Staff Writer
Owners of Northern Music Supply, Tim Humphrey and his wife Doreen have hit the quarter century mark as business owners. Opening their store in 1984, they have enjoyed meeting many people.
Tim and Doreen Humphrey in 1984
Humphrey, a retired English teacher now, was teaching in the Hodgdon school department when he opened the first shop at 70 Franklin Street where he and his wife lived. It was just a tiny shop located in their one-car garage. The street is now called Chandler.
In 1999 they moved to the Calais Road where Doreen’s parents had owned a home. They again filled an area not too much larger than the previous space and it is there that Tim spends most of his days.
He retired from teaching in 2004 after 36 years in the classroom. He likes the slower paced life and says that his business has grown continually over the years.
“Even with these economic challenges, people are still investing in instruments,” said Humphrey. “The cost of the instruments has stayed quite steady, however the shipping has increased a lot,” he added.
Humphrey sells mostly stringed instruments including, electric and acoustic guitars, banjos and mandolins. His inventory also includes drumsticks, electric drums, harmonicas, cymbals, amplifiers and sound equipment for public address systems.
He has customers from as far away as Calais and Patten. He says that his customers include teenagers, to those in their 70s.
Humphrey also does some online business and expects to do more once his Web site is up and running in a couple of months. He has sold and shipped instruments all over the world.
At Northern Maine Music Supply you can buy both new and used instruments.
Humphrey is no stranger to the music world. He was an original member of a local band Rock Renaissance back in the 1970s and beyond. After that group disbanded, he started his business, but continued to entertain under the name Solitare.
Since then he has changed his act to, ‘Tim the Tune Man’, entertaining as a DJ. He has become a fixture at Houlton’s Midnight Madness in July and most recently kept the crowd rocking in Monument Square during the Holiday Light Parade.
Humphrey sometimes joins his son Travis in Portland to play a few venues there. Travis has his own band called the Travis J. Humphrey Band and plays professionally in the Portland area.
I wonder where he got interested in music? Humphrey thinks that Travis will come back to the area in the future and continue the business his parents started a quarter of a century ago.
Tim Humphrey at his shop in 2009
