— A passion for music and a desire to fill a void in the local community have led Brian and Abigail Ferdon to open The Music Shop in Detroit Lakes’ Washington Square Mall; a “soft” opening is scheduled for Wednesday, April 1.
The store, which will offer both private lessons and a variety of instruments and music accessories, is the culmination of a lifelong dream for Brian Ferdon, a Navy veteran with deep roots in musical education.
“I always wanted to start a music store,” he said. “You have to go all the way to Fargo-Moorhead to get supplies for instruments or anything like that. So it seemed like it was a good opportunity.”
The Ferdons hope to follow the soft launch, which will focus on starting lessons and selling initial inventory, with a grand opening in July.
The shop’s initial focus will be on providing a broad range of music instruction, with lessons available for vocal, piano, guitar, brass, drums, percussion and violin — yes, Brian is a multi-instrumentalist, Abigail noted with a smile. “There are so many instruments in our house!” she said.
Vicki Gerdes / Detroit Lakes Tribune
“I started singing in church when I was three years old,” Brian said, adding that he played multiple instruments growing up as well, before getting a “full ride” scholarship to play trumpet at Jacksonville University, in his native Florida. While in college, he studied music, business and recording technologies, and he intends to leverage that extensive musical background to guide the lesson programs.
Abigail met her future husband through music, specifically in the marching band at Jacksonville University, where she was in the color guard.
“I was catching flags, mostly with my face, because I had never done it before,” she joked, “and he played the mellophone (a brass instrument that can roughly be described as a trumpet-French horn hybrid).”
Vicki Gerdes / Detroit Lakes Tribune
After graduating from college in 2013, Brian joined the U.S. Navy. “That was around the time that everyone was getting furloughed at the National Endowment for the Arts,” Abigail explained, adding that “all of the symphonies in the nation were on strike, so getting a music-based job in 2013 was extraordinarily difficult.”
Abigail, meanwhile, graduated from Jacksonville University with a bachelor’s degree in both marketing and management before going on to get a master’s degree in management.
“Shortly after getting my MBA (degree), I got a job with Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command, as a contract officer,” she said.
Contributed / Abigail Ferdon
It’s a position she still holds, as she is able to work remotely out of the San Diego office. In 2023, Abigail and their daughter Micah moved to Detroit Lakes from San Diego to be nearer to family.
“All of my family is in this area,” she said, adding that she spent a good chunk of her formative years in Hawley, while “my dad grew up in Detroit Lakes and my mom grew up in Mahnomen. We came back to the area for the Fourth of July and Christmas, basically every year.”
While Brian grew up in Florida, Abigail’s ties to this area include not just her parents, Jason and Kelly Bristlin — who now live in Audubon — but several other relatives in Detroit Lakes, Mahnomen and Perham.
Brian joined his family in Detroit Lakes in May of 2024, after being discharged from active duty with the Navy. They now have a home near Dunton Locks County Park.
In addition to lessons, The Music Shop will sell instruments and related supplies. To start, they will primarily carry guitars and ukuleles, along with a full range of accessories such as reeds, strings and valve oil, as well as sheet music for a variety of instruments. They are currently working to secure dealership agreements to stock larger items like keyboards.
The Music Shop will also offer an online store for items too large to carry in the physical location, allowing customers to choose between shipping to their home or picking up in the store. Furthermore, the shop will provide repair services for string instruments and act as a resource hub by providing business cards for other local repair specialists they know.
The couple chose the mall space because of its size and location. “Honestly, foot traffic, and it fits the need,” Abigail Ferdon said. “We were looking for a place that was at least 1,000 square feet and was in our budget.”
The soft opening on April 1 will signal a new chapter for the Ferdon family and a new resource for the Detroit Lakes area’s music enthusiasts. The Ferdons are using a Google form, linked on The Music Shop’s
and
pages, to gauge interest and determine the final lesson offerings. Interested parties can also email them at
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.dl-online.com ’
