Photo by Howard Owens.
The way Jeremy Logan sees it, Batavia needs a music store.
A community this size needs a place not just to buy instruments but all of the accessories musicians sometimes need on short notice, from strings and reeds to picks and drumsticks.
Logan worked for 13 years at Roxy's Music Store, and after Rose Caccamise died and the store closed, he knew there was a void to fill. He worked from home repairing guitars for former Roxy's customers and continued taking guitar lessons from Paul Runfola at St. Anthony's.
Going to a lesson one day, he drove by a recently vacated storefront next to Southside Deli on Ellicott Street and thought it might be a good location to start a music store. A few days later, there was a for-rent sign in the window.
He spoke to Runfola about it, and they decided to form a partnership and open a store.
In less than two weeks, Logan's Music has already started generating buzz among local musicians, and a lot of players are stopping by to say hello and check out the store. He's even made a few sales.
Currently, the store is stocked with second-hand guitars, from a gold-top Gibson Les Paul to custom Telecasters, along with lower-end models, as well as a few guitars Logan built or customized himself.
Logan, born in Batavia and raised on the Tonawanda Indian Reservation, fell in love with guitar at an early age. As he grew older, he wanted to find a way to make a living in the music business.
"I've loved guitar since I was kid, you know, but I wasn't good enough of a player to go further," Logan said. "I could play in local bands, but I wanted something consistent."
In 2000, he enrolled in the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery in Phoenix and, after his studies, moved to Eugene, Oregon and worked for a company making graphite guitar necks.
Then he returned home and eventually took a job at Guitar Center in Buffalo, first in sales and then as a luthier when the company decided to open a repair shop.
One day he happened to Roxy's and met Rose.
"I was just talking with her and told her what I did and everything, and she said, 'Come over here,' and we sat down in the corner we talked for about a good hour about what I was doing. The next day, she gave me a call and offered me a job.
Logan liked holding down a job closer to town, and he gained a reputation among local guitarists as an expert luthier.
He became a luthier because he loved tinkering with guitars but also because he wanted to build custom guitars himself.
"I've always wanted to make my own kind of crazy designs," Logan said.
There's also satisfaction, he said, in bringing a broken guitar back to life, whether that is for a customer who drops by with a damaged instrument or if he finds a crippled axe at a flea market or garage sale, giving him an opportunity to turn it into something that brings joy to a customer.
"I like fixing guitars, taking a perfect junk guitar and making it playable and getting it to somebody who can use it," Logan said. "That's always really cool. I like the look on someone's face when they get a guitar. It's always the same feeling. I like just bringing a guitar back to life and getting it out to people to where they're it's to be played and not just sitting in a pile of junk."
The selection of second-hand guitars in the shop offers shoppers a wide variety of choices. He has buyers who go out and find them, and now that he has a storefront, customers will bring in guitars to sell. That makes the selection always eclectic and always changing, making the store a bit of a paradise for local guitar players who haven't had a place in Batavia to browse a variety of guitars for a couple of years.
He's still building his stock but has no plans in his current small space to stock many other instruments. He does intend to carry supplies to support all kinds and levels of musicians in the community and is open to suggestions.
"I had a music teacher from John Kennedy come in, and he was talking to me and asked me if I was going to carry certain stuff, and I said I don't really know what to carry for schools, so he sat down, and he gave me a whole list of what he needed," Logan said. "He said he would send over a teacher from Batavia High School, too. That was cool because everybody has been ready to give me advice and what is needed for the community. That is what I've wanted. It's going to be hard to take the place of Roxy's, but there was nothing here for the community, so it's cool (to get advice)."
Logan's Music is at 302 Ellicott St., Batavia. The store is open from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday. The phone number is 585-201-7133.
Photo by Howard Owens.
