A decade after shutting up shop, Crowley’s Music Centre strikes a new tune southside
Preparations are underway to turn No 1 Friar Street into the new Crowley's Music Centre
A NEW version of Crowley’s Music Centre, the erstwhile wonder emporium of budding Cork City musicians, is set to open on Friar Street, a decade after the closure of the original premises on McCurtain Street.
Sheena Crowley, whose grandfather Tadhg Crowley started the family business in Blackpool back in the 1920s, is preparing to launch the new venture, south of the river, at No 1 Friar Street, almost 10 years to the day since the McCurtain Street store closed on August 8, 2013.
The new enterprise will include a part-time shop with “lots of strings and accessories and with random secondhand instruments”, Ms Crowley said, and it will open from Thursday to Sunday, while the remainder of the week will focus on services for musicians, including hosting workshops and facilitating podcasts.
“It will evolve as we go, I am trying to stay open to as many options as possible, so the shop will operate part-time for now at the front of the premises, while some small rooms to the back can be used as teaching rooms and space to record podcasts.
“My plan is to host different events there and various workshops, looking at different aspects of the music industry,” Ms Crowley said.
While the shop will run from noon to 6pm Thursday to Sunday, the earlier part of the week will be given over to repairing instruments.
“Down the road, I would hope to be looking at making instruments, I am trying to keep things fluid,” Ms Crowley added.
She didn’t lick her enterprising spirit off a stone – her grandfather Tadhg had a keen interest in piping and travelled around Munster to hear various pipe and marching bands, before staring out making bagpipes and uileann pipes himself, setting up his first workshop in the 1920s. The workshop, where he would make and repair instruments, gradually evolved into a shop and in the early 1930s, he opened a music store at No 10 Merchant’s Quay. Following his death in 1955, his son Michael (Mick) Crowley, took over the business at the tender age of 14.
Over the next couple of decades, he built the shop into a cultural hub, a space where aspiring musicians could go and borrow an amp for a gig and repay the favour later, when they could afford to, or where youngsters skivved off from school to jam on the latest guitar models, including the likes of the late legendary singer/songwriter/guitarist, Rory Gallagher, who bought his iconic 1961 Fender Stratocaster from Crowley’s in 1963.
Mick, who relocated the business to McCurtain Street in 1974, passed away on August 6, 2010 and Ms Crowley tried to keep the store going, but was forced to close in 2013.
As her late father’s 13th anniversary approaches, she is planning a tribute gig to him, to take place in the Triskel Arts Centre, on August 4.
Musicians taking part will include David Munnelly and Shane McGowen, an accordion player and a guitarist respectively, whom Ms Crowley says are “masters of their instruments”. Also playing will be the NoName Trio, a trad band.
Meanwhile the new shop is set to open ahead of the commemoration gig, with Cork singer/songwriter/guitarist John Spillane due to perform at the July 27 launch. Mr Spillane immortalised the business in a song called Crowley’s Music Shop, the "one bright spot", which he wrote as a tribute to Mick in 2020 to mark the 10th anniversary of his death. The Friar Street shop, where renovations/preparations are well underway, will officially open on July 28.
Ms Crowley said it could not have happened without the generosity of longstanding, loyal customers of the original store, who supported her instrument rental business which she started during Covid, with many donating instruments back to Ms Crowley. “When people got wind of what I was doing, they started donating,” she says.
She hopes to expand her inventory over time, with her dream being “walls lined with handmade Irish instruments” and to “keep supporting local and Irish made products”.
“Also, if anyone is selling an acoustic or semi-acoustic guitar, give me a shout,” she says.
The shop at No 1 Friar Street replaces former tenant Badly Made Books, which relocated to a larger premises in Togher as business grew. It’s in the same neighbourhood as award-winning heritage attraction Nano Nagle Place, and close too to UCC’s Centre for Architectural Education.
