TAMARA SAVIANO
Tamara Saviano is an author, producer, communications expert, marketing strategist, and creative ringleader.
For more than thirty years, Saviano has specialized in Americana and Folk as a music business consultant, artist manager, marketing strategist and public relations director. Her latest book, Creative Strategy in the Modern Music Business is a companion to Tamara’s private coaching and consulting business. Through Tamara Saviano Media, Saviano offers strategic consulting and advisory support for artists, filmmakers, authors, nonprofits, festivals, historical societies, and cultural organizations. Drawing on decades of experience across music, film, books, public storytelling, and creative leadership, she helps clients clarify story, strengthen positioning, and shape the larger direction of meaningful creative and cultural work. Her role is advisory: providing senior-level guidance, narrative clarity, and strategic perspective during key moments of growth, transition, and development.
Saviano is a three-time Grammy nominee and took home the statue for producing 2004’s Grammy-winning Best Traditional Folk Album, Beautiful Dreamer: The Songs of Stephen Foster. Saviano produced The Pilgrim: A Celebration of Kris Kristofferson in 2006. The Grammy-nominated This One’s For Him: A Tribute to Guy Clark won the Americana Music Association’s Album of the Year Award in 2012. She collaborated with Austin artist Jimmy LaFave to make 2014’s Looking Into You: A Tribute to Jackson Browne. In 2016, Tamara partnered with Memphis artist Luther Dickinson to produce Red Hot: A Memphis Celebration of Sun Records.
Saviano produced iconic songwriter Kris Kristofferson’s final album, a double-CD set The Cedar Creek Sessions recorded in Austin, Texas.The album was nominated for a Grammy for Best Americana album in 2017. Over two decades, Saviano’s work with the legendary songwriter morphed into a longstanding friendship. Kristofferson wrote the foreword to Saviano’s memoir, The Most Beautiful Girl: A True Story of a Dad, a Daughter and the Healing Power of Music. The book was listed as one of the best books of 2014 in the Chicago Review of Books.
Without Getting Killed or Caught: The Life and Music of Guy Clark, Saviano’s biography on legendary songwriter Guy Clark, was released by Texas A&M University Press in 2016 and won the prestigious Belmont Award from the International Country Music Conference for the best writing on country music that year. Her documentary feature on Clark, Without Getting Killed or Caught, is the winner of SXSW’s 2021 Louis Black Lonestar Award and the 2021 Rockport Film Festival’s Audience Award. Saviano’s latest book (June, 2025) is Poets & Dreamers: My Life in Americana Music. Part memoir and part oral history, the book explores the rise of Americana music as a genre.
She worked with documentary filmmaker Ken Burns and his team as an advisor for the PBS series Country Music. She co-created (with artist Rod Picott) From Art to Commerce: A Workshop for Independent Musicians, a comprehensive one-day program that demystifies the perplexing elements of the music business and teaches entrepreneurial skills to independent artists. As a veteran of Leadership Music, a cohort of professionals committed to supporting the industry, Saviano was invited to create All ATX Leadership in Austin, which she directed for three years prior to the pandemic. Now she is the President and Creative Director of Guy Clark LLC, Truly Handmade Records, and the Guy Clark Family Foundation. The companies were formed by Clark’s grandchildren to cultivate and manage the intellectual property of Guy and Susanna Clark, to amplify and honor the legacy, and to support songwriters who live and work in the spirit of Guy Clark. Saviano also shares her voice on the airwaves as host of The Traveling Kind, an Americana radio show on WVMO—the Voice of Monona.
The Texas Heritage Songwriters Association honored Tamara in 2017 with the Darrell K. Royal Texas Legend Award for her work with Texas Songwriters. In 2020, the Austin Music Awards selected Tamara to receive the Margaret Moser Award, which recognizes women leaders in music.
