Bill’s Music founder and owner Bill Higgins passed away in February, but the music ecosystem is still very much alive in Catonsville, due in part to Higgins’ support of fellow local music stores.
Higgins, who died of Fabry’s Disease at the age of 81, is remembered by many of his colleagues as someone who would go out of his way to help customers and competitors alike.
Catonsville is well known for its variety and number of music stores, its free music concerts, and support for young musical talent. Void of chain music stores, the area is instead filled with independent music businesses. Officially designated “Music City Maryland” in 2002 by the Maryland General Assembly, the town’s musical cup overflows, and Higgins played an instrumental role.
Just ask Gary Gebler, owner of Trax on Wax, a record store on Frederick Road. He put his store in Catonsville because of Higgins. The 66-year-old Gebler grew up on the border of Harford and Baltimore counties, and his parents took him to Bill’s Music when he was a teenager to get his first drum set.
“He made this town the music town that it is,” Gebler said. “And everything that we owe to our success, he’s partially responsible for. Just by being such the institution that he is in this town and the amount of people that came into this town that were musicians, I knew if I had a music store where musicians came, I would be successful, and it’s been 16 years and we’re still having a great time.”
Emory Knode owns Appalachian Bluegrass on Frederick Road in Catonsville. The store has been around since 1960, specializing in the sale and repair of bluegrass instruments, and offering lessons.
Knode reflected on Higgins’ legacy in Catonsville music and business, saying that as competitors, the two had a very good relationship. He called themselves “allies,” saying they competed “amicably” as business owners.
If one store couldn’t meet a customer’s needs, they would regularly refer them to the other.
“Over the years, we’ve had many customers where we couldn’t necessarily fill their needs here in my store, we’d send them to Bill’s,” Knode said. “If they were looking for an electric or a P.A. or a keyboard or that sort of thing, yes, we sent, over the years, many, many people up to his business.”
Knode’s father established the business in 1960 as Nelson Music Center, a general music store carrying all types of instruments, both acoustic and electric. When Emory took over in 1980, he decided on a narrower focus.
“I just pulled everything in and just focused on acoustic music instruments, focused on the Bluegrass community, focused on some very high quality, fine musical instruments,” Knode said.
He spoke of Higgins as a visionary in the music business, the likes of Sam Ash and Chuck Levin. Knode said Higgins was part of a group of entrepreneurs back in the 1960s that envisioned a music store as a large, super store rather than the smaller music shops that were the norm. He took the music store to that larger level, and Knode believes we will never see that again.
“Whenever you see a large business open up, it’s typically not an independent owner,” Knode said. “It’s typically going to be some sort of a chain business, like Guitar Center. So, the people like Bill, Chuck Levin, and Sam Ash, and all those guys, they were pretty unique in their day.”
David Fedderly, former principal tuba player with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (he retired in 2014), established Baltimore Brass Company in his home near Catonsville in 1992. His business was worldwide from his basement before he moved it into a shop in The Shops on Mellor in 2001.
“I moved in there on September 1st, and we were just getting set up and this guy walks in the door and introduced himself as Bill Higgins,” Fedderly recalled. “Very nice. And he said he owned Bill’s Music, and that he wished us luck. And I said I think we’re very different stores. So, I said I don’t think we’ll be getting in each other’s way at all.”
On the contrary, Fedderly describes a very friendly, supportive musical and business relationship with Higgins. If he needed parts for fixing percussion instruments, he bought them from Bill’s Music. Baltimore Brass Company did some repairs for Bill’s Music. Fedderly noted that all the music stores in Catonsville have their own niche, paving the way for a symbiotic rather than uber-competitive relationship among them.
“He was always very complimentary and very supportive as I was with him,” Fedderly said. “It was just a nice professional relationship. I always knew if he was in there, I’d stop and I’d talk to him.” Fedderly sold his business in July 2023 and now lives in South Carolina.
Lee Hirschmann, like Gebler, began frequenting Bill’s Music as a child. Years later, he worked there as a salesman, then as a musical repair technician. Eventually he ran Bill’s brass/woodwind repair department before he struck out on his own to start The Band Shoppe on Frederick Road. There, they repair band instruments, run a rent-to-own instrument program, teach lessons, and provide shopping for band items.
All told, Hirschmann worked for Higgins for around 10 years, time he describes as a lot of fun, and Higgins as a fair boss.
“He taught us a lot along the way,” Hirschmann said. “He was one of those guys that worked every day, you know? He was always up there. If you needed something, you could certainly go talk to him. With any employer, there was always times you obviously banged your head up against the wall, but very much he was a big family guy, huge lover of music, and when it came to the music business, he was just a very, very, very well-respected man.”
In addition to describing Higgins as profoundly proud of his family, Hirschmann said he was funny, brazen in business, and unafraid to do things without asking permission, which he has come to respect after running his own business for the last seven years.
“He gave me a lot of tools you needed to succeed,” Hirschmann said.
Two things he remembers Higgins emphasizing over the years were to always make sure you have more money than month left, and it’s always easier to ask forgiveness than permission.
He says Higgins always kept his employees fed — especially if hot dogs were involved.
“If you were lucky enough to have to run an errand to either Lowe’s or something like that, he never hesitated to treat you to a Lowe’s hot dog,” laughed Hirschmann. “He loved a hot dog. That man absolutely enjoyed that hot dog.”
“It was just one of those silly things that you really think about and just appreciate over the years, whether it was pit beef, or him picking up cream of crab for the shop and just little things. He never came to a meeting without doughnuts. The man always made sure we had something tasty laying around. It’s little things like that, that I just never forget,” Hirschmann said.
Higgins and his wife Nancy sent flowers to The Band Shoppe to congratulate him when it opened, and always encouraged him, offering to be on call for help if ever Hirschmann needed something. “He never withheld that. Up until the last time I saw him he always said that same thing. ‘You know, hey, if you need anything, please let me know,’” he said.
Hirschmann spoke of Higgins’ influence beyond Catonsville, too.
“You’ve got Miles DeCastro, who owns North Country Winds (Potsdam, New York). You’ve got Keith Grasso, who owns Island Music (La Plata, Maryland). You’ve got Robbie Stein, who owns a guitar shop down in Florida. You had two other guys that went out and started vintage guitar companies,” Hirschmann said. They’d all worked together at Bill’s. “More importantly, how many of us went out on our own after seeing it and learning from Bill how you do it, which is you take it on the chin, your pull your pants up, and you don’t give up. Every day you give it hell, you work your ass off until something happens, and that’s just what he did.”
Cole Morris agrees. Morris began working at Bill’s Music after graduating college, having studied audio engineering in 2012 or 2013. He used his knowledge to become a salesman and met Hirschmann there. Morris learned that instrument repair was a career path that existed and was worth pursuing, and he ended up running the Keyboard Pro sound recording department at Bill’s Music for five or six years.
“It was very cool to see and to have been able to work with somebody and watch someone that’s so self-made,” Morris said. “There’s very little blueprint for what he did. He just did it based on ideas and what worked and what didn’t, and just like Lee said, he stayed agile with that. You can kind of just hop from idea to the next. If it doesn’t work, you don’t really lose too much time on it if your brain is working that quick. It was definitely interesting to see somebody operate like that at such a high level when they’ve done it all themselves.”
Morris also had been going to Bill’s since he was a child – a common theme for folks in music around Catonsville and beyond – calling it a “wonderland.” He now works with Hirschmann at The Band Shoppe.
Tracey Kern began working at Bill’s Music when she was in middle school. She was already quite familiar with store operations, however, given she was one of Higgins’ three children.
Kern said she and her family never realized the impact her father had on so many people. This is the store’s 58th year, and her father was there for nearly every day of those 58 years, so the number of messages, calls, and social media posts paying him tribute was overwhelming.
“We were getting calls from people out of state that heard [he’d passed away] and wanted to call and say, ‘Oh my god, your dad gave me my first credit card,’ or ‘He trusted me to take this and pay him,’ or ‘He picked me up for my band job when my car broke down,’ or ‘He brought me a guitar when my string broke.’ None of us realized the impact he had on people,” Kern said.
He wasn’t only in the music business; he was in the people business, Kerns said. He may not have remembered a customer’s name, but he could match a face to the instrument they bought. She described people coming up from North Carolina to buy a guitar, knowing Bill’s was physically one of the largest stores on the east coast. She also credits him with having a big role in Catonsville’s “Music City Maryland” designation.
Kern and her sister still open the store every morning.
“I come in and I do what I have to do to get the store open, but when I walk in now, when I’m by myself here alone, I just have always been so proud of what he did,” Kern said. “He didn’t do it to make money or to be famous. He did it because he loved music so much and he loved getting guitars in the hands of kids and people that wanted to play.”
“Who’s lucky enough to spend every single day with their parents at their job?” Kern said.
