Folk music store still golden

Schulers tuned into what customers want

By Charlie Mathews
Herald Times Reporter 10/20/02

MANITOWOC — Fritz and Mary Schuler have too many satisfied customers to retire any time soon.

“I don’t know what I’d do if somebody said, ‘you don’t need the store anymore,’” said Fritz Schuler, 56, who’s co-owned Golden Ring Music & Folklore Center for 30 years. “We’ll be here till we keel over.”

Mary, 57, has a ready answer when asked what’s enjoyable about running the music shop on Washington Street.

“It’s nice to see people get excited about music and taking the risk of learning an instrument themselves,” she said. “Maybe they’re in their 40’s, (and) always wanted to play guitar. They finally take that jump.

“It’s nice to see people playing music rather than doing something more passive, like watching TV.”

Guitars line two walls of the store, which is crammed not only with six- and 12-string instruments, but also banjos, mandolins, violins, ukuleles, mountain dulcimers and Celtic harps.

Mary sets up every single guitar.

“We wouldn’t feel good about just taking them out of the box and putting them on the wall,” she said.

She makes certain the string tension is just right so, “a 9-year-old isn’t going to kill his fingers,” she said.

The Schulers are accomplished guitarists, but they have a number of other instruments, including pennywhistles, Irish and Native American flutes, harmonicas and Ocarinas.

But what may really blow away many customers are the thousands of music books for guitar and other instruments.

They include a guitar music book for the movie “Spiderman,” flute songbooks for CATS and Star Trek, Disney Solos for Oboe, Clarinet Patriotic Melodies, Encyclopedia of Celtic Tunes for Celtic Mandolin and the 785-page Definitive Bob Dylan Songbook.

Guitar songbooks have changed since the Schulers opened in the summer of 1972.

“They now include ‘tablature,’ a guide to finger positioning that makes learning a lot easier,” said Fritz, who owns a dozen guitars and teaches at Silver Lake College and elsewhere.

One key to success and attracting customers from the Lakeshore area and beyond is having a niche. For the Schulers that niche is folk music CDs, classic jazz from the 1920s to the 1960s, popular vocalists from the 1930s to the 1950s, and classic 1940s and 1950s country artists.

The shop has no listening stations, like one would find in a chain music store or Wal-Mart.

“They’re not going to have Gid Tanner and the Skilletlickers,” said Mary of an old-time string band.

It’s an eclectic music store not driven by what’s popular on WAPL or WIXX, although it does have songbooks featuring compositions by Metallica and Pink Floyd.

And a big hit is the songbook featuring tunes from the sleeper hit movie of 2000, “Oh Brother Where Art Thou.”

“Rock’n’rollers will come into the store and start singing ‘I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow,’” the Soggy Bottom Boys Grammy-winning bluegrass song, Mary said.

She gets a kick out of talking to budding musicians, like those who come into Golden Ring and scope out the electric guitars.

“It’s always fun to talk to teenagers, kids forming a garage band. It’s nice to see parents coming in and going out on a limb and supporting their son or daughter who wants an electric guitar, amplifier,” Mary said. “It means so much to the kid seeing their parent take the risk, believing in them enough to invest the money.”

There are no synthesizers, trumpets, saxophones or clarinets in Golden Ring. There are, however, basic supplies like reeds and the music books for local students playing different instruments at their junior or senior high school.

“It wouldn’t be fair to our customers to sell instruments we don’t have expertise in,” Fritz said. “We could be selling a terrible clarinet and not know it. We’re not keyboard players. To try and tell somebody what’s a good keyboard would be ridiculous.”

They know their guitars, like the Samick Southern Jumbo with “solid cedar top with rosewood sides and back, scalloped braces/Grover machines,” for $459.

Folk music is always the foundation. Fritz Shuler’s passion for the genre has led to performances all over the world, including a performance at the 1994 Seafest in Japan. He conducts a master’s class in the History of American Folk Music at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center.

Fritz estimates his customer base is 60 percent local and 40 percent outside Manitowoc County.

He said it happens fairly often that a Chicago-area visitor will find that rare, elusive folk music CD.

The Schulers don’t consider Internet businesses to be their competition.

“Most of our merchandise are things people want to see and touch before they purchase,” Fritz said. They use their own Web site, www.goldenringmusic.com, to sell collectibles.

Foreigners must pay in American cash, like the $300 a Japanese customer used to purchase old LP vinyl records.

Mary said she gets great fulfillment helping people find a piece of music, “a song that has been a turning point in their life.”

She said there’s satisfaction in having the right song somebody wants, say, for a parent’s funeral, to be played by the church organist.

“There’s that emotional connection with deep meaning,” she said.

And then the next customer might walk in and buy the boxed CD set, “The Hoochie Coochie Men” featuring acts like the Kinks, Fleetwood Mac and the Yardbirds.

With a 300-CD changer in the store, there’s always interesting music in the air at Golden Ring.

Courtesy of the Herald Times Reporter