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Megadeth, Anthrax and More to Offer Free Virtual Music Lessons

Megadeath David Ellefson

Since schools are closed for the foreseeable future, Megadeth bassist David Ellefson is kickstarting a new effort to offer free one-on-one lessons to music students.

The “School’s Out” initiative will pair up students, high school or younger, with metal musicians who will mentor them via Cisco. It is spearheaded by the David Ellefson Youth Music Foundation, which is an affiliate of the Grammy Music Education Coalition.

Aside from Ellefson, his bandmates Dirk Verbeuren and Kiko Loureiro have joined the cause. Other artists include Frank Bello (Anthrax), Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal (Guns N’ Roses), Chris Kael (Five Finger Death Punch); Phil Demmel (formerly of Machine Head) and Clint Lowery (Sevendust). You can find the full list of participating musicians here.

There will also be a number of instructional videos that will be on the Ellefson’s foundation website for free.

“The mission of our foundation is to try and help keep music in schools, but what happens when kids can’t go to school? As I’m sitting home with my 2 restless kids, in basically forced exile, it kinda hit me,” Thom Hazaert said in a statement. “We started talking about David doing a few online lessons with kids, via the foundation, and then got around to the idea of recruiting some of our other friends as well.”

Students can apply for the lessons here. And if you want to donate to the cause, you can check out their FundRazr here.