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The definition of a family small business, Lewis Music — Paul, Brandie and Stephanie — in downtown Kissimmee celebrated 50 years of serving the community Saturday. PHOTO/DAVID CHIVERS
Lewis Music in downtown Kissimmee celebrated 50 years of teaching and serving musicians throughout the community Saturday with live music, cupcakes and many friends coming by to honor the memory of the original founders, Homer and Mary Lewis, and gather with the three generations of the Lewis family that still run and work in the original store on Broadway.
“(Homer and Mary) made this place,” says Brandie Lewis Green, their granddaughter who, with her father Paul, still own and run the store. “No one ever had an ill word to say about them, and that’s great, because you can’t say that about a lot of people anymore. They were never angry with anybody, they were always positive. You never had to tell them to be positive, they were just by nature positive. And that’s what we’re about too.”
The couple opened the store in 1973. Homer was an ironworker from Indiana who came to the area to work erecting Disney World. As that work ended, Homer and Mary had already decided to make this area their home and bought a house, one Brandie now lives in. Although trained as an ironworker, Homer was also a musician, mainly country guitar, but he could also play drums, fiddle and bass. It was a friend, Frank Partin, who suggested Homer should open up a music store, because there was none in town, so he could get strings and sticks without having to travel to Orlando.
“They found this place and they opened it with five instruments, and we kept it alive.” Brandie says. “Homer passed in 2008 and Mary 2015. Although she played piano, Mary was mainly on the managerial side. She was the socialite. Everyone loved talking with her, she just lit up a room.”
Paul was 15 when his parents started the store. When asked if he worked in it from the beginning, he laughed, “No, who wants to work for their parents?”
After graduating from school and trying a few jobs, he came back to it in 1976 and has been a part of the store ever since.
“I am the head guitar repair person, janitor, bottle washer…” he said playfully, gesturing towards his daughter. “I’m turning it slowly over to her,” he said, which has been “wonderful”. Being semi-retired means he now plays golf Mondays, but still has about 100 guitar players who regularly bring their guitars to him for service and repair, to go with the music lessons that have been a major part of the business since its start.
“I enjoy it. I really haven’t done anything else in so long I’m accustomed to being here,” he said. “I still want to fix guitars. I don’t know what I’d do with myself if I didn’t have to come in here every day.”
Brandie is a musician as well, playing, “Everything that’s not a stringed instrument; saxophone, clarinet, flute, piano, trumpet.” Brandie’s daughter Stefanie now also works in the store, making her the fourth generation Lewis Musician, and is a singer and plays the ukulele. “We just keep the legacy going,” Brandie says. “We’ve been in the same spot for 50 years in downtown Kissimmee. I’ve been on the payroll since I was 12 and now I’m 44. Now it’s trying to keep it going, still with the morals and values that my grandparents wanted. We still do things on paper and pen. We like to support local. We still get our business cards from (fellow longtime downtown family business) Cunningham’s.
“Now we teach their grandkids and their kids, so it’s really cool. We just love being in Kissimmee. We have very loyal customers that come and lots of lessons. We have teachers that have been here over 20 years. One just retired after 26 years.”
Like many small businesses, especially that are so personal, the pandemic was a struggle. ”It was hard,” Brandie remembers. “We had to rebuild students, we had to rebuild people to come out again and sign up. Now we have four teachers and we’re full, but it took from then to now.”
And ‘then’ to ‘now’ is a big change.
“When I was little there were no cars on that road, no night life. There is a night life now,” Brandie said. “And now that Main Street is involved you have these after hours things we participate in that get attention to the music store and other surrounding businesses. There really wasn’t any of that before, there was just word of mouth.”
