it at the time. About eight years ago, the band leader at his church wanted the group to start using it. Casey researched it on his own and taught himself how to apply it on the guitar. It took several years to play with it confidently in a live setting.
He has played in three bands across his career so far.
Wild Ride
Country and rock, based in Denver City, Texas. Monthly shows at the Higginbotham Jamboree and local dances.
Tuesday Night Live Youth Band
A weekly Christian youth outreach at Judson Baptist Church in Walker, Louisiana. Casey oversaw the band and taught the guitar parts to the other players.
Christ Community Church Band
Based in Denham Springs, Louisiana. Casey has played lead guitar with this band for the last 15 years. They play every Sunday morning. You can see the band on the church’s YouTube channel.
Why He Wrote the Book
About a year ago, Casey’s oldest grandson Thadeus asked him to teach him guitar. Casey knew right away he did not want to teach Thadeus the way he had learned, fighting through five open chords for six months before anything sounded like music. He started Thadeus on the Nashville Numbering System instead, beginning with the A major chord in the first position, which is the 1 chord. Thadeus picked it up fast. He can now play in the key of A in two positions on the fretboard and he plays arpeggios and harmonies that took Casey years to learn.
Casey began writing the weekly lessons down so he could remember what he had taught the week before and plan the next one. After a few weeks the document started to look like a book. He kept going, rewriting it as a course any beginner could follow on their own. He named the book after Thadeus and wrote it in a voice where Thadeus is teaching the reader, the same way Casey teaches him.
What Casey Plays
Casey plays a mix of styles. Blues, Classic Rock and Country. He reads music, played piano briefly, played trumpet through high school, and has taught guitar one-on-one to students of all ages, including his grandson and several students in his community. These days most of his playing is with his band in Denham Springs, with rock and roll on the side for variety.
Where to Find Him
Christ Community Church of Denham Springs, Louisiana.