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The News & Advance Lynchburg Va. Sunday March 4, 1990
Eclectic, electric store sells gas, food, guitars by Cathy Gedvilas staff writer Staff photo by John McCormick Standing beside Wally Roach is a lifesize female mannequin: Short blond hair. tight leopard skin dress, mink stole draped over her arm. "When local customers come in they know this is not your regular convenience store" says Roach who owns and operates Wally's Corner Store in Rustburg . Along with groceries he sell a number of brightly colored electric guitars. "I got into the grocery store about four years ago," he says. Once the store was built and running Roach who is 36 but looks 22, decided to try his hand at selling guitars like the ones he began collecting years ago. "I had this insatiable thing for guitars you couldn't get in town. One thing lead to another ... before I knew it I was selling them. That was many guitars ago." "The grocery really helps me stay in the guitar business ... makes me feel like I cam maintain. I put a lot of hours in here. The only other help I have is my mother," Ruth Roach -- a slender, natty woman with gray hair -- is ringing out a gasoline customer. She likes working for her son in the town the family moved to when Wally was little. "This store is different" Ruth says."Some people think it's unusual. We have a good time." Wally Roach collects new And vintage guitars ranging in price for a few hundred dollars to a couple of thousand dollars He's the nearest dealer for BC Rich, Rickenbacker, Mosrite and Metaltronix - custom made guitars painted in snakeskin, graffiti, metallic tones the kind used by professional musician as well as beginners who can afford them. Dressed this day is a sleeveless black T-shirt, jeans and high-top tennis shoes. Roach is perched on a stool at the front counter. A piranha swims nearby in a tank (the fish really does have a personality.) Roach's big hair is cropped well below the shoulders, fluffed high above the forehead. The image is somewhere between MTV and backstage at a thrash concert where road crew and young women mingle with the band and all are dressed in tight black clothing, all throwing back manes of untamed hair. Three of four members of XXX, a Lynchburg-based band, are in the back of the store looking at amplifiers. They are all friends and Roach says. They use his guitars, and they stop in when working in town. Roach says he attends performances of thrash-sound XXX and other bands local or otherwise, who play in the area. The grocery part of his spacious store contains neatly arranged rows of edibles and household dry goods. The floor is polished, windows are clean. An electronic pinball flickers in a corner. Roach lives behind the store, which is at the intersection of Virginia 670 and 677. "I don't have any competition with the guitars. I have a totally different approach to selling them than the local music stores The local stores, he says, dislike his unorthodox approach. He says he offers different lines than they do." Guitar players like coming in late and getting strings on a weekend night I've traded for cars, motorcycles .... everything except kids or pets," Roach says. He says he sells at least 200 guitars a year. Semie Moseley, owner of Mosrite Electric Guitars of North Carolina describes Roach as a vintage Mosrite collector who buys and trades instruments for his own collection as well as for his customers. Roach says reaction to buying at a country grocery is mixed. They'll say "You bought a guitar at a convenience store ?". I get all kinds. I never had that "I've got to make a fortune" idea in my mind. I haven't been comfortable since I've been here but money has never really been a problem. If I didn't think I could win the game I wouldn't play". We always put what we make back into the business" he says. He describes himself as "just a guy that works in a grocery store and sells guitars. I wouldn't feel comfortable getting called Mr Roach. reprinted with permission from The News & Daily Advance |
