The walls are covered with guitars, banjos, violins, and other string instruments. The air has an earthy and musky scent as if the wooden instruments packed into the space were handmade this morning. Bluegrass stars of the ‘50s and beyond are memorialized by the newspaper clippings and old posters on display.
The slight tune of a banjo fades into the background music as the afternoon sun beams down through the window, highlighting every gold fleck on the headstocks of the guitars.
Leon Barrows opened Music Junction in High Springs in 2007 before he moved the store to downtown Alachua in 2012. Barrows, a luthier – that’s a maker of stringed instruments – opened the shop to keep busy during retirement. But in the nearly two decades since, he said, it’s become a passion project and his version of heaven.
“It’s good for the community, it’s good for the soul, it’s good for the people,” Barrows said. “Music is good all the way around.”
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, music stores nationwide have closed amid increased online retailers. Sam Ash, a national music store chain, closed its doors earlier this year after a century in business. The number of companies in the musical instrument and supply stores industry has slowly but steadily decreased over the past decade, with 9,903 stores reported in 2013 and 9,125 stores in 2023, according to data published by IBISWorld, an industry market research company.
Barrows said it’s been a challenge keeping Music Junction afloat, but strategic decisions have helped keep the store’s doors open and the strings plucking.
“We’ve had to change our rates, of course, because minimum wage went up, in order to stay here,” Barrows said. “That’s basically what we’re doing. We’re just surviving.”
Music Junction is not just a store and repair shop. It also offers lessons. Barrows said that four instructors teach around 40 students.
One instructor is 85-year-old Gene Menet, who has taught music lessons for 17 years.
Menet, who sits in a worn leather chair, shared that he was in a bluegrass band for seven years. He said he found Music Junction after his wife passed away, and that it was his saving grace.
“My theory is in bluegrass and country music. If you can hear it, you can play it,” Menet said. “I don’t read music; I play everything by ear, and I teach it with a process called tablature where you tab out the notes on a graph.”
Menet said witnessing his students learn to play and develop a love for music has kept him teaching for as long as he has. He recalled one story about a mandolin player.
“I tabbed out a song for him, and he went through it, and then the following week, he came back. He sat, and he played it, and he played it well, better than I could have,” Menet said. “I’ve seen it so many times over the years, and that’s why I keep coming back and doing it.”
Music Junction is among only a handful of north central Florida music stores to have survived the tough economic trends. Gainesville’s famous Lipham Music, where Tom Petty worked in the 1960s, closed in 2014 after six decades in business.
Big-box stores, too, cut into the business, Barrows said, but he sees increasing support from people in the surrounding area who love music.
“It’s best to support the local small mom-and-pop places than it is the big-box stores,” Barrows said. “I think slowly people are starting to realize that.”
The tune of the banjo turns into guitar strings, and Barrows reflects on how a new feeling of hope has set in.
“We were able to stay above water, but it’s been a roller coaster ride, and it probably will always be a roller coaster ride, but the good thing is Alachua is growing,” he said. “So that looks like a good future down the road.”
One leg up Music Junction has on online retailers is Barrows’ luthier skills.
“A lot of people are buying online because they think they’re getting a better deal,” Barrows said. “In reality, they’re not getting a better deal because I find most of them bring [their instruments] to me to fix them.”