The White Plains branch of the Sam Ash, the much-loved chain of music stores that closed in 2024 after 100 years in business, has risen phoenix-like from the, er, ashes.
Brian Reardon – longtime proprietor of Monster Music in Levittown, Long Island, and a well-known music personality in that region – has recently taken over the much-missed White Plains store and is set to make a splash at Smash (— his new name for the former Sam Ash.
When Sam Ash nationwide abruptly shuttered, it affected different communities in different ways, Reardon told Westfair’s Westchester County Business Journal. In White Plains, he said, “it blew a crater into the local market,” a gap that he saw a way to fill.
He already knew the area: His good friend, the jazz guitarist Gil Parris, had been running a Wednesday night jam at Ron Black’s in downtown White Plains for 20 years, and Reardon regularly came along to hear him play. He’d seen the old Sam Ash store standing empty and on successive visits was surprised to see it was still vacant. Knowing his brother Keith had a music project in the pipeline – and watch this space as details about that unfold – suddenly everything dovetailed.
“We believed this could be super successful while also making a great and necessary contribution to the local music community,” was how Reardon put it.
Having done music education advocacy in Washington, D.C., for many years, Reardon said he certainly knows the importance of kids having music in their lives. And, he added, that with the population in Southern Westchester so dense, without a full-line music shop there was no doubt that kids would be denied “a version of that opportunity.”
Asked to expound on his confidence in White Plains, Reardon said he thinks the city offers the best of “urban and suburban overlapping and intertwining.” He went on: “there also seems to be a wonderful spirit of cooperation and civic pride that exists between the local government, the private sector and independent groups like the White Plain BID (Business Improvement District), who are wholly committed to improving the community for all.”
As an “old-fashioned, full-line” music store, Smash, whose grand opening is slated for Saturday, Sept. 6, will have an “incredible” lesson program, Reardon said. It will also rent, service and sell all instruments.
“One of the benefits of working in the industry as long as I have is that I have relationships with all of the major brands, so I can source anything competitively,” he told us. He said he also has a strategic partnership with Sweetwater.com in the school band instrument space, which allows him access to an exceptional selection of educator-approved school band rentals – “by the month for maximum flexibility and at rates that are truly sensitive to family budgets.”
And if any more encouragement is needed to get would-be musicians started, they could do worse than draw on Reardon’s Levittown motto: “Stop Dreaming, Start Playing.”
“We believe that music brings together the community in ways that nothing else can,” Reardon went on. “I’m always awestruck by the beautiful diversity that exists and that music has a way of uniting like nothing else. It is in all of our DNA.”
Speaking, or perhaps singing to that belief, Smash will offer free open mic nights.
“While I love many of the local bars and restaurants, we also like to offer an alternative where one can experience live music in a different setting,” Reardon said.
Asked about challenges the new outlet faced, or any vision for the future, Reardon said his was a “mom and pop” family business and, as such, had the challenges that all small businesses faced, not the least of which was Amazon. “But like I try to convey from the stage when we have an event at the store to subtly hammer home the distinction, ‘When was the last time you went to an open mic night on Amazon?’”
