BY EMILY BENNETT

Nestled in the alleyways and street corners of Galway, Ireland, you’ll find musicians of all flavors. From a 14-person folk band complete with a washboard and spoons player to a lone guitar-wielding, mop-headed teenager singing Dylan covers, Galway streets are anything but quiet.

Music swirls through the cobblestone streets, past tourist shops and pubs.  The bustle of tourists and the sounds of fiddles, passers-by are likely to come upon three small music shops. They are the only three surviving shops from an original six pre-recession, and they serve as tourist attractions as well as string and pick refill stations for the street musicians and bands playing in the pubs nearby.  

Mostly family owned, these stores represent an older Ireland – one where music books and pianos once ruled the music sales. The three storefronts house everything from tin whistles to high-end handmade acoustic guitars. Opus II, P. Powell & Sons and Kieran Moloney are the backbone of the famous sounds of Galway.

Three owners, shop workers and luthiers – a craftsman who repairs string instruments – discussed the challenges of running a business with music at the center and maintaining the old Irish folk traditions while remaining observant of the changing sounds of Galway.

OPUS II MUSIC

Michael Nichols, sole owner of Opus II Music, doesn’t play a single instrument. This doesn’t deter him, however, from enjoying the sounds that come from visiting musicians testing out his guitars, pianos or traditional Irish drums.

“My grandfather was a musician; my mother a little bit,” Nichols said. “I was trying to run it as a three-store business, and I’ve ended up being the only one left, and I’m not a musician. I generally like the customers because if you’re coming in to look at the guitar, you have an interest in it and you want to sit there and play it; it’s a luxury purchase.”

Nichols is the third generation to own and operate the family music shop. Originally located in three counties, Opus II was a music book- and piano-centric shop. Now, it operates as a catch-all for tourists in the summer and a lower- to mid-range guitar shop for regulars and semi-experienced musicians during the fall and winter periods.

“We’d always be busy with tourists in the summer, and we try and hold on to our regulars as people who buy strings and guitars and things, but around September to January, the guitars would be up at the front of the shop, and we’d sell lots of pianos,” Nicholas said. “So if you came back here in six months’ time, the store would look completely different.”

It’s this versatility and diversity in sales that keeps Opus II afloat, Nichols said. The recession in the early 2000s caused the music industry to suffer, causing the Nichols’ family tri-county business to condense to the single Galway location. This is a trend in small business presence in Galway.

“Just over one year ago, a shop closed that was very close to us here,” Nichols said. “And three years ago, another music shop closed. Music shops are closing. Business has changed. To successfully operate a business in Ireland, to pay rent rates, there’s a 23 percent% tax on all the instruments. You can beat them with the internet on price.”

Although the streets are jam-packed with musicians playing “traditional” Irish music, Nichols insists the world of music is changing and that Galway is changing with it.

“Traditional music is all for the tourists,” Nichols said. “Young people are the ones playing guitar now; it’s the parents that are buying pianos.”

KIERAN MOLONEY

Although luthier Kieran Moloney didn’t inherit a family business like Nichols, he had the duties of shop owner passed on to him by a violinmaker he apprenticed for after he finished college.

“I’ve been in this shop for 21 years,” Moloney, who is also a locally renowned flautist and mandolin player said. “There was a violinmaker in here, but he moved to a different town, and I had been working under him for a little while, so I took it over and expanded it greatly to include all the other instruments that you see.”

And there’s a lot to see. The seemingly hidden upstairs space means Moloney loses a lot of the tourist attention the other music shops get.

“The range of customers could go from school children to Grammy award winning, internationally famous musicians,” Moloney said. “It’s everybody and anybody in between.”

The roots of traditional music run deep for Moloney. His luthier-oriented experience lends him to loving the hand-crafted fiddle and the well-kept and polished flute, not the Guitar Center-grade drum kits he says dot the store fronts in Galway.

“Traditional music isn’t a tourist attraction; it’s a living part of our culture,” Moloney said. “Just like the Irish sport. Traditional music is for everybody.”

POWELL’S and SONS

Aaron Coyne, manager at P. Powell’s and Sons, or Powell’s for short, says the power of the traditional instrument will never die, even after traditional music itself digs its grave.

“I play a traditional instrument, but I don’t play traditional music,” Coyne, a tenor guitar player, said. “There’s a good kind of cross section of traditional folk and then contemporary stuff in town.”

Coyne, although not part of the Powell family, has worked in the family run music shop for 10 years. Coyne denoted the success of the large, multi-level storefront to the fact that the Powells purchased the building the store is located in, eliminating the cost of rent – something Nichols cited as the highest determining factor of success when it comes to small businesses in Galway.

“There are only three [music shops] left including us,” Coyne said. “The business opened up about 100 years ago, and the building is in the family. They don’t have to worry about that cost. So we’re a bit safer than other businesses.”

Powell’s employs five full-time employees, an above average number compared to the other two smaller shops. Size and success aside, all three shops exude richness in experience and an urge to grow and change alongside the people who keep them in business – the musicians and visitors of Galway.

“You don’t come to Ireland for sun,” Moloney said. “Even though there’s such natural beauty, there’s a musical cultural tourism, which is very important. It attracts musicians from around the country and around the world as well. There’s an incredibly lively vibe of all kinds of music.”