Working at the Music Store.
How it used to be back in the day.
Taking a look back at the world of music stores and just how much has changed since those happy days of being a music teacher and having lots of eager students.
I started teaching guitar lessons in the later part of 1996. It was at the (former) Thoroughbred Music store in the Lee Road shopping center in Orlando. I started out scheduling only one or two days a week at the store because I was also working part-time at Orlando International Airport. Teaching lessons was supposed to be a temporary thing to supplement my income.
Sometime in early February 1997, I went to my job at the airport and discovered that the contract I was working for had not been renewed with the airline - which meant that I along with three of my fellow coworkers, were all out of a job at the end of the month. I didn't stick around to see how it ended. I think I quit that job some time that week. I'd had enough of the airport life. It was time for me to move on to something I actually liked doing.
That summer, I was able to eventually build my roster up to about twenty-five weekly students. I had found a new home, a new job where I felt like I truly belonged. What I remember about those days in the middle 1990's was that the store was never not busy. From the time it opened around noon to the time it closed in the evening, there were always a lot of people in the store. There was always a full staff of employees working in every department of the store. The guitar department alone had at least two or three sales representatives. The front counter had at least two or three cashiers. The drum department had at least two sales people working.
In the back, was where all of the lessons rooms were. I believe that there were either four or five rooms available to all of the teachers. There were one or two drum teachers, a piano teacher, a horn teacher, a strings teacher - my buddy, Mike and I and two other guitar teachers. Every teacher had a roster of weekly students. I would guess that all total, we must have brought in at least two hundred students a week into that store.
I think my busiest days were when I had eight or ten students in one shift. I liked being busy, because the lessons were easy and the time simply flew by. If I had a break between lessons, I would walk across the street to the Checkers burger place and get lunch. Sometimes I'd drive down the road to Taco Bell. I loved having my time to come and go as I pleased. I had never had a job where I was completely in charge of my day.
The music store didn't really have to do much advertising to draw potential new students into the store. There was a bulletin board next to the front door, but that was about it. Keep in mind, all of this this was happening long before everyone had cell phones and home computers. In other words, people looking for music lessons back then, perused the Yellow Pages or the local newspapers for information on teachers. The internet of those days was nothing like it is now. People didn't shop online because there was nothing to shop for. If you wanted to buy a guitar, you had to go to a music store to buy it. If you wanted lessons on learning how to play that guitar, chances are, you'd probably take the lessons at that same music store.
I remember many of the local musicians came into that store all of the time. If you worked at the store, you knew who the celebrities were. I remember one evening as I was waiting for my last student to show up, the front door opened and five teenage boys all dressed up in nice clothes walked in and started shaking hands with everyone. Behind them was this 300-pound sweaty pig in a suit. It was Lou Perlman and (I think) either the Backstreet Boys of NSYNC. There were so many boy bands back then, I don't remember which ones these guys were. What I do remember is this wafting stench that floated across the store. It was Perlman. His raging body odor shook hands with everyone ten minutes before he did.
I had my proverbial ear to the ground back in those days. I knew many of the local bands, where they rehearsed and where they were playing in town. From 1999-2001, I played bass guitar in six different bands. The music store was always jumping. It was alive with people trying out new guitars, drum sets, pianos and keyboards. Then, in 1999, Sam Ash purchased Thoroughbred Music.
Changes were coming. Since I and all of the other teachers were independent of the music store, none of us were all that concerned about our jobs as teachers, since none of us were actually employees of Thoroughbred. We just rented the back rooms for a small fee. However, Sam Ash had different ideas on how to run the store. They sent a headhunter to the store to thin the herd and to get rid of the people that were costing the store money. In this process of changes, corporate decision makers saw little reason for any of the teachers to remain at the store, as we were not insured as employees. By 2000, we all had to find another place to teach our lessons. I guess when I look back at it now, I sort of understand why they needed to make this decision. The guy who was doing all of the house cleaning actually offered me a job selling guitars. I turned down the offer because I didn't want to work for someone else. I wanted to be my own boss for a while.
I think it was several years later when Sam Ash decided to bring back their own teachers as employees. By 2010, it was already too late to salvage any teaching program that would come close to what we had going in the 1990's. People still went to all of the music stores all over Orlando and Central Florida, but it wasn't anything like it used to be. The only people going to music stores to buy gear were the diehard musicians who wanted to shop in the candy store. Everyone else was buying their stuff online. Too much had changed. Over time, with the internet and the virtual disappearance of the once dominating music industry, combined with online shopping and social media - the death nail in the proverbial coffin became abundantly clear.
Fast forward to today. In the dozen or so times I have walked into the Sam Ash music store on East Colonial, I immediately noticed the absolute emptiness of the store. A once bustling store with hundreds of customers, was now a nearly empty shell of its former self. I was recently hired as a teacher at that store. I was thrilled to be brought onto the team. Unfortunately, that's as far as things have come so far. I haven't worked one day. When I inquired about my scheduling, I was told that they simply didn't have any new students for me, which is surprising since I was under the impression that they had students waiting for me. It is all very disappointing. I would love to go back to working a day or two each week at the store, just so I have a place I can go to where I could have my ear to the ground once again.
Maybe those days truly are over. All the musicians I knew back then are now either working 40-hour-a-week jobs or retired, moved out of town or dead. I have no idea what would ever bring life back into the music stores. Music today resembles nothing of the music of yesteryear. A rather apathetic, skeleton music store staff with little motivation to feel happy about coming to work each day, serves as a reminder of how much has been lost in the past twenty-five years in the music world. It is exceptionally depressing to have a “lifetime art” to teach - that very few people are even interested in learning. I know nothing else but music. My days of working "jobs" are over. At nearly 61-years of age, I want to be semi-retired soon and only teach students who want to learn how to play the guitar. Everything else is just a waste of my precious time.