STARKVILLE — For Tony Foster, working at Backstage Music on Highway 12 is a dream job.
Serving as a guitar and amplifier technician would be the dream job of any longtime musician, he says. And Foster is certainly that.
The Caledonia native has been a mainstay in the Starkville and Columbus music scenes for decades, but makes his living repairing the guitars and amplifiers of others, from local musicians like Nash Street to nationally known artists like Luther Dickinson of North Mississippi Allstars and Shelby Lynne.
Foster, who lives in Columbus, has worked for Backstage Music since 1988.
So what exactly do you do here at Backstage Music?
I guess you could call me a guitar and amp tech. I work on guitar amplifiers and guitars, primarily. Now I also do work on (public address system) stuff — everything that we sell — all the electronic stuff. My specialty, I guess if you want to call it that, would be tube amps, like vintage amps, and guitars and basses.
How did you get so knowledgeable in this field?
I was playing in the ”70s and, with the road band I was playing with, it was out of necessity that we learned to repair our gear and keep our gear up. When I started for Backstage in ”88, Jamie McKay, who was one of the owners and a really good guitar player, I learned a lot of stuff from him. I used to spend time calling people like Gerald Weber of Kendrick (Amplifiers), Anthony Byers, Ken Fischer, who has passed away. These are famous amplifier builders and technicians now, but way back in the ”80s before they were famous, they would still talk to people. I learned a lot of stuff from them, and by doing.
How much do you still play?
I play a fair amount. I”m in a band called the Juke Joint Gypsies that play local. I also play in another group called Gas that plays lots of original material. So yeah, I still play a pretty good bit.
What was it about this job that appealed to you in the first place?
Wow. It was like a dream job to be around guitars and amps all day. I was in auto parts and this was just a lot more fun.
Do you still consider it a dream job? Do you still like getting up and coming to work every day?
Yeah. Like anything else, after you”ve worked on guitars for 20-something years, in my free time I don”t go home and work on my guitar unless I have to. But there are days when I get a really cool piece to work on and it”s a lot of fun. I really love the old amplifiers. I am very fortunate. I do work for (musician) Shelby Lynne and Luther Dickinson (of North Mississippi Allstars). It”s really neat working on their stuff. Right now I”m watching Shelby Lynne”s current tour and they”re using a deluxe reverb amplifier that I restored for them, so that”s neat seeing that up on stage.
What about you? Do you play any other instruments?
Well, I play guitar and bass guitar. I play a little bit of mandolin. That”s about it.
How many strings have you broken over the years?
I really don”t break strings that much. I don”t know why. I broke them a lot more frequently when I was younger, for sure. I don”t break them very often, probably because I keep them changed pretty regular.
So you can probably take a guitar apart and put it back together with your eyes closed, can”t you?
The common ones, yeah. I could probably work on one in the dark. But they”re simple things.
What would you say is the best part about the job?
Probably the hours, the freedom that you have.
What kind of hours are you working?
We”re open 10 (a.m.) to 6 (p.m.). You don”t have to get up early. You don”t have to be at work by 7, so that”s cool.
What would you say is the most difficult part of the job?
For me, it”s when you”re working on a really valuable instrument that belongs to somebody. That”s a bit tense, or it can be. There”s no room for error. You”re doing something on something that”s either irreplaceable or very valuable. To a lot of people, guitars are a very personal thing and you sort of understand that. So it can be tense to have to do something difficult to something that”s very expensive or valuable.
How would you describe the music scene in Starkville? I guess Columbus, as well, because you commute back and forth, right?
Yeah. I think the music scene in Starkville is more open to original music than Columbus is. Also the music scene over here (in Starkville) is fairly consistent. There are always venues to play. Columbus, on the other hand, goes through cycles, for lack of a better term. Right now there are a couple of cool places to play over there (in Columbus), but in the years I”ve been playing, there have been times when there wasn”t anything new in Columbus. It cycles through the life of a particular bar or something like that. So I”d say it”s more consistent in Starkville. I”m not saying the people in Columbus don”t appreciate new music, but I think it”s easier to play original music in Starkville than it is in Columbus.
On a national level, who do you think are some of the better bands out there musicianship-wise?
I like Kings of Leon. I like Train a lot. I”m a big fan of Counting Crows. I like Melissa Etheridge. And, you know, I love the old school guys. I”m a big Joe Walsh fan. … Jimmy Page and Joe Walsh are definitely my heroes. I think Jimmy Page was just a genius.
I”m kind of changing the subject here, but do you also give lessons here at the shop?
I don”t, but we do. We have a really great staff of teachers. We have three teachers, we have good facilities. We renovated part of the building and have a separate entity that is really nice and comfortable. We have three teaching rooms that are sound-isolated from each other. We have a nice waiting area for parents to sit while their kids are taking lessons.
What would you say to somebody who has always wanted to pick up an instrument, but who might be a little leery to take lessons?
Oh man, guitar is an instrument you can start playing at any age. You can morph to it fairly quickly. In two or three weeks you can be playing songs and enjoying it, whereas there are other instruments, like violin for example, or fiddle, where that instrument takes a lot more time to develop the muscle memory and stuff to play. Quite frankly, with something like that, to really be good at it you need to start at an early age. There are exceptions, of course. But with guitar, you can start at any age and enjoy it. It doesn”t require the technical ability that other instruments do. To be truly great at guitar, it does, but that”s probably why it”s the most popular instrument, probably in the world.
How has business been here lately? Do you have a steady stream of customers?
We do. We have a lot of long-standing regular customers. A cornerstone of our business is the church and commercial sound installation. Any kind of sound installation, we do tons of that.
I didn”t even think about it from that angle. I was just thinking about people coming in for guitars and strings and whatnot.
Yeah, that”s what we call the retail part of our business. We kind of classify it as three different areas. We have the installation or contracting, the repair part of it and the retail part. Now we”re learning to use the Internet to our advantage. In the early days, the Internet hurt us from a retail standpoint. Now it”s beginning to help us. We”re finally learning to utilize it as a tool.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 36 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.