11/14/2020
UNBOWED
Dahl Violin Shop owner restores life and beauty to stringed instruments
The sign on the street-level door says “Fragile…Be Careful.” A visitor might well wonder if the sign refers to the door itself, the building or the delicately curved contents of the old place.
The wooden stairs to the second floor creek like an 80-year-old rocking chair, and the hallway has a musty smell to it. This is the home of one of Downtown’s antique treasures, Dahl Violin Shop.
“I get people who have been coming in for almost 40 years, who say ‘I love how you haven’t changed anything,’” said Robert Black, owner of Dahl Violin Shop.
Mathias Dahl started making and repairing violins, violas, cellos, bass and anything else with a bow in 1917. Dahl bought the old mansion housing the shop in the 1940s; it’s where he made and repaired violins until his death in 1973.
Black, 52, began working in the shop as an apprentice for Dahl in 1967. Black remembers he had an up-and-down relationship with the violinmaker who was well into his 80s by the time.
“He would fire me at the end of everyday,” Black recalled. “And then he would ask me the next day where I was.”
Upon hearing of Dahl’s death in 1973, Black decided to get his funds together and buy the store, even though he was only 18 years old at the time.
He said he had always loved the place, from the first time his own father took him there as a kid, but he never thought it would turn out to be the place where he’d spend his adult life—not even after he bought it.
“It was always so magical when I was here, and part of me thought this was destiny,” Black said. “But I never really thought I would still be doing this today.”
Black works all by himself, and while he doesn’t make violins like Dahl did, he’s widely respected as one of the more trusted repairmen of bowed instruments around.
“We don’t just get classical players, but also bluegrass, Celtic, street performers and traveling people,” he said. “We have regular customers, whether it be symphony, or amateur orchestra, some Nashville players, and some serious students.”
Among the repairs Black does for those artists includes gluing up seams on a violin, making new parts for it, touching up on varnish, and just about anything one could do to a bowed instrument.
Black, as quiet and unassuming as his craft, admits he has hardly changed a thing about the store — save for an additional cabinet or bench here or there — since he bought it three decades ago.
He also admits that the building has acquired a certain rustic charm via that benign neglect. He confesses further that he often spends great portions of his days twiddling his thumbs as he looks out his window at the modern skyline.
Dahl Violin Shop is a survivor in the age of the internet, but it’s not thriving as some of its more high-tech competitors are.
“Some places are high-end repair, and cater to people with money,” Black said. “It hasn’t helped with the advent of mail order and internet communication. We pretty much depend on word-of-mouth here”
The city he gazes upon during the slow moments of his workdays used to be home to big music stores who have since fled for greener, suburban pastures.
“Downtown has seen a lot of changes over the years with all these personal studios and such,” he said. “We have all these tall buildings, heck there going to build another 50-story building right out this window, I’m going to be completely sucked up.”
Black says making money isn’t the most fulfilling part of owning the store anyway.
“It’s most satisfying to see the look in their eyes when they bring in their great grandfather’s violin and it hasn’t been played in 50 years,” he said. “Or a violin from the 1700s that keeps getting passed down from generation to generation.”
Outside his shop, the world speeds by in a frenzy to acquire more property, big and small, but inside, life has a more lyrical quality for a man doing what he loves.
- JAMES SCHLEMMER
