This week on The Tone Mob, Blake sits down with Frank Gross, founder of Thunder Road Guitars Seattle, for a conversation about music, retail, risk, reinvention, and the strange magic of simply refusing to disappear.
Frank tells the story of leaving the band life behind, moving back to Seattle, and slowly turning Craigslist flips, pawn shop finds, and a tiny workspace into one of the most respected guitar shops on the West Coast. We dig into the early days of Thunder Road, the importance of branding, the realities of bootstrapping a business, and why “just show up and try” might be the most brutally useful advice a new business owner can hear.
We also get into the brand-new Thunder Road Seattle location, building an in-person retail experience in an increasingly online world, the chaos of moving a working guitar store, punk and screamo war stories, favorite Boss pedals, gigantic pizza, and why guitar shops still matter.
Check them out at https://www.thunderroadguitars.com/
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