How Our Music Store Got Started

When I was in HS (back in the dark ages) we took that military test that tests your potential to learn, asfab or something like that. Turns out that I scored 99 percentile in mechanical ability, which was apparently really weird for a girl. My band director mentioned it (I was the talk of our HS) and jokingly said, "You ought to learn how to repair band instruments from Mr. Wiese." Wiese Music was the store that called on our school.

I pestered poor Edgar Wiese until he gave me a job. My first clarinet repad was picked out by Roger Marsh, the guy that trained me. I swear he picked the buggiest one on purpose, to see if I would really do it. It had live bugs crawling in the pads. I wasn't daunted, I had grown up in west Texas out in the oil patch with the rednecks, on horseback. I was used to seeing things like maggots.

I loved the job. Kept it until I married a jerk, and spent the next many years being a Navy wife, raising 4 rug rats, and going back for my degree in music. Graduated from college, was a band director for 5 years. Divorced the jerk. Worked off and on for Wiese Music while I was doing all that, whenever they needed the extra help and I needed the dough.

Wiese Music sold to Brook Mays in May of 2001. That summer, after a motorcycle trip to Colorado where new hubby, Johnny Paul, and I experienced major bike problems, hubby was bragging to his new BM manager that I had repaired the bike in the back of a U-haul truck with a flashlight and my pocket knife. When the manager inquired further, hubby said yes, my wife can fix anything. She's probably one of the best woodwind technicians in the entire DFW metroplex. Manager said, get her in here, I want to hire her. I was having a difficult year in teaching, administration woes, and he offered me enough money to make the switch.

We worked for Brook Mays for a year. Johnny Paul had worked for Wiese Music since he was 16, now he was 56. We quickly saw that it just wasn't going to work, but hubby wouldn't believe me when I said his name was enough to start a new business with. We went to work for another music store in town, for 6 short months. But, by making the switch and watching all of our old accounts follow Johnny Paul to the other store, I finally was able to get his attention and he believed it was possible after that. We only stayed at that location for 6 months.

January of '03, we started the business in our big garage. After only a few months, we had band instruments stacked to the ceiling. We applied for an SBA loan, bought the land, built our building, and we were off! Our new store opened in May of 2005, and we have been growing since.