{"id":8971,"date":"2020-12-21T11:15:26","date_gmt":"2020-12-21T16:15:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gleanernews.ca\/?p=8971"},"modified":"2020-12-21T11:15:27","modified_gmt":"2020-12-21T16:15:27","slug":"focus-ring-music-shuttered-dec-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gleanernews.ca\/focus-ring-music-shuttered-dec-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"FOCUS: Ring Music shuttered (Dec. 2020)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A deeper look reveals a storied past<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Bruce Dowd (L) and Bill Wager (R), 1974 or 1975. COURTESY MICHAEL MCLUHAN\/RING MUSIC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By Nicole Stoffman<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ring Music, the guitar shop at 90 Harbord St., whose customers included Gordon Lightfoot, Bruce Cockburn, and Lenny Breau, has closed after 51 years in business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Owner John La Roque says he\u2019s \u201cWorking away on a new album,\u201d and the now-empty storefront heralds the end of an era. Ring\u2019s closure presents an opportunity to tell its little-known history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It all started when musician Bill Wager arrived in Toronto from New York in 1969, with a few hundred dollars in his pocket. His new bride insisted he get a real job, so he took a walk down to Queen St. West to ask for work at a printers\u2019 shop, having had experience in that industry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A guitar gets the Bruce Cockburn treatment, 1983.
COURTESY MICHAEL MCLUHAN\/RING MUSIC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

He saw a guitar in the window of a pawn shop and knew he could sell it for twice the price. Wager had learned a great deal about guitars from Dan Armstrong, the inventor of the world\u2019s first clear plastic electric guitar, and owner of a guitar shop on 48th Avenue in New York.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wager repaired the instrument and put it in the shop window of Ring Music, an audio store (named after the Lord of the Rings) that his friends had just opened at the southeast corner of Harbord and Spadina. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The guitar sold two days later so Wager, \u201cwent cruising pawn shops,\u201d to buy more guitars, fix them up, and sell them at twice the price. Soon he was splitting rent with Ring Audio. A short time later he set up Ring Music in the back of the store, where he also did repairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Michael McLuhan, 1973 or 4, with a 1956 Les Paul Guitar, this is a very prized guitar nowadays, worth about 250K. Then it could be had for less than $1,000. COURTESY MICHAEL MCLUHAN\/RING MUSIC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThen weird things started to happen,\u201d Wager told the Gleaner<\/em>. \u201cOne day I see a nylon string classical guitar. It\u2019s not my expertise, but something said, \u2018Buy me.\u2019 I bought it and brought it back to the store. I put it in the window. A few days later, this lovely blonde girl walks in and says, \u2018Can I try it?\u2019 I said, \u2018Sure!\u2019 I\u2019m surprised the guitar didn\u2019t melt<\/em>, she was so good. She was fantastic. We were all standing there, our jaws on the floor. It turns out it was Liona Boyd.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When U of T built the Benson Athletic Centre in 1972, Ring Audio moved to Queen St. West and Ring Music moved to 90 Harbord St. The following year, Michael McLuhan, son of Canadian media guru, Marshall McLuhan, joined Ring to apprentice with Bill Wager and luthier Bruce Dowd. Michael was so good with the customers, that within three months, he was running the front of the store, too. \u201cHe never threw any customers out of the store like I did,\u201d explained Wager.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ring music attracted a professional clientele with its reputation for guitar repair. The Bay City Rollers called Ring to repair their instruments when they were in town. In order to avoid being mobbed by girls in the street, the Rollers asked that their instruments be picked up and dropped off at the hotel. Ring Music provided the same type of pick up and delivery service to Gordon Lightfoot, who reciprocated by wearing his Ring Music T-shirt in public, and being interviewed for Ring\u2019s radio ads, as did Ian & Sylvia Tyson. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The store\u2019s humble facade of recent years does not reveal how much of a storied place it is. Bill Wager and his team once inlaid a diamond into Ian Tyson\u2019s fretboard. Bruce Cockburn once coached a young boy from Grimsby how to play his song \u201cFoxglove,\u201d in the store. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI remember Bruce Cockburn coming in and trying guitars and the way he\u2019d treat the guitar was like his was giving it a chiropractic treatment,\u201d recalled Nathan Hiltz, an employee from the 2000s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other notable customers included Lightfoot\u2019s guitar player, Terry Clements, Mick Taylor of the Rolling Stones, Dave Wilcox, Jim Cuddy, Tom Cochrane, and Lenny Breau, considered to be one of the greatest jazz guitarists of all time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe was always penniless,\u201d recalled McLuhan of the Canadian Music Hall of Fame inductee. \u201cWhich made it a bit of a problem to service him, because we did have to get paid.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Penniless or not, working musicians were always welcome at Ring Music. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou wanted to come to us because we could get you happenin\u2019,\u201d said McLuhan, who purchased the store in 1974. \u201cEverything was on a handshake basis.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They prided themselves on making used instruments, some of which had been in terrible accidents, road-worthy again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ring Music was sold again in 1984, this time to John Laroque. McLuhan had hired Laroque in 1982 to learn repair and to look after customers. LaRoque expanded the business into new guitars and a started a music school. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The store was a haven for former employee Nathan Hiltz, who came to Toronto from Halifax in 2000 as an aspiring young jazz musician. New to the Big Smoke, he found his community by simply crossing paths with other players. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRing has always been a very welcoming, helpful place, built around very caring people,\u201d said Hiltz. \u201cToronto becomes a little less nice, a little less cool, a little less comfortable every time a guitar store closes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mystique of Ring Music was rooted in Bill Wager\u2019s own credentials. In New York, he had played on demos in the Brill Building, which famously housed songwriters and music publishers that wrote some of the greatest American popular music. Songwriters would use the demos to shop songs to artists. Wager played on the demo for \u201cYou Keep Me Hanging On,\u201d made famous by the Supremes. He also played bass and guitar on occasion for the Cavalcade of Stars, where he recalls backing nine year old Stevie Wonder. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ring Music also helped create a market for vintage guitars. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn 1969 there was no vintage market, there were only used instruments,\u201d said McLuhan. Ring became known for servicing electric guitars, including big jazz arch-top guitars from the forties on up. Arch-tops feature an \u2018f-hole,\u2019 similar to that of a violin. They are prized by jazz and blues artists alike for their big, complex sound. \u201cWe developed this insane reputation as those instruments started to become revered as vintage instruments.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ring music also helped to launch the career of world-renowned luthier Linda Manzer, when they bought her first guitars. Based in Toronto, Manzer now makes guitars for the likes of Paul Simon and Pat Methany. Her creations can be seen in the permanent collections of The Canadian Museum of Civilization and the McMichael Art Gallery. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRing was the hub of musical and social activity, and it was always exciting to walk in because you never knew who you were going to see playing a guitar or end up in a lively conversation with,\u201d said Manzer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Ring Music, it was more important to resurrect guitars, often with homemade parts, than to restore them with original parts. A case in point was a 1942 Vega Deluxe hand-carved in Boston, with a Maple back and spruce top. One day, the Vega Deluxe came into the shop an accident victim, missing the back and neck, and with a crushed brace.  After being revived at Ring Music, it was owned by McLuhan, then LaRoque, and eventually Nathan Hiltz, who wasn\u2019t looking for a guitar at the time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople now borrow this guitar from me to do recordings,\u201d says Hiltz. \u201cI didn\u2019t have money to buy a lot of guitars, so it was a big deal for me to buy it, but I was guided very, very well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A deeper look reveals a storied past By Nicole Stoffman Ring Music, the guitar shop at 90 Harbord St., whose customers included Gordon Lightfoot, Bruce Cockburn, and Lenny Breau, has closed after 51 years in business. Owner John La Roque says he\u2019s \u201cWorking away on a new album,\u201d and the now-empty storefront heralds the end […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1101,19,1751],"tags":[697,4215,4213,4214,4207,4216,4212,3774,4211],"class_list":["post-8971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annex-2","category-arts","category-life","tag-annex-gleaner","tag-bill-wager","tag-bruce-cockburn","tag-bruce-dowd","tag-dec-2020","tag-john-la-roque","tag-michael-mcluhan","tag-nicole-stoffman","tag-ring-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gleanernews.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gleanernews.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gleanernews.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gleanernews.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gleanernews.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8971"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gleanernews.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8975,"href":"https:\/\/gleanernews.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8971\/revisions\/8975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gleanernews.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gleanernews.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gleanernews.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}