Today we’d like to introduce you to Charlie Andrews
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Since this is supposed to be an update on a prior interview, I’ll make the background brief. Suffice to say drumming was always one of the most positive and healing threads of my life, interwoven into most every part of my life. I’ll always be grateful for the opportunities I had to grow as a person while I grew as a musician and I have many people to thank for that.
While in college, I was got a taste of the business side of drums – product development, marketing, sales – during an internship and that’s when I started to wonder about owning a shop. I didn’t give it serious thought until another internship put me with a boss who loved to started businesses and encouraged me to consider starting one myself. That led to me opening Badges Drum Shop shortly after I graduated in 2018.
I didn’t know anything about retail but I had spent my life studying drummers and drumming and drums, so putting together the shop environment and inventory was rather automatic. I knew what I wanted my shop to be and what I wanted it to mean to the community here in my home town. While not a music capital, Cincinnati has a thriving music community and I’m proud to be a business that supports drummers in my home town and all over the country and world.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
In my last interview I talked about the challenges of negotiating Covid just one year into growing this business. I doubt that would be a surprise to anyone. So, while year one had consisted of launching the business and getting my footing, year two centered around surviving an unprecedented pandemic, and in year three I began the climb back to normal life without yet knowing what that was supposed to look like.
Not long after that my landlord decided he wanted to sell the building I leased and had renovated as my shop’s home. I faced the choice of either buying a building in need of extensive repairs at top dollar or finding another place. Commercial spaces were expensive and in short supply. Finding a space became as big of a job as running the shop and the pressure was overwhelming.
A business neighbor who owned a drapery shop just a few doors down heard of my challenge and miraculously and generously offered to move her business home a few years earlier than she had planned to let me buy her building – a perfect spot for me and an absolute godsend. The challenge was time. In two months time I needed to secure a commercial loan, get closed in record time, renovate the space and move before I had to be out of my old spot. With superhuman effort on the part of friends and family, we pulled it off and I moved into my current location in June 2022.
It was then that it finally hit me that owning a drum shop is what I do and that I was home.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I spend my days surrounded by decades worth of the instrument I love while serving people who love my instrument. So, I take the work to heart. I love every item I allow to take up space and time here. If it’s here, I believe in it and personally selected it with my community’s drumming journey in mind.
Badges Drum Shop is highly focused on drum set so the inventory specifically consists of new, used, and vintage drums, cymbals and accessories for drum set players. There is only one of most of items in the shop. Even the new drums and cymbals are custom ordered or commissioned or curated to provide meaningful solutions to sonic problems and opportunities. So, it’s a very personalized experience here. Drummers will often come in with a sound in mind and I can guide them to the drum or cymbal that achieves that sound. It’s mostly matchmaking.
So, it’s very specialized work that is deeply fulfilling and allows me to tap the skills I’ve developed from the time I was very young. For most of my years prior to owning this shop, drums were everything. They motivated me, shaped me, and introduced me to the most magnificent people and opportunities. To the people who trained me, mentored me, played with me I’m deeply grateful. For the instrument itself I have reverence.
So it may sound odd when I say that drums for me are not the end-all. It’s more what they do for people that matters to me – it’s more of a spiritual pursuit. I try to come in here thinking about what’s important and it is rarely what I sell but what that experience means. I recently shipped a sweet 1960s blue sparkle Gretsch o a guy in Norway who had dreamed of that set his whole life. The guy who brought it in here owned it his whole life. Those beautiful drums pale in comparison to the joy of the transfer between those two drummers. Some of my customers and students are bearing massive life challenges. I see what the instrument does for them and I love being a tiny part of that. We all get opportunities to connect with people and show them some help and respect, and this is just a setting for me to do that. It may involve a drum or a cymbal or it may not.
I treat this place like a sanctuary – for me and for those who come here. I want it to feel like home or at least serve as a place to breathe and feel inspired. I work and pray for that
What were you like growing up?
I was creative and inquisitive. I loved Legos and drawing and animals and nature. I got into music in late grade school and it took over from there. I was fortunate to go to a school with a thriving arts program. That music program became my community and I became involved in as many opportunities as I could — jazz band, pep band, orchestra, private lessons. I also stayed busy gigging outside of school, eventually as the drummer for the student house band at the Blue Wisp Jazz Club. There I was exposed to exceptional drummers who would sit and talk drums and gear with me like I was an old friend. That meant something to me — that the best took time to show me how to be a better drummer and person. I learned that drummers are some of the most humble, generous people on the planet and it’s why this work is so meaningful to me now.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://badgesdrumshop.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/badgesdrumshop/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/badgesdrumshop
- Twitter: https://x.com/badgesdrumshop
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@badgesdrumshop
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/badges-drum-shop-mason
- Other: https://reverb.com/shop/badges-drum-shop
