Tall Toad Music strikes a chord in Petaluma

Charles Cowles, the “chief scientist” at the decades-old shop, has built a musical community in the city.|

In an era where once-thriving music stores are diminishing, Petaluma’s decades-old Tall Toad Music continues to hit a strong note in the community.

The store, co-owned by Charles Cowles who calls himself the “chief scientist,” is alive with music, people practicing, previewing instruments or taking lessons.

“Our main purpose and guiding principle as a business is to try to enrich people’s lives through participation in music,” Cowles said. “To do that we’ve developed a community of local musicians who rely on us not only for instruments and supplies but also very importantly for information that they can use to develop their skills as musicians.”

Since Tall Toad Music opened in the Great Petaluma Mill in 1988 and subsequently moved to its 43 Petaluma Blvd. North location, Cowles has grown a loyal following and a diverse clientele - drawing some big names in music.

“Tom Waits, you might have heard of him, he shops here,” Cowles said. “He’s a normal guy, dresses casually, pulls up in an old white Cadillac and parks in the red zone (in the evening). He likes things from the early 1900s.”

Waits once eyed a giant marching drum in the window that read “Marching Gnomes of Petaluma,” but Cowles wouldn’t sell.

The store’s proximity to the Mystic Theatre is also fortuitous, he said.

“Taj Mahal, Junior Brown, and Leon Russell, all the big stars come in here,” said Cowles.

Cowles said his best-selling guitars are Fender, Martin, and Gibson. He carries an unusually large number of left-handed guitars, plus a proliferation of other stringed instruments.

“David Grisman, a good friend of mine, has over 100 of his instruments on consignment here,” he said. “He’s the world’s best mandolin player, according to him, and most people agree.”

In the past three years, ukuleles have become a fad, he said, to the tune of three or four purchases daily. Tall Toad Music also does a big business in band instrument rentals, with a stock of a couple of hundred.

“We sell a lot online, too. You have to these days,” he said.

Guitar lessons are given by accomplished artists, deep in the bowels of the multi-roomed Tall Toad Music.

Cowles said more than 1,000 students have taken classes.

“We don’t make a dime,” Cowles said. “When I stopped charging the teachers five years ago, the vibe got much better. Everybody’s happy.”

Cowles, who can be found practicing music for several hours each day in the store, took a circuitous route to becoming a small business owner. Born near Cleveland, Ohio, he obtained a masters in biochemistry and took a post at Ohio State University Hospital, where he worked in cancer research.

“It was a cool job,” he said. “Then LSD came out.”

In 1967, Cowles jumped on his motorcycle and headed to San Francisco for the Summer of Love, where he “did the hippie thing for a while.” In 1971, he opened Tree Frog Music in the city, naming the business after a fictitious beer that appeared in tales drawn by his underground cartoonist friends in Ohio.

“It was a goof, an in joke,” he said. “There was no such beer, but they all used the name.”

At the shop, he sold strings and harmonicas and acquired a large collection of music books, which has now grown to 25,000.

Folk singer-songwriter Arlo Guthrie’s brother, Jody, worked there and Cowles was best man at Jody’s wedding. Cowles became “tied in with Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Utah Phillips, all those guys,” he said.

After selling the store in 1981 to a retired gardener who had been a customer, Cowles attended law school for two years before realizing he didn’t want to be a lawyer. He moved to Petaluma in 1986, where he’s lived since, building his business. By then, the characters in his friends’ comic books were drinking Tall Toad Beer, also fictitious, thus the store’s name now.

Not to be left out of the musical nature of Tall Toad, Cowles himself is studying at the California Jazz Conservatory in Berkeley.

“Now I love jazz,” he said. “I didn’t like it before. It’s much more expressive than rock’n’roll.”

He continues to enjoy operating his longstanding musical hub.

“Tall Toad is not a lucrative business,” Cowles said. “For me, it’s a labor of love.”

For more information or to take a virtual tour of the store, visit talltoadmusic.com.

(Contact Robert Feuer at argus@arguscourier.com)

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