Daily Inspiration: Meet Brian Stevenson

Today we’d like to introduce you to Brian Stevenson.

Hi Brian, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
We just celebrated our tenth anniversary in the business. I had previously worked as an instructor at a band instrument repair school, and my wife, Deanna, and I decided we were ready to open our own repair shop and music store. We looked at the map of Denver and saw that there was a gap in areas that had good brass and woodwind repair along the US-36 corridor and we opened up shop in January 2013.

We started really small, just the two of us working in a shop that today we can see as a tiny corner in an industrial park, but at the time felt like the castle that we had built together. We started just as a repair shop with a super small selection of supplies like reeds and maintenance supplies for customers.

The only instruments for sale were ones that I had pulled out of my own closet or that I had picked up at a thrift store or garage sale to sell. Deanna and I worked in Music education previously and we have always built our business around what kind of services we wish we had while we were teaching. This gave us a unique insight into the challenges and the rewarding nature of doing work for schools and for beginning band students. Our passion has always been getting the best possible instrument in the hands of a kid to allow them the best possible chance of success and finding a lifelong love of Music. We have since moved locations and expanded size twice. We now have a full staff of other technicians, delivery people, and retail staff.

We also sell new and used instruments, rent instruments to beginning students, and have a full retail store. We always expanded organically and added services or products that our customers asked for. We’ve been recognized as a top 100 Dealer in the world by the North American Music Merchandisers (NAMM) organization and run a charitable event we call “school secret Santa” that has given away over $120,000 worth of instruments and musical supplies to local schools over the last 3 years. We also do all the brass and woodwind repair for Bringing Music to Life, a charity that fixes up donated instruments to provide for schools. We’re much bigger and busier now, but our commitment to students getting the best possible chance to succeed at music is still at the core of what we do.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
As with a lot of businesses, COVID was a major problem. We were placed in the situation of agreeing that the activity that our business is founded upon was probably not the most prudent of activities. A Large group of children playing instruments that they blow air and spit through in a small room would’ve been the CDC’s worst nightmare. Schools, Community bands, and music venues literally stopped overnight. When people aren’t playing their instruments we became a luxury that no one needed.

Things disappeared quite literally overnight and for the next year and a half, we had to make cuts in staffing and make a lot of hard decisions to try and be ready when things started up again. At a certain point, we decided that we weren’t going to wait for the world and we actually invested in a large expansion of space and personnel. We’re really glad we did because once things came back we got inundated.

“You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone” definitely applied to school music and they have had a record number of kids signing up. There are ups and downs and stresses to owning and operating a business with your family, but we have a great yin-yang relationship where I’m the wild Idea guy and Deanna is the pragmatic person who does the real nitty-gritty work to do things and to do then right. She reigns me in when I’m a little too crazy but also is able to make my ideas and dreams a reality better than I possibly could on my own.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Band Instrument repair is a pretty specialized and not too common of a career path. There are only 3 schools in the country that train in the field. My journey came from the old school version where I worked under “old timers” as an apprentice. I’m really proud that I got to where I am by literally working as hard as I could and being hungry for knowledge. I primarily work on Woodwind and Brass instruments, and that’s a lot. There’s literally never a time when any one person can know everything there is to know.

I have many many mentors that I refer work to that I can’t even imagine doing, and I’m proud to say that a lot of those people in turn send a lot of jobs to me that are not in their wheelhouse. I’m dedicated to training and sharing knowledge of what we do and encouraging others to join the field. It’s not just as a teacher or a performer that you can have a lifelong fulfilling career in music. I travel around the country doing seminars, clinics, and teaching at the repair schools, and many events for the National Association of Professional Band Instrument Repair Technicians (NAPBIRT) I’ve presented at regional clinics and three times at the national convention. We also host a regional clinic every other year in which we bring in the best people we know in the industry to work and learn together.

Everything from minor adjustments to major damage (think running over a french horn with your car) we can handle at the shop and we’re really proud that we have become a source of trust for Colorado’s Band instrument musicians.

What do you think about luck?
I tend to be in the school of thought that the better you prepare the luckier you get. We’ve been very lucky to be embraced by many of the music communities in Colorado including college programs, school band directors, and community bands, but that luck came about by being honest, doing the best work we knew how to do, and making sure that we were someone that people wanted to tell their friends about.

We’ve been lucky to have these people feel comfortable enough to lend their own personal credibility and reputation to recommend us to people, but we never could’ve earned that if we hadn’t made a great impression on them initially.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.rockymountainmusicrepair.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RockyMountainMusicRepair
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@rockymountainmusicrepair5177
• TikTok: @rockymtnmusic