Jack Devine

A musician who teaches, not a teacher who plays a little.

Jack leads Knock 'Em Dead, sits in regularly with Rainbow Spirals, and was recently invited to join the Near Dead Experience for the 30th-anniversary tribute to Jerry Garcia at Brooklyn Bowl. He gigs. He records. He's still figuring out new songs at rehearsal the night before a show, the same as every working player.

That matters, because the lessons here are taught by someone who knows what actually works under bandstand lights, not someone whose framework collapses the moment a drummer plays the wrong fill.

How the school got started

For years, Jack ran a busy private-lesson practice. One-on-one Zoom sessions, students all over the country. The teaching was good. The model was unsustainable, you can only book so many hours.

One of his students pointed out the obvious: "You should be teaching in classrooms, not one-on-one."

So in late summer 2025, Jack launched Snax Skool on the Skool community platform. The name is a deliberate misspelling of "snacks" (a personal nickname) plus the deliberate misspelling of "skool" that gives the platform its name. It's a school. He owns the school. Both of those misspellings are on purpose.

Brainy scholar, working musician.

Jack was an English and musicology major in college. He's the kind of teacher who'll cite the Hampton '88 footage by date and timestamp, then immediately show you why most tablature you'll find online for the same song is wrong. He's allergic to misinformation. He's tolerant of how language and music actually evolve, but if you're going to play Big River, you should know that "I met him accidentally in St. Paul Minnesota" goes to B7, not the chord the four most popular online tabs all confidently misprint.

Underneath the scholarship is a fundamentally practical mind. Jack doesn't teach abstract theory. He teaches the way an actual gigging musician implements theoretical concepts, major pentatonic with the flat three, Cornell-style enclosures, harmonic minor for the dominant chord, explained in plain English with a guitar in his hands.

A dad first.

Jack's a husband and father. His son is a competitive swimmer just selected for nationals. The school runs on a real Monday-through-Friday rhythm because everything in Jack's life does. The schedule isn't an artificial scarcity, it's the actual schedule of a working musician who values his evenings.

Which is also why Snax Skool delivers what it delivers. Five live touchpoints a week. Lessons that don't waste your time. Homework that gets reviewed. A real classroom, not a content firehose.

Where to catch Jack live

Jack tours with several New York-based bands. Upcoming:

• Brooklyn Bowl, August 9, with the Near Dead Experience. A tribute set marking the 30th anniversary of Jerry Garcia's passing.
• Rockaway Boardwalk, August 8, with Rainbow Spirals.
• Bose Bar (Green Lawn, Long Island), September 13 & October 25, with Knock 'Em Dead.
• The Bitter End (Manhattan), October 29 (Tuesday before Halloween), with Knock 'Em Dead.

If you're local, come out. Throw something in the jug if you're at the boardwalk show.