Swicegood Music has spent the majority of its nearly seven decades in business on College Street in Beaumont.
When it relocated from the original downtown location, Swicegood and a 24-hour pig stand diner were the only businesses on the road.
It’s a scene difficult to imagine now, as Baptist Hospital and other health care offices fill the roadway, along with an H-E-B grocery store, pharmacies, endless fast food options, restaurants, gas stations and more fill the heavily-trafficked corridor.
The growth spurt brought in commercial realtors looking for more opportunities for developers and, as a result, multiple purchase offers to Swicegood Music owner Kurt Killion.
He’d always said no, even after Swicegood flooded during Tropical Depression Imelda.
“We were only closed a few days and could still do out-the-door sales for simple items like strings or reeds while cleaning up,” Killion said, adding, that inside, “it wasn’t pretty with a bare concrete floor and walls missing up a couple feet.”
But it was the very commercial growth on College Street itself that made Killion seriously consider his latest sale offer, now over a year ago.
The glut of traffic on the roadway, especially at lunchtime when popular drive-thrus like Chick-fil-A could tie up a whole lane of traffic flow, made getting in and out of the store more problematic.
And there was a growing issue with unhoused people staying in the area, most of whom Killion and employees had gotten to know over time.
“As a person, you feel for them, but as a business owner, it wasn’t good. Some customers were afraid to come in (if a homeless person was sleeping out front or hanging around),” he said.
When he’d arrive to find a person sleeping outside the storefront, he’d tell them they had to leave, saying, “’Look, I get it, but I’m trying to run a business here.’”
Then, the store was vandalized.
Reportedly, an unhoused man threw a brick through the store window and stole several guitars before police arrived at the scene.
The man was arrested and guitars recovered from nearby pawn shops, but the instruments had been damaged.
When Killion’s pice to sell Swicegood was accepted the next day, he moved the veteran Beaumont business elsewhere.
“It was just the right time to do it,” he explained. “The money was right and the building was 60 years old.”
Killion called Gerald Farhar — a friend in real estate — and said, “I got to go.”
Farhar suggested a new property he’d gotten along Twin City Highway in a new commercial development zone. This site was the first developed on a brand new street — Lone Star Drive in Nederland.
It was Killion’s old stomping grounds and 1,500-square-feet larger than their old property, where the storefront and exterior warehouse and storage units amounted to roughly 8,500 square feet.
The size difference isn’t big on paper, but the new property’s layout, with warehouse inventory, repair and showroom under the same roof, made it feel larger than the numbers showed.
The open floor plan at the new site allowed for larger showroom displays, for one.
“There were some things, like impulse items or displays of drumsticks, what-have-you, that we didn’t have room to display (before on the floor). They were all behind the counter at the old location,” Killion said.
The sheet music and books were in a separate room at the old space, as well.
It amounted to a cramped shopping experience.
That isn’t an issue now.
“Aesthetically, this is much nicer,” Killion noted.
It’s a difference customers have noticed, as well.
“The return customers like that it’s newer and bigger,” Killion said, and since the move, “we’ve seen some new faces here — mainly people from Mid- and South-County that hadn’t gone to Beaumont before.”
His employees like the new space, as well.
What they’re lacking in walking-distance lunch break options on College Street, they’re making up for in in-house functionality.
“Our work spaces are more spaced out here,” said Myles Peace, who started at Swicegood as a janitor eight years ago while studying at Lamar, “(The move) was an adjustment, but it is nice to have your own area and not be packed together, having to ask, ‘Can you move that, so I can get to this?’”
It’s a spacious benefit they’ll likely appreciate more in a few months, when Swicegood’s instrument repair team sees its highest volume of business from its best customers — school band programs.
More than 1,000 instrument services come in the summer months before school resumes.
Swicegood Music services more than 90 regional schools’ music-related needs — providing instruments, repairs, sheet music and making routine on-site calls to check in with band directors about emerging
needs throughout the year.
Their service ranges from schools throughout the Golden Triangle to East Houston and north to Livingston, Cleveland and the lakes region.
“There’s not many stores like this in our area,” Killion said, adding,
“Obviously we’re here to make money, but it’s more of a service to our school music programs. We help schools get access to and supplies of the sheet music and instruments/repairs they need.”
“Texas is the ‘gold standard’ when it comes to school band programs,” Killion said, noting those programs dovetail the state’s devotion to high school football.
It’s a mindset that has helped Texas music programs avoid the creative program budget cuts experienced by many schools throughout the country.
“The Texas Music Educators Association has a good lobby in Austin. They make sure these programs get their share,” Killion said.
That keeps the bands marching on, and doing business at Swicegood’s, as well.
“What grows our business are strong band programs where parents feel like the financial contribution is worth something — it’s a good thing to spend money on. When you have more kids in band, we have more business” he said.
Doing more for school bands goes beyond being good for Swicegood business, however.
It’s a mission Killion benefited from as a child, when his parents got him his first instrument for school band — a saxophone purchased from Swicegood Music decades before he’d become the store’s owner.
The saxophone set off a trajectory of personal music history that led Killion to become a music major at Lamar University, then a middle school band teacher for ten years – two at Port Arthur schools and eight in Nederland.
Since joining Swicegood in 1992, he’s given back to the very programs from which he benefited and made a number of friends along the way.
Killion and others became bandmates in Eazy the Band, which included Michael Westbrook, a former Hardin-Jefferson High School band director and the first local confirmed fatality due to COVID-19.
They still play, mostly now at Pine Tree Lodge, though shows fresh in the wake of Westbrook’s loss were difficult, Killion said.
But the power of music heals, and Killion is making sure that Swicegood endures as a music resource for generations to come, including employees like Steve Huelsman, who was 18 when he started working part-time at Swicegood’s.
He’s now part of the instrument repair team at the shop while continuing to perform as a guitarist with bands throughout the region.
“I’m in my 25th year, and I haven’t left yet,” he said.
kbrent@beaumontenterprise.com