-RPMD-Yay! Boston’s Seaport Hotel was the place to be in late April for tons of information to help you sell print music products.
-Music City Miracle? Is this the year Summer NAMM makes a great comeback?
-Moonlighting. A look at manufacturers/reps who still perform regular gigs and how it helps them in their day jobs.
-The Bright Stuff. We always hear the bad news going on in the world. How about the good news?
-The 'Real' Guitar Heroes. What will the future of the guitar industry look like?

If you’re tired of hearing about all of the bad stuff going on the world, boy do we have a treat for you. When you open a newspaper (you pick the day), stories about health scares, murders, steroids, Human Growth Hormone, and suicide bombings are assured of being in there. Well, you won’t hear about any of those in this story. You also won’t hear about the recession and subprime woes. For the first time, we present several great things that manufacturers are doing in our industry today. How do companies make a difference for their communities? How do they make a difference for larger charitable causes? Here are some of the people and stories from companies you perhaps communicate with on a daily basis.

Let’s start with Alyssa Janney, who manages the HealthRHYTHMS division of Remo Inc., which is devoted to music therapy wellness applications of its business. “Reaching beyond our doors,” she said, “we support organizations that use music products in music-therapy and wellness applications. We are a patron member of the American Music Therapy Association. We have also supported through membership the American Holistic Nurses Association and the Florida Healthcare Association just to name a few. We also reach out to help many organizations around the globe who are trying to make a difference in their communities. One of the most exciting things that we are doing is the HealthRHYTHMS Group Empowerment Drumming program. We have trained facilitators now in 48 U.S. states and 17 countries around the world. The HealthRHYTHMS program is a research-based group drumming program that integrates proven wellness strategies for psycho-social and health outcomes. It’s being used in hospitals and long-term care, in schools, corporations, and community organizations. It’s used to build cohesive teams, for employee wellness, for cancer support groups, for alcohol and drug addiction support groups, for support of our military and their families, at-risk youth, and more. The program has very broad applicability because HealthRHYTHMS can be used as a platform for addressing many different needs in a way that is non-threatening, supportive, accepting, and fun! It’s one way we are using our core competencies to make a difference. And it’s all based in solid, scientific research which has been published in peer reviewed medical journals.”

PRS Guitars has generously provided for its community. The company holds an annual golf tournament with proceeds benefiting people living with cancer at Johns Hopkins Medical Center. And PRS Guitars’ latest venture was to help a local man whose house burned down. “He lost everything,” said Larry Urie, national sales and marketing manager for PRS. “He’s a musician and he doesn’t have any insurance. He only had one instrument that survived the fire. That was a PRS Standard 20th Anniversary model. The firemen estimated it was 800 degrees where that guitar was. How did it survive? The guitar is charred, but still playable. It has a broken string and the finish is bubbled over. We decided to fix it for him. Then I went to Paul [Reed Smith] and said I have a better idea, ‘Let’s give him a new guitar and see if he’ll trade us his. We can keep this burned guitar to show to people.’ The person came in and we gave him a new guitar. We don’t forget where we came from.”

Musicorp is a big supporter of the South Carolina Youth Advocate Program, which is part of the national Youth Advocate Program. “It’s a non-profit organization that trains and oversees foster parents and foster families for special needs foster children who come through the state,” said Gene Taylor, a Musicorp sales rep. “Often, these children are abused and medically fragile. In our local Charleston, S.C. area, at any time, we have about 70 kids in care through the agency. What we do is organize drum circles for them. We actually bought the whole drum circle kit from Remo.”

In fact, Taylor’s wife is a regional director for the youth program, and drum circle participants have ranged in ages from 3 to teen. “The first drum circle we did was at the [advocate program’s] Christmas party,” said Taylor. “We had about 50 kids join in. For half of those children, it was their first experience having their hands on an instrument of any kind. We’ll be doing one this spring, summer, and we’re looking to conduct one for the entire state organization, which would involve several hundred children.”

Tanya Fox, Canadian and International sales administrator for Sabian, has a vital role in a local program located in Woodstock, New Brunswick, Canada, about 20 minutes away from Sabian’s headquarters. “The program is called Funstage,” said Fox. “I’ve been a part of its committee for the past three years. It’s a nonprofit organization whose mandate is “to bring good entertainment to the community and reasonable prices for all families to enjoy. We’re part of the New Brunswick Arts Council who draws in artists to perform. We determine which artists could be excellent for our program. We usually stick to three to four performances per year. This year, we’re doing three and the last one is scheduled for [this month].”

Tickets to the concerts cost $7 Canadian if paid in advance and $8 at the door. That money all goes to the organization’s operating expenses. “We’re not making money. We try to bring in good talent so the kids in Woodstock and surrounding areas can enjoy it at affordable prices.”

Funstage’s last performance, which took place in February, featured Halifax, Nova Scotia-based band Razzmatazz, which plays folk, Celtic, and blues music. According to Fox, attendance has grown dramatically during the past couple of years. Past events drew about 120 people. However, 370 attended the February performance. The theater’s capacity is 400.

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