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For many, new school year is music to the ear

Graham Jaehnig/ Daily Mining Gazette For high school marching band members, the only alternative to a store in Houghton for things like instrument reeds, valves and other parts, is to order them online.

HOUGHTON – Going back to school involves many things, including last-minute inventories on supplies such as notebooks, calculators, pens, pencils, and other necessities. For members of the school band, additional necessities include things like valve oil, reeds, and other equipment.

Good Times Music, on Shelden Avenue in Houghton, is the only music store between Marquette and Duluth. The owner, Bruce Rundman, is aware of that, and he makes sure his store is able to accommodate the needs of high school band members, and even the local university’s bands.

Cloe Borree, assistant manager at Good Times, said the store does a lot through its rental program for local students.

“We work with a program called NEMC (National Educational Music Company),” she said, “and they will send us the instruments, then we distribute them to the people.”

Students can secure waivers, she said, by which the store’s staff will make any repairs or maintenance that the instruments may need for free.

Borree said that NEMC rents band instruments like trumpets, tubas and others typical to marching bands, but they also rent string instruments such as violins and cellos, along with percussion instruments — “whatever you can imagine.”

Borree said that in addition to instruments available for rent, Good Times also carries a specific type of drum stick required by the MTU Pep Band. The store also carries reeds for woodwind instruments. “We got a million,” she said.

The store offers its musical instrument rental program, EASYRENT, powered by NEMC, the store’s website states.

“Through this program, we are able to offer the benefit of personalized service right in your community,” states the website, “backed by a national company, providing you access to the largest inventory of teacher-approved quality musical instruments in new or like-new condition such as trumpets, clarinets, trombones, flutes, saxophones, violins, violas, cellos, percussion and many more.”

NEMC is a national affiliated program, established through community music stores across the country. NEMC is known for its school band and orchestral instrument rentals, sales and service, nationally distributed through this network of community locally-owned music stores or directly to schools or parents.

Within the school districts of the Copper Country Intermediate School District, high school bands are a point of pride to the student musicians, their parents, and to the entire community.

One example of this is the Calumet High School Marching Band, the monicker of which is The Pride of the Keweenaw. The CHS Marching Band earned a spot to perform at Walt Disney World this past March.

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