Rainbow Music Finds a New Home in Bellefonte

When Rainbow Music closed its store at 140 N. Atherton St. in State College after losing its lease at the end of 2019, owner Bill Beard expected it to be a temporary hiatus of a couple months until he found a new location.

“My focus was to liquidate as much as I could with the understanding that the future was uncertain,” Beard said. “My plan was to get out of there, put everything in storage, then go get another place, renovate and maybe be out of commission a month or two.”

In the early months of 2020, however, COVID-19 hit and, unsure about when he would be able to open for business, Beard saw no sense in leasing another place immediately.

His short hiatus turned out to be a little bit longer than expected, but two years later the longtime Centre County shop specializing in guitars, gear and accessories has returned with a new home in a different borough.

Rainbow Music opened in late spring at 1 Perry Lane in Bellefonte (behind the Waffle Shop and adjacent to the Spring Street municipal parking lot), giving the county seat its only dedicated music store.

Beard acquired the building — which is best known to locals as the former longtime home of Nastase Beer Distributor — last summer, then undertook renovations and waited until the weather was good enough to safely move in sensitive products like guitars and amps.

While not much is visible from outside of the brick building, inside Beard has created an inviting space, where he installed an HVAC system specifically designed for an instrument store. Upon entry customers will find a front room with amps and keyboards, then a bright space with electric guitars lining the walls and small goods throughout. Sliding doors open into a side room that was once the beer cooler and is now lined with acoustic guitars — including a wall with vintage Martin guitars.

“Basically that’s an insulated box which is really good for the acoustic thing and also if we ever got into a situation where the heat went down, the instruments could be moved in there, the sliding glass doors closed and basically seal it in,” Beard said of converting the cooler to a showroom.

It’s both a new beginning and return to form for Beard, who got his start locally managing the former George’s House of Music in State College in the 1990s. In 1998, he struck out on his own, opening Rainbow Music on West College Avenue.

When the owner of that building sold it, he moved in 2008 to the North Atherton Street building, which was acquired by Penn State two years earlier. The university, he said, was looking for short-term tenants with the expectation it would eventually be using the property and others nearby for its own purposes.

Beard’s initial lease was for five years and he didn’t expect it would last beyond that. But it was extended on a year-by-year basis until 2019, when Penn State finally informed Rainbow Music and tenants of other nearby university-owned buildings that their leases would not be renewed.

“Having gotten 12 years out of the building was beyond what they told me upfront to ever expect out of the time spent there,” Beard said.

After moving slat walls and display cases into storage and instruments and amps to his house, Beard worked on setting up e-commerce for Rainbow Music. As he looked for a new brick-and-mortar location, staying in State College became less likely.

Over the years, a changing economy and the Internet meant store sales were not what they once were. At the same time, development in downtown State College pushed up rental rates and made smaller spaces on the outer edges of town the only realistic option in the Centre Region, he said.

“The whole landscape of high rent really limits the kind of business you can run,” Beard said.

In State College, Rainbow Music had high visibility and a business model that relied on foot traffic from the university. In Bellefonte, it’s a bit different.

He believes his longtime customers won’t have a problem going to the new Bellefonte location, so he’s focusing on building awareness in the community.

“I don’t have the drive-by exposure,” Beard said. “I’m hoping the parking lot attracts some visual. Obviously the building is well signed now. For me it’s really trying to get the community to appreciate the fact that they have a music store now.”

Most of the instruments Beard has for sale right now are used, as he works to restore business relationships with manufacturers and, more significantly, wait out the supply-chain and production issues that have made new guitars more difficult for retailers to acquire after a boom in sales early in the pandemic.

“Maybe I’ll be focused more on the used end of things but the problem with selling strictly used is that you’re at the mercy of what anybody’s willing to sell you. So I’m hoping to find a happy balance here as time goes on,” he said. “For now, I’d rather have more guitars than I have right now. I think I’ve got more than most small stores have at any given time, even when they’re not trying to build.”

Beard said he wants “to be known as the guitar guy” among music stores. (You might not be able to buy or rent a saxophone at Rainbow Music, but you can still find small goods like reeds and ligatures.)

With the focus on guitars, his goal is to help customers find the one that’s right for them.

“I really want to get in deep with why people care,” he said. “Why do you want to play an instrument? What’s going to inspire you? How do we move you in a direction forward. My whole attitude about buying and selling is first you want a kid to come in and ooh and ah. Then you want him to get his first guitar. Then you want him to get into it and trade up and over the course of a lifetime continuously improve your instrument selection. A toolbox is one thing; it’s another thing to have really special instruments that inspire. I’m a big fan of quality over quantity.

“For me, why try to sell a kid that’s 12-years-old a $500 guitar? Unless his parents played and realized he’s more inclined to stick with it. That’s what parents always want to find out: how do I know if they’re even going to stay with it? The problem is if you’re in that situation you can get something that’s so cheap it’s unplayable then they actually won’t stick with it. It’s my job to find the right instrument for the right person at the right level of skill they’re at.”

He also says he places a lot of value on the buy-sell-trade aspect of the business, which also includes buying and selling of vintage coins, to give fair value and help customers get what they’re looking for. And he’ll help broker a sale as well.

“What happens is a lot of times is grandpa bought this guitar new, then dad got it later in life, somebody died and nobody in the family plays,” Beard said. “They need to have an outlet for that rather than just trying to figure it out on the Internet. Whether I broker a deal or buy an instrument from somebody, it’s good to know there’s somebody in the area who can handle that beyond-the-norm.”

For now, store hours vary and can be found daily, along with inventory, at rainbowmusic.com, as well as on the business’s Facebook and Instagram accounts.

Beard said he’s looking forward to building the store by using revenue to increase inventory.

“From the outside it doesn’t look like much but I’ve been in enough music stores to know that this has kind of got it going on for what it is,” he said. “…Ultimately we want this to be a destination place for at least a 50-mile radius.”