"I need attention. I admit it," says singer-songwriter Nathan Beaver, admittedly. "I always have. Performing can fill that void, at least for an hour or two at a time. Songwriting fills a similar, less obvious void, though sometimes even creating a new one for each one it fills."

As the second son of a music minister and an accomplished vocalist/pianist, Nathan owes his love of music to his parents, whose passion helped him to develop a genuine appreciation for well-written, well-performed music of all kinds, not just the hymns he sang on Sundays growing up in suburban Atlanta. It wasn't until later as a high schooler in Nashville that he began to change the way he listened to music. "My older brother would send me album after album of songwriters such as Matthew Kahler, Shawn Mullins, and David Wilcox, artists who embraced the craftmanship of their songs as their strength. I began to realize that a song's ability to tell a story or articulate an emotion can be a very powerful thing; it can make you feel things you'd rather not feel and think about things you'd rather forget, all the while still compelling you to listen over and over again."

After high school, Nathan moved to Athens, Georgia, where he would eventually begin playing, writing, and performing after squandering a year and a half of formal education at the University of Georgia.

"If you round up, I'm a junior."

"My only regret," he says regrettably, "is not recognizing earlier that I had something to contribute. I feel like I got a late start; I wish I would have made an effort to begin playing and writing when I first began to appreciate songs for what they were. I imagine I would have had alot to say back then, maybe even more so than now."

Nathan's strength is in his live performances, during which his songs are delivered genuinely, passionately, and effectively. "I'm convinced that less is more" he says, convincingly. "Music at it's finest should be simple and sincere, a good song should be made up of the best words in the best order, and a show in which the performer truly believes what he or she is singing about should be a show worth seeing."

Nathan currently lives and works on a horse farm/bed and breakfast in Madison, Georgia.


-Johnny Wheelright
The Southeastern Songwriter's Syndicate