Tamara Saviano

Tamara Saviano is an author, producer, songwriter-whisperer, and creative ringleader.

She 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. Saviano’s 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. Saviano collaborated with Austin artist Jimmy LaFave to make 2014’s Looking Into You: A Tribute to Jackson Browne. In 2016, Saviano partnered with Memphis artist Luther Dickinson to produce Red Hot: A Memphis Celebration of Sun Records.

Saviano produced iconic songwriter Kris Kristofferson’s double-CD set The Cedar Creek Sessions and the album was nominated for a Grammy for Best Americana album in 2017. Saviano has worked with the legendary songwriter for more than two decades. 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 on the prestigious 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. Saviano’s 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 oral history on Americana music, Kindred Spirits, will be published by Texas A&M University Press in spring, 2025.

Since 2002, Saviano has worked as a marketing strategist, communications director, music business consultant and project manager in the Folk and Americana genres. She worked with documentary filmmaker Ken Burns and his team as an advisor for the PBS series Country Music. Saviano 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.

Saviano is president and creative director of Guy Clark LLC/Guy Clark Family Trust. The trust was formed by Guy’s grandchildren to cultivate and manage the intellectual property of Guy and Susanna Clark, amplify and honor the legacy, and to support songwriters who live in the spirit of Guy Clark. Guy Clark LLC is managed by a board of directors, which includes Saviano, Guy’s grandson Dylan Clark, longtime friends Rodney Crowell and Verlon Thompson, and record label executive Scott Robinson.

The Texas Heritage Songwriter Association honored Saviano in 2017 with the Darrell K. Royal Texas Legend Award for her work with Texas Songwriters. In 2020, the Austin Music Awards selected Saviano to receive the Margaret Moser Award, which recognizes women in music.

Testimonials

“Tamara Saviano is an intelligent, clear-eyed, no-nonsense professional who is a pleasure to work with and a reliable partner to have on your side.”

—Kris Kristofferson (artist)

“Tamara Saviano is one of the most talented indie managers, label consultants and PR people that I’ve had the pleasure to work with. A gifted entrepreneur herself, I can think of no one better to speak to the independent artist community to help them navigate these often difficult waters.”

—Kerry O’Neil, co-owner of Big Yellow Dog Music (Multiple Grammy winning music publisher)

“Tamara Saviano embodies the best combination of passion and clear-eyed objectivity. I entrusted my most personal album Burnt Toast and Offerings to her and she ‘got it’ in every sense of the word and made it her mission to get it to the rest of the world. I’d work with her again in a heartbeat.”

—Gretchen Peters (artist)

“In 2012 to celebrate my 50th year in the music business, I released a newly recorded album of 25 Greatest Hits. In all my years of singing, I’d never released an independent album and had no clue how to do it. With Tamara’s excellent guidance, she explained how it was done, set me up with an independent distributor, handled all my publicity and generally acted as an all-in-one record label staff for me. The release was extremely successful and I couldn’t have been more pleased with Tamara’s work on my behalf.

—Gene Watson (artist)

“Tamara Saviano is not only a tremendous manager and publicist with the connections to get your music heard and promoted, she has the ability to help artists see the big picture and come up with a plan. Plus, she is one of my favorite people to hang out with.”

—Radney Foster (artist)

“If you’ve got an artistically meritous project, I can’t think of anyone that I’d rather have as an advocate to the press than Tamara. She planned and implemented the media campaigns for two of our top selling projects, Beautiful Dreamer: The Songs of Stephen Foster and Beth Nielsen Chapman’s Hymns. Whenever you invest money in a publicist, you hope you can feel the difference on Soundscan. Using that as a gauge, I think we underpaid her.”

—David Macias, Thirty Tigers (Record Label, music marketing company)

“Tamara is a professional in every sense of the word. Set-up, execution and results. We’ve worked together with Guy Clark’s Workbench Songs and Somedays The Song Writes You. Both campaigns culminated with GRAMMY nominations. Enough said.”

—Paul Roper, Dualtone Music Group (Record Label)