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Here is the HISTORY of Tall Toad Music and Charlie Cowles!

It was a dark and stormy night in 1970...I was burning a phatty with underground cartoonist buddies Dave Sheridan (Leather Nun) and Gilbert Shelton (Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers) in San Francisco and asked them about a recurring theme that showed up in the work of lot of the artists who worked for the Rip-Off Press, that being that they drew their characters drinking Tree Frog Beer.

I was looking for a name for my first guitar shop and Dave suggested that Tree Frog Music would be good name, and so it was. I opened that store at 26th and Geary in San Francisco and it lasted there for ten years. A little hippie shop, selling Guild and Yamaha guitars and giving guitar lessons (all the kids wanted to learn Stairway to Heaven in those days).

I sold that business in 1981 and went to law school for a couple years, then got the bug again and opened a new store in Petaluma. What to name it? Well, by this time all the cartoonists had switched to having their characters drink Tall Toad Beer so it seemed an appropriate name for the new store. S. Clay Wilson (Checkered Demon, Ruby the Dyke) was probably the guy who first used the Tall Toad motif. Example:http://www.fabulousfurryfreakbrothers.com/unbearable.htm

THE HISTORY

Tall Toad Music was opened by Charles Cowles and Iris Lawton with a very modest inventory in August 1988 in a small room upstairs in the Mill in downtown Petaluma.

After being there a year, the old storefront that had been the music store in town for 70 years came up for rent and although it was way bigger and more expensive than we could afford we moved to the new location, built a wall near the front and moved it back as we slowly built up to a store full of inventory.

Our specialties today are print music (15000 titles) and acoustic guitars (1000) but we also carry electric guitars, banjos, mandolins, steel guitars, violins, ukuleles, and lots of parts and accessories. We give lessons (100 students and seven teachers), buy used stuff, take consignments and rent band instruments.

We will celebrate our 20th year in business in August 2008.



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