Greetings and salutations!
I’m Mike Strausbaugh—guitarist, composer, teacher, speaker. Owner of a very fancy résumé.

But I’m still just an 80s metal kid whose life was saved by Music in 1987—who somehow lived long enough to lose it all at 24 and fight to get it back more than a decade later.

I was on my own at 15—the youngest casualty in a family that had fallen apart.
I was invisible, powerless, and scared.
Forgotten.

And then my life changed in an instant—one day in 10th grade English class, when a kid pressed play on a white cassette tape.

Disposable Heroes.
Metallica.

That song doesn’t begin—it detonates. And it sounded exactly like I felt.

Grief. Rage. Silence. And suddenly, I had a voice.

As soon as I could, I bought my first guitar. It became my sword, my shield, my armor, my home.

I built my life around that guitar, and then around Music.

Nine years later, I graduated with my B.A. in classical guitar.
And exactly one week after that, my life began to fall apart.

Over the next 10 years, an undiagnosed genetic disorder took everything—my health, my future, my music. A decade of survival. Eight near-death experiences. Chronic illness. Constant pain. Spiritual existentialism. No guitar. No music.

And then I was diagnosed.
Common Variable Immunodeficiency. I had a brand new life.
The doctor asked what I was going to do with it.

Five years later, I had reconnected with music and relearned how to play the guitar—while earning three master’s degrees in music, working full-time, commuting 100 miles a day, going through a horrible divorce, and homelessness.