When Jenna Kelly opened The Loop Music Company in May, she expected quiet days repairing instruments. Instead, she said she found a steady stream of musically inclined, and loud, customers.
“I didn’t realize how musical this town was. So it’s kind of a happy accident,” Kelly said.
Located on 5th Ave., the store is a one-woman show, with Kelly selling, stocking and repairing all of her inventory herself. Kelly advertises that The Loop buys, sells and trades instruments.
“It’s a five-line music staff with repeats on each side, which means the loop, because you’re just going to keep looping it,” Kelly said about the company’s logo. “That’s part of my specialty, I take old instruments and fix them up and repair them.”
Kelly, originally from South Florida, moved to Grinnell to be closer to her older brother Matthew Karjalahti, who owns Re/Max Partners Realty in town.
A sound technician and trained luthier with a specialty in guitars, she works on all and stocks parts of all the most popular musical instruments and sound equipment. Ranging from clarinet reeds to electric violins, one of her favorite sayings is “If I don’t have it, you don’t need it.”
“I have been crazy busy throughout the summer,” Kelly said. “I really don’t do much for advertising. Word of mouth spreads really quickly through a lot of other musicians.”
Kelly grew up in a musical household. Her first instruments were the ukulele, the Arabic drum and the zills. In middle school she learned the flute and the saxophone. Kelly said that she plays all the instruments she repairs, though her true love is the guitar.
“I put a rosette on my logo to pick on guitar players because even though I’m one of us, most of them can’t read music and they think that’s supposed to be a guitar string,” Kelly said. “But it’s actually the five-line music staff. That way, other musicians know that I’m not just a guitar repair shop.”
In her first weekend in town, Kelly met Erin Bustin, the founder and executive director of the Grinnell School of Music, who showed her that there was a place for her technical audio skills in town.
“My brother was hauling her float for the parade, for the homecoming parade and she forgot to bring cables for her PA [Portable Audio] system,” Kelly said. “So I ran back to my house and I got the right cables to hook her up … I figured I might as well get started and open it up, and I have so much equipment anyway.”
Grinnell School of Music has been a steady source of business for the shop, Kelly said.
“They get a lot of donations, all kinds of instruments,” Kelly said. “A lot of those donated instruments come in from barn finds and they need a lot of service.”
Kelly told The S&B that this year she will be hauling the Grinnell School of Music Float for the homecoming parade.
“I love making sure that the kids are being supported and that they have instruments that function properly,” Kelly said. “Live music will go away if we don’t keep encouraging our kids to learn and to play and to practice.”