Hole In The Wall | If you’re not careful, you could walk right past the Acoustic Music Shop.
As you head east past 109 Street on Whyte Avenue, you pass all sorts of music stores, each one devoted to a certain instrument or piece of musical equipment: guitars, amps, pianos. There’s a sterile feeling to some of them, like you know you’re walking into a store, where they’re advertising the latest instruction books, their aisles so jam-packed with instruments you’re afraid to walk anywhere for fear of knocking them over.
But go past the Gateway rail tracks, down where you start to worry about walking alone, and you’ll find a little hole in the wall, a split-level joint. The main floor of the building between the Shell station and Lagano Skies has a travel company, airfare prices written with soap marker on its windows (“London, 7 nights in Earl’s Court, $1199!”). Here, if you head downstairs, you get the feeling you’ve arrived in the home of someone who just happens to sell instruments.
Behind the counter of the Acoustic Music Shop is a young man with tattoos peeking out of his shirt and running down his arms, talking to a customer in brown leather, shades pulled up on his forehead. Down the hall, kids tinker with guitars as they wait to take their lessons. The proprietor of this cozy little shop, Rod West, can be seen in the back room through a window, amidst stacks of cases and instruments ready to be worked on.
I found out about this place through Don Ehret, a guitar teacher at Alberta College, who used to teach West around the time he took ownership of the shop. “Hopefully he’s still practicing and working hard at it,” Ehret laughs. “It’s a really nice little shop. I go there first before I go to any of the other stores. The service, atmosphere, quality instruments. I’m going to be taking a guitar to him to refret it—he does a lot of good work that way. He’s very dedicated to what he does.”
West emerges from behind the glass to shake my hand. “G&L guy, right?” he says, remembering me from the previous week when I dropped off a G&L ASAT Tribute semi-hollow guitar.
The 38-year-old Edmontonian is best known from his days as part of the band Captain Emo, which released three albums between 1992 and 1998. A couple years ago he was with Darrek Anderson and the Guaranteed. West still does fill-in work whenever he can, mostly in the roots genre.
The Acoustic Music shop started out in 1992 under Tony Michaels; back then, it was located across Whyte next to CIBC, but it moved to its current residence for bigger floorspace, better parking, and to get away from an annoying resident in the upper floor suite. West (who took sole ownership of the store after it changed hands from Michaels to Andy Nichols, whom West partnered with from 1996-1998) smiles when I ask what drew him to the shop itself. His answer is simple: “I obviously love instruments, I love to play, I’m really into music. It’s a gratifying job for me. We take on a lot of repairs that most places don’t. We do some complicated jobs, reconstruction that sort of thing which a lot of stores don’t want to deal with.”
And West has made a point of using the shop and the music therein to contribute to the community. Under West, the shop has donated to the Youth Emergency Shelter, Santas Anonymous, the Superwalk for Parkinson’s (to which they donated an autographed Tom Cochrane guitar), all in addition to sponsoring or staffing the backline on festivals like the Uptown Folkfest, the Northern Lights Folkfest, and the Pembina River Nights Festival.
It’s the kind of diversity and passion for music Edmonton’s cultural scene needs, and it brings a smile to my face to see a man so dedicated to the music. As if all that didn’t keep him busy enough, West insists on offering his clients and musicians full-service support. “We offer repairs, lessons, some group ensemble lessons, sales, a full line of instruments, amplifiers and PA gear, rentals, lots of community events, sometimes the odd clinic,” West says.
West’s instructors offer guitar, bass, violin, mandolin, and fiddle lessons—you know, the usual—but the Shop’s offerings extend into ukulele, banjo, resonator and classical guitar, stand-up bass, cello, and even mandola. “A lot of [our instructors] are working players around Edmonton who I’ve seen play, or they’ve come here because they have a friend who has taught here,” West says. “But they’re all visible in the music community. They all have a passion for music and like to teach.”
As I take my leave and collect my guitar, I feel West has given me more than his time (and an amazing instrument)—he’s given me the assurance that I’ll always be welcome back in his shop, where it’ll always feel more like home.
