Music Makes Us Family

written by Livi West

**Shiloh Music Center is 45** *photos by Joshua Hicks*

written by Livi West

There’s just something magical about a center of the community where everybody knows each other’s names and histories. It draws us in, makes us want to stop for a drink at Cheers or sit in the local barber shop just to play chess or whatever. Those kinds of community hangouts have almost disappeared in the digital age, and you can’t find that sense of home just by going on Hip Mount Juliet, but it still exists in real life.

I found it at Shiloh Music Center.
It’s not just me, either. If you sit here long enough, it seems like the whole town walks in. In the same day, I bumped into the keyboard player from my old church worship team, a former bandmate, and a cowriter who currently plays lead guitar for Kellie Pickler.

The sense of belonging that suddenly washes over everyone when they walk into Shiloh emanates directly from the family that owns and runs it, the Hedges. The Hedges family has always belonged to music.

Fred Hedges was a guitarist, luthier and machinist from Ann Arbor, Michigan. When his friend Billy Grammer wanted to start his own guitar company in Nashville, Fred moved South to design and build the necessary machines. One of Johnny Cash’s Grammer guitars currently resides in the Country Music Hall of Fame. Fred’s son, George, remembers doing yard work and sweeping the floor at the factory. He wasn’t allowed to help with the building when he was young.

It wasn’t until after he returned from service in the Navy that his father asked George to get into the music business with him by starting a store. Fred and his sons, George and Richard, opened the first location on April 1, 1974, with a big grand opening celebration featuring Fred’s old friend Billy Grammer. It was a small storefront in the Shiloh Plaza on Lebanon Rd. with one lesson room.

Karen walked into the new store looking for a job, then a James Taylor songbook. Neither were available yet, but she ended up with so much more. She and George were married in November of 1974 and she started teaching piano a few months later.

New businesses require a lot of work and money to get off the ground. At one point, the store was struggling and George had to sell his motorcycle. He had bought a Honda right out of the factory in Japan while on duty. The cargo crate had been on the ship with him when he was brought home for the last time. He opened the crate and drove that motorcycle all over America for a while before settling down back in Tennessee to open the store. It had been a sacrifice to sell it, but one that George was happy to make for the store that became the second home for him and his young family.

There are very few work places that enable a family to spend so much quality time together as Shiloh has. George and Karen soon had two sons who frequently tagged along while their parents were working on something at the store. At the second location, a little house on Lebanon Rd that had to be torn down for the road’s expansion, the boys would play hide and seek in the basement. Karen could give lessons while the kids played. James loved to follow George around and help him with repairs, Paul loved helping his dad run cables and set up sound systems. It’s really no wonder the boys grew up to become such prodigies, as well.

One Christmas when Paul and James were in High School, George gave the boys each a box with a guitar drawn on it in Sharpie. Inside the guitar box was “a bunch of pieces of fire wood, some money and guitar parts.” It was a build-your-own guitar kit, which became the first guitars the boys had ever built. Later they would both rebuild hundreds of guitars for their customers and James would even take this skill on the road with many major label recording acts.

Over the last 45 years, Shiloh Music Center has continued to grow with its family and its town. Paul has taken over management of the store’s business and James is now running the repair side. For the last six years Shiloh has resided at it’s third location on North Mount Juliet Rd and it feels just as much like home as ever.

“I can’t imagine what it would be like for a new customer to walk into this store for the first time and hang out for an hour or two.” George says.

I can, because I recently did this. It wasn’t my first time in the store, but not being one to window shop for things I can’t afford, I had never stayed to hang out before. Since starting research on this article, I have fallen in love with the community which this store and it’s family have created. Let me tell you some of what I have seen and learned.

While I was buying a tuner for my son’s guitar, I bumped into a songwriter friend who had recently moved to Virginia. He was hanging out in the store to say hello to the staff, who had become good friends over the years when he had lived in town.

I watched one of Karen’s students testing keyboards. He needed one with weighted keys for more accurate practicing at home. Paul was showing him a feature where the Roland paired to an app on his phone so he could alter the effects or even the key. While the student was playing, Paul changed what it sounded like several times. Later, while he was checking me out at the counter, he unexpectedly changed the tuning of the Roland again, which served to remind the student that his grandfather was waiting for him in the car.

I watched as several of the teachers took turns recording instrumental tracks on the recording equipment to contribute to a song a friend had written celebrating the store’s anniversary. Several of the students stopped to listen to the mix, which Paul and Davie spent lots of time tweaking during down times and after hours.
While Jay talked a regular customer through some modifications to the pickup on his guitar, George told me about the many years (more than one decade) when Jay was just a regular customer himself. Jay had been working at a used instrument store in downtown Nashville, but had been let go when the store was changing directions. The very next day he came in to Shiloh to check in with George and was given a job on the spot. He has been working on their repair bench for over a decade now. Jay has a warm and ready smile and a soft southern drawl that reminds me of my grandpa. It’s impossible not to feel at home around him.
Bill Cooley stopped to talk to me about his time with Shiloh. He had taught guitar there for a while in 1982, but he took a job touring with Kathy Mattea. He still tours with her, “but she only plays on weekends now, so I have time to teach again during the week.”

He loves teaching at Shiloh. I watched Bill lay his guitar track on the collaborative song and my eyes misted up. His fingering style is so effortless and beautiful, I just want to listen to him play all day. It seems I can, since he has a few albums of his own.

Twice I have been in the store when the Martin representative was dropping by and I even got to play a new guitar that wasn’t available for sale yet. Magical moments like that make me wish I had been in the store on the day J.J. Cale showed up on his motorcycle instead of his Volkswagen Beetle.

Normally, Cale would park his rusted Beetle right in front of the door. He would come into the shop to talk about music and life, pull out a large wad of cash wrapped in a rubber band and pay for whatever he played with that day in unsorted bills. He also loved motorcycles, so George and J.J. would talk about the rides they had been on. One day he discovered that George no longer had his bike. The next time he stopped at the store, he came on his bike. He strolled up to George at the counter with two helmets. Then, he handed George the title and key.

“He was the kind of man who would do something like that for the thrill of it and he wanted nothing in return. No alternative motive. He didn’t even want a discount.” J.J. Cale just wanted to continue trading stories with George, and for that, George needed a hog. It was years of stories later when J.J. came in with his girlfriend and they picked out coordinating Fenders, and George was finally in a position to return the favor. He gifted them the guitars.

Today, the education department of Shiloh is the biggest story of all. The back half of the store houses the lesson hall which features 9 sound-proofed teaching studios where 19 teachers instruct over 450 students every week ranging in age from 5 to 83. Inside those rooms you can learn to play any instrument you can imagine.
The waiting room, centered between the 9 studios, sounds a lot like Tin Pan alley, various instruments all mingling together in a soothing way. Each studio has a window so parents can watch while their child learns, but most just sit in the chairs provided and converse with each other, catching up on the latest news about a rescue puppy or sharing potty-training tips. Every half hour a new rotation of parents, grandparents and students enters and the hallways and waiting area are flooded with happy conversations, well-wishes and invitations to some show or another. Some of the grandparents and parents are also students. Karen, who has now been teaching there for 44 years, currently teaches several of her “grand-students,” the children of her former students. A couple of her students have now become Shiloh’s next generation of piano teachers, others lead worship at churches and play in famous bands.

And the beat goes on.

To be a part of this family, come to Shiloh Music Center
4056 N. Mt. Juliet Rd.
Mt. Juliet, TN 37122
615-758-9437