Onset Village Music closes its doors
An eerie quiet settled inside the Onset Village Music Store Friday afternoon. There were no music lessons taking place, as there normally would be, and there was no music coming through the speakers, because, like most of the store’s remaining merchandise, they had all been sold off.
“It’s the quietest it’s ever been in here, said co-owner Sue Noonan. “Today is the day the music died.”
After 11 years in Wareham, the Onset Village Music Store closed its doors at 2510 Cranberry Highway Friday afternoon.
Sue, who co-owns the business with her husband Frank, said they were both ready to move in a new direction.
Sue recently earned her bachelor’s degree in English and secondary education from Bridgewater State University. She did this while running the music store, and said it would be too difficult to run the store, while teaching high school students, which is what she hopes to do with her degree.
Frank is the musical side of the duo. He spent 20 years in the military playing with various bands, including the prestigious “The Commandant’s Own” in the Marine Corps. He also was a band director at high schools across the South Coast.
Sue and Frank met, when Frank was the bandleader at Wareham High School and Sue’s daughter was a drummer.
After being married for only five months, Frank and Sue decided to open up a business together. A music store was the obvious choice. Onset Village Music’s first location was 239 Onset Ave., where the Firehouse Cafe was the most recent tenant.
After a year in Onset, the Noonans moved to a building across from the Fan Club in East Wareham for seven years, and for the last three years have resided on Cranberry Highway. The Noonans thought they would see a boost in traffic from the new Walmart, upon moving further down Cranberry Highway. In an ironic twist of fate, after a number of delays, Walmart only opened two days before the music store closed.
“We had a good run,” Sue said.
Sue said she loved running the business and meeting new, creative people. She said they had phenomenal music teachers and loved seeing students come back year after year for lessons.
“It’s one of the few things left that needs to be passed on person to person,” she said about learning an instrument. “YouTube is never gonna say, ‘Hey that was really good’, and give you that feedback.”
Sue said in addition to young people there were also adults, fathers and sons, and even entire families that came in for lessons.
“I think we did a good job of getting music back into people’s lives, where it wasn’t there before,” she said.
While Sue will be focusing on teaching, Frank will be spending more time with his music. Sue said Frank plays 130-150 performances a year at local assisted living homes, and would like to dedicate more time to that. Frank is also a bandleader for a number of local community bands.
Sue said she hopes the store encouraged music in people’s lives and hopes she can continue to do so without the store.
As she ended every transaction at Onset Village Music, Sue reminded this reporter as he left to “Have a musical day.”