Rhythm Traders, a Northeast Portland drum shop that has been open for over 30 years, is welcoming two other music businesses into its building. Together, the three businesses hope to create a sort of living room for Portland musicians, and long term stability for their own stores. Ryan Lynn, owner of Eastside Guitar Repair, and Hank Failing, owner of Hank’s Music Exchange, join us to talk about what the new ‘MLK Music Mall’ could look like.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: The drum shop, Rhythm Traders, has been operating in Northeast Portland for over 30 years. It recently welcomed two other music businesses into its building. Eastside Guitar Repair and Hank’s Music Exchange had been in Southeast Portland. They’ve moved to the Rhythm Traders building to form what they are calling the MLK Music Mall. Ryan Lynn is the owner of Eastside Guitar Repair. Hank Failing is the Hank behind Hank’s Music Exchange. They both join us now. It’s great to have both of you on Think Out Loud.
Ryan Lynn: Hi there, thank you.
Hank Failing: Hey, what’s up, Dave?
Miller: I’m doing well. Hank, first – what was your path to getting into the used guitar or used instrument business?
Failing: I started selling guitars retail in 1997 working at Old Town Music. I became the manager at Old Town Music over time and I worked there for 22 years. Pandemic hit, I stopped working there, and then people were like, “What are you gonna do?” And it’s like, “What else can I do?” So I basically started doing it out of my house, working things on Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, filling up my basement and my garage with things, trading with people. Then [I] met with Ryan and basically Hank’s Music Exchange started by subleasing from Eastside Guitar Repair. And then now it’s kind of been off to the races since 2022.
Miller: Ryan, what about you? How did you become a luthier? It’s been a little while since we talked about that profession on the show. So what’s a luthier?
Lynn: Yeah, a luthier. The root of the word is lute maker. But it basically means a guitar maker, guitar repair person. It also is in the violin world, in the bow instrument world.
So, I went to a school in Arizona called Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery in 1999. After college, I was going to school for graphic design, I decided to embark on a different path. I lived out of a Volkswagen bus for a year, snowboarded in Colorado for a little bit, and then made my way down to Phoenix, Arizona. And I went to the school. Then a year-and-a-half later, I moved to Portland, worked for a music store, worked for Breedlove Guitars shortly after that. Then I did some guitar tucking for several bands throughout the year, still working at the music store. But in 2008, I opened up Eastside Guitar Repair on Southeast Division Street.
Miller: What was it like to have your own storefront after those years of sort of patching things together and making a career for other people?
Lynn: Yeah, it was challenging. I opened up right at the beginning of the recession in 2008 and it is just a testament to the local music community that they kept me in business, and I won’t ever forget that. It was challenging. I didn’t really have a plan. I went in to see if I could qualify for a loan and I walked out with the money in my bank account. I was like, well, I guess my life is gonna change now and all of a sudden I have a business. And 16 years later, I’ve been going strong and people bring me their instruments. They trust me with their instruments and I appreciate that.
Miller: And then just a couple of years ago, you and Hank were talking and you decided that he could sublet part of your building for his business. How did that come about?
Lynn: Well, I noticed he was starting to sell instruments on Instagram. Our relation goes back, from the time I moved here in 2000. He worked at a local music store as well. I tried to get a job there and he didn’t hire me.
Failing: Sorry!
Lynn: They already had a guy.
Miller: It all worked out.
Lynn: But Hank has had a stellar reputation in town as just one of the most friendly guys in town, knows his stuff, has expertise. And that’s the kind of quality I look for in people. I saw that he was selling on Instagram and I was like, why don’t you consign some things in the front of my shop?
And after a couple of beers, we kind of hatched a plan for him to actually just move into the front of the shop and start a music store. And in the short two-and-a-half years that he’s been open, he’s become an intricate part of the local music scene as the go-to shop in town for affordable music gear. People come to the shop for him and his employees as much as they come for the gear. And that’s a real testament to who he is and what kind of store he runs.
Miller: Hank, how did it happen that the two of you decided to pick up stakes and to move to Northeast?
Failing: Well, the building that we had sold. And so there was a new management company and the rent just wasn’t gonna make sense. And they wanted us to move out basically and rip the place apart. Hank’s Music Exchange had been getting bigger and bigger. So we were already kind of thinking about moving to a bigger space, just because we were outgrowing the 300 square feet that was in front of Eastside. We were crammed in there, which was very amazing, but having a bigger spot made a lot of sense.
So I had already been looking out there in the world a little bit and then Brad from Rhythm Traders just happened to be wanting to rent off half of his building that he owns and has Rhythm Traders in. And we went and looked at the space and both felt that this could be really beneficial for all of us. It seemed like the space would work for us. Each one of us occupies kind of a different theme in the music community and we all benefit from each other being together just because each one of us really loves what we’re doing and have done it for a really long time.
Miller: In other words, I mean, it would have been harder to share space with another shop that repairs guitars or sells used gear, right? I mean, you would have had more competition there, as opposed to a drum shop where they’re not in your business. They’re in an adjacent music part?
Failing: Well, there’s a drummer in a band and then the guitar player goes to our store and then the drummer goes to Rhythm Traders, hypothetically. And then the guitar player goes and gets his guitars repaired by somebody like Ryan. Yeah, I mean, I’m also not totally opposed to having somebody do exactly what we do and be next door because I believe in what we do. And I’m also somebody that believes in us as a group. If we’re all doing, we can do well together, you know what I mean? And still be doing kind of the same thing.
Miller: Ryan, what is your vision for what this trio of businesses can accomplish together?
Lynn: We saw it as a really good opportunity to offer something in the community. The Portland music scene has just been really supportive of all of our businesses over the years. And we called it the Music Mall and we wanted to open that up to other businesses that are nearby. My friend’s music studio down the street, Flora Studios. There’s Mothership Music. There’s the Wonder Ballroom and then there’s Super-Electric Records, Black Book Guitars on Mississippi.
So we kind of wanted to make this North/Northeast area, an area that serves the music community that people can go to. And we just saw it as an opportunity to kind of band together and raise all ships.
Miller: Hank, when you think about customers for this place, how much do you think about professional musicians now, as opposed to people who are just starting out or amateurs?
Failing: Well, I think about both of them. We definitely have a lot of professional people coming through, which is awesome. It’s great to be starstruck by somebody and it’s an honor to have somebody who’s amazing come through the door. But also people that aren’t professional are awesome too. And really, the shop is supposed to be for everybody. It’s for somebody who isn’t a musician that comes in, who maybe wants to become a musician. It’s for somebody who’s professional and maybe says, “Dude, you’ve got this really special thing and there it is!” That might be a synth, a keyboard or a piece of recording gear, anything that a musician might want like that.
Miller: There are a lot of online marketplaces now for used musical gear, including some that are specifically focused on musical gear, in addition to the just other eBay adjacent things of the world. How do you think about online competition? And how do you think about what a brick and mortar store offers these days?
Failing: Well, I think it’s important to think about the things that an online retail environment is not. So when you log in, it might be having a cookie on you following you and it knows what you like. But you walk in, I see your face and I know what you like. I know you personally, we’ve maybe known each other for a couple of months or 10, 20, 30 years.
Miller: Or you just walked in and you could talk to me, I suppose?
Failing: That’s it. And then you can ask me a question about something and I can give you an opinion about something like, “Hey, use this mic versus that mic over there,” or, “Buy this guitar or this thing, or you like this kind of music. I sold that guy that thing right there. Maybe you should buy it.”
But to me, it’s the world I want to live in. It’s something you have to think about. Online retail is not gonna go away. It’s really easy. I use it all the time myself. So I just try to change my business to suit that. Be careful with your pricing on new things because they could buy it cheaper somewhere. So I’ll talk to a wholesale account like, “Hey I saw these were below this price. Not supposed to be below that. That affects us.” And then with used prices, which we do a lot of things, I base used prices off of things that have sold online and then price it roughly about 20% below what they saw online. So everybody looks on their little phone and says these go for like $800 and we’ve got it for $650.
Miller: How can you do that?
Failing: Dude, you just do it, man. [Laughter] It’s not that hard. You say, I’m gonna sell this for $650. You’re honest with people. You say, “I’m gonna sell this for $650 and not $800,” because I want it to be a deal for a musician. That’s what it’s about. And most people are cool with that and they’re not like, “I’ve got to get top dollar.” They kind of want their gear to go to somebody … to be a special experience for them because this is a piece of gear that is special to them.
Miller: And often this is consignment?
Failing: I do do consignment by the way. But it’s on items that I sell for $1,000 or more. But honestly, most of the stuff I’ll just buy from people.
Miller: And then it’s up to you. I mean, you’re the one who is making a kind of business decision to charge less, even though you’re making less money overall because you want people to come to you and to have a relationship with them that’s ongoing?
Failing: What’s important to me is that the gear is in a musician’s hands. I mean, we’ve got to make a living. But the thing is the retail price is a relative thing. This thing could be $500 or it could be $300. If I put $300 on it, I’m still making the same margin. It’s just that I’m making less money on that individually, but I’m selling it quicker because it’s a good deal. And what happens is that over time people love buying from us. So who are they gonna sell to? So it’s a little counterintuitive. But it’s been really busy, so I feel like we’re doing the right thing.
Miller: Ryan you have, I imagine, an interesting perch in the Portland music scene as one of the go-to people that people … they bring their instruments that need some love and some fixing up. And I’m just wondering how you’d assess the state of the music scene right now from your vantage point as a repair person?
Lynn: Well, Portland’s already been vibrant. It’s sustained. For the 24 years that I’ve lived here, I’ve seen it kind of ebb and flow. I’ve worked on everybody from beginners to rock stars coming in the door. I’ve been on tour with bands on the road. And I see things that kind of threaten the scene here a little bit – like Live Nation coming in. It really has a detrimental effect on the local music scene by pushing out a lot of the ingenuity and the work that the local music scene has put in here.
I want to give a shout out to MusicPortland for fighting against Live Nation because when the local music scene is affected, our businesses get affected as well. And we don’t really get any business from Live Nation acts at all. They’re not coming into town and giving us any business. But they’re pushing out the local musicians that do support us.
Failing: There’s also a problem with homogenizing what everybody’s exposed to as well. So when there’s more venues with more different kinds of bands, people get to experience more stuff and then there’s a bigger scene in general.
Lynn: But I would say that we will get past this and we’ll be just fine.
Miller: Ryan Lynn and Hank Failing thanks very much.
Lynn: Thank you so much.
Failing: Thanks Dave.
Miller: Ryan Lynn is a luthier and owner of Eastside Guitar Repair. Hank Failing is the owner of Hank’s Music Exchange. You can find them both now at Rhythm Traders, which is at the corner of MLK and Failing.
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