By Olivia Lehman

On June 1 of this year at 11 a.m., bass player Danny Gold opened his small music business, Danny’s Guitar Shop. Located in the center of Narberth, at 102 Forrest Ave., and fronted by a fire-engine red sign with vintage lettering, Danny’s has quickly established itself as that rare kind of clubhouse — the kind where everybody’s allowed in.

Though an inevitable “cool” makes an appearance here at Danny’s (is it all those black amps?) cool doesn’t reign. For Danny Gold, more borscht-belt than bravado, music seems to be an art form both miraculous and ordinary, as familiar as the train whistle outside his door. That’s why folks like to hang out here, and why Gold will probably never be alone again.

Skateboards and Trek bicycles made their way to Danny’s right from the start. “The entire populations of St. Margaret’s and Merion School were here,” says Gold, remembering two legendary friends who showed up around July 4. “We called these two the pair of Jacks. They came by with their friends on bikes and then it was just the two of them. Siblings and friends had been weeded away. They were absolutely mesmerized by the guitars — they would take them off the walls and mess with them though neither play — just question after question: what does an amp do? How do you tune? Acoustic vs. electric. And they wanted to get picks even though neither of them owned a guitar. Their mouths were just open in wonder. Sure enough, two weeks after they first showed up, after they’d done ‘due diligence,’ moms showed up. First one, then another one. Now they both take lessons.”

The two Jacks and their moms are just the kinds of customers Gold hoped would walk into his store. “What I wanted was a family-oriented place,” he says. “I wanted to become part of the fabric of the community as well as be a hub of guitar activity. And Narberth is tailor-made for this.”

Gold peddles mostly new Fender guitars because they’re the guitars he knows best. He spent 10 years as a mid-Atlantic district sales manager for Fender before opening his own place. With the closings of Medley Music Mart in Bryn Mawr and 8th Street Music’s Philadelphia store, the time seemed right to open a music shop and fill the gap in this region. Rob Martyn, the owner of D-Town Guitars in Doylestown, encouraged Danny to open this business, which still seems to its bearded proprietor “a little bit like a fantasy.”

Danny Gold has studied music since he was a fourth-grader playing bass violin; today he plays electric bass in a band called Beats Walkin’. His sister is Julie Gold, composer of the Grammy-winning anthem “From a Distance,” made famous in recordings by Nanci Griffith and Bette Midler — a photograph of Julie holding her Grammy can be seen at the back of the store.

Pumped up by the excitement of the British Invasion, the folk boom and the music of Elvis Presley, young Danny was as smitten by musical gear as the two Jacks. “As a teenager starting at age 12 or so, me and my two friends would grab a bus, and the El, then hit King of Pizza over on 15th and Market,” remembers Gold, who grew up in Havertown. “...Then we’d one by one go to the music shops starting at Music City on 18th and Chestnut, then Wurlitzer where there’d be these cage elevators — you’d arrive at the second floor and there’d be a bunch of Vox amps just like what the Beatles used. Then we’d head to Sam Goody, where there were cheap guitars and salesmen with major attitudes. ‘I’m comin’ in next week with my mother,’ I’d say. He’d say, ‘Yeah, that’s what you said last week.’ And then we’d end up at 8th Street Music when it was actually on 8th Street.”

Jump ahead 40 years and you have Danny behind a counter of his own. Surely the yearning is the same as when Gold hopped the El, though demographics have changed. Of the 60 or so weekly guitar students who study at Danny’s Guitar Shop, about half of them are girls. There’s even a powerhouse of a female bass teacher on staff, Ryan Madora, who just graduated from NYU with a music degree. Non-kids show up for lessons too, and aren’t laughed at — one neat relationship at Danny’s involves 14-year-old ukulele teacher Will Brown and his student, Susan Gingerich, a social worker more than three times his age. “I love to sing,” says Gingerich, “and I wanted an instrument I could sing along with — I had tried guitar eight years ago and was discouraged. But a friend recently suggested the ukulele, and I walked by the store and saw the ukeleles and came in and asked about teachers.” Susan now plays a tenor Fender ukulele and sings with young Will during her lessons.

Walk into Danny’s and you’ll see lots of gear packed into small, fresh-faced quarters. Everything gleams save the vintage instruments, which merely glow. There are Fender guitars, Gretsches and Jacksons too, banjos, ukeleles, mandolins, harmonicas, stands, strings, amps, picks, slides, straps, cases, even tchotchkes like retro lunchboxes, coffee mugs and bracelets fashioned from guitar strings.

For more information call 610-668-3345.