Continuing with the hyper-specific “intersection of music and business in Athens, Georgia” beat, here’s something I wrote about Chick Music in downtown Athens for a public affairs reporting class.  There are a lot of places in downtown Athens actively pursuing certain “cool” aesthetics (and many of them succeed).  The inside of Chick looks like a middle school band room.  Bars, restaurants, record shops and vintage clothing stores all disappear and reappear under new ownership every few years, but Chick Music has survived downtown for 70 years now.

There was a time when Anne Shepherd, the owner of Chick Music on West Clayton Street, could not bear the sound of an electric guitar.

“At first, I was really unhappy,” she said.  “Kids would come in and want to play, and of course they couldn’t play.  They would make such hideous noises.”

And this was before the 69-year-old local business started selling amps.

“I finally got used to it, until the amplifiers came, then I just couldn’t take it,” she said.  “I’ve had to change my attitude about a lot of things.”

That attitude adjustment came on the heels of a much bigger one.  Shepherd never anticipated owning a music business.   When her husband Bill passed away in 1988, after 24 years of ownership, she considered selling the store.

“He made me promise that I would not,” she said.  “He wanted me to leave the kids something.  He wanted them to have a business they could work in and not have to work for someone else.”

Shepherd has four children: Van, Steve, Carol and Christy.  They play a collection of instruments, ranging from piano and flute to bass and electric guitar.  All of them grew up in the store, and three of them still work there.

Like her kids and her husband, Shepherd played the piano when she was young, but she was often discouraged.

“I had a teacher that hit you with a ruler when you made a mistake,” she said.  “Plus, when I got married, my husband was an excellent pianist and I was embarrassed.”

Billy Shepherd assumed ownership of Chick Piano in 1964, following the death of founder Lewis Chick.  Chick started the business as a small piano and organ shop next to the Georgia Theatre in 1942.  When Billy graduated high school in 1947, he immediately began working there.

“Mr. and Mrs. Chick did not have any children, so he was kind of like their adopted son,” said Shepherd.

In 1968, Billy sold the Lumpkin Street property to C&S Bank.  The business moved to West Clayton for more space.  Chick music expanded again, this time horizontally and vertically, in 2006.  Now there is an additional showroom on the street level, a concert hall and teaching studios upstairs and a repair shop downstairs.  To the delight of Mrs. Shepherd, there is a soundproof room for the noisier instruments at the back of the new showroom.

“Now, I owe a lot of money,” joked Shepherd.

The money has not always been there.  She took over the business with minimal musical knowledge and just a degree in home economics from the University of Georgia.  Some important lenders doubted her ability to succeed.

“Twenty-three years ago, the banks did not particularly care about giving money to women,” she said.  “The bank that I had been with for several years decided they didn’t want to do that, so I just walked to the bank across the street,”

Van, Steve and Christys’ combined musical experience helped keep the business going.  Today, Chick Piano has 16 employees, rents instruments to over 40 school bands (including the Redcoat Marching Band), gives music lessons for all ages (their youngest students are 16 months, their oldest 85 years) and does PA installations in churches and schools.  The PA expertise comes from Steve, an electrical engineer.

It employs a variety of professionals who do not have the surname “Shepherd,” too.  Jeff Crouch has played trumpet for 24 years; he has worked in the band department for six.  Dan Myers is a more recent hire.  He started doing repairs for Chick four months ago.  Prior to that, Myers ran his own repair shop for 35 years.

“I didn’t want all the hassle anymore,” he said of his decision to give up his own business.  “I just wanted to work.  They let me do that here.”

Myers sits at a chest-high, dusty pinewood desk for hours, cluttered with special screwdrivers and shiny loose instrument pieces.  His recent endeavor was a saxophone squished by a pickup truck.  He deemed it wholly unsalvageable, but managed to save parts he could use for other repairs.

A tough economy has not spared the only local instrument supplier in downtown Athens.

“Of course our sales are down,” said Shepherd.  “But we’re fortunate our business has held up pretty well.  We’ve managed to maintain things.”

With all the revenue generated from school band rentals, Shepherd said there is a fear that the hard times will hurt concert instrument sales.

“We are always afraid at the beginning of the school year, because the economy is so bad, that we’re going to be stuck with all those instruments and not rent them,” she said.  “But thus far, people have found a way to make room for those instruments.”

It also helps to be nationally recognized and admired.  The B-52s secretly recorded their last album in the new concert hall in 2006.  When customers would ask about the noise, or vigorously claim they saw members of the band, Shepherd would plead ignorance.

“The B-50-whos?”  She would say.  “Oh, come on.”

Another legendary local band, Widespread Panic, mentions Chick Music on all its album covers.  They may not have made it if the store had not let them borrow equipment on credit.

Even people impersonating famous musicians come to Chick.  Steve remembers when a man claiming to be Jimi Hendrix walked through the front door.

“He said I sold him a $500,000 piano” said Steve.  “Then he told me I played at his funeral.”

Chick Piano’s local prominence and family atmosphere is ultimately what has helped it succeed through tough times., though

“I’ve been extremely lucky,” said Shepherd.  “And thus far, no one has lost any money on me.”