California
Andy Penn opened one of the first music stores dedicated to drums and percussion in Northern California. As a drummer he wants to create a place for others to gather and be able to purchase quality gear. He opened Andy Penn’s Drum world in 1965 only to soon discover the name Drum World was...
Frank Ford was beginning to build guitars and mandolins when he met Richard Johnston. The two guitar lovers decided to open a repair shop in Palo Alto, California called Gryphon Stringed Instruments. Before long he had a need to expand and the shop became an important retail store for the emerging...
Michael Simmons is a co-founder of the Fretboard Journal and the author of several articles and books about vintage guitars and other fretted instruments. He began his career at Gryphon Guitars in Palo Alto, where he caught the bug for the history of the instruments. Over the years he has...
Ted Kraut loves teaching guitar! It's in his blood and very evident to anyone who talks to Ted for over a minute. His passion has inspired thousands of students over the years, first when he taught at Canoga Music and in more recent years when he bought the business and focused on forming its...
John Pedersen, the founder of Pedersen's Band & Orchestra in Burbank, California, began his career with a small instrument repair shop. The store, which began in the early 1970s, continued to grow even during the 17 years he spent working for the Los Angeles Unified School District repairing...
Nedra Pedersen grew up playing French horn and studying all areas of music. She landed a job in the publishing side of Disney and worked with Hal Leonard on several projects including The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. In the year 2000, she began working full time with her husband in...
Marcia Stearns is a regular attendee at the annual RPMDA conventions and can often be found volunteering to introduce a speaker or tallying the session surveys. Her passion for the business is clear in all that she does, including running her own sheet music and gift shop called Bookmark Music. ...
Richard Gellis remembers the early days of the vintage guitar movement when greater value was being placed on "used instruments." As his small store grew in Santa Cruz, California, so did his reputation for knowledge and customer services that helped make Union Grove Music the go-to place for...
Tom Steuckert is a veteran of the music industry having served as store manager at Union Grove Music in Santa Cruz, a road rep and sales manager. His career began when he helped assemble synthesizers for Dave Smith at Sequential Circuits in the early 1980s. Tom later owned his own store in Half...
Fat Dog is the founder of Subway Guitars in Berkeley, California. Since the 1960s, the store has become a hub for musicians to gather to discuss everything from politics and human rights concerns as well as music and poetry. The level of social awareness that Subway had was in Fat Dog's...