In 2016, Josh Gillis was at a crossroads.
He could either continue climbing the ladder at his job in a Kentucky paint store, or he could hit the reset button and move home to Columbus.
“I kind of hit the point in my life where I was like, I can either do the corporate thing — because I was nine years deep into it at that point — or I can kind of do whatever is next,” Gillis told The Dispatch Sunday. “Even though I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to do, I decided it was a good point in life to kind of go for it.”
So after moving to Kentucky for seminary and working at the paint store for nearly a decade, Gillis came back home and started trying his hand at a different career.
He bought and ran a coffee shop in the city for a couple of years, and while he loved the job, he didn’t think that was his life’s calling either. So he turned to what had been a constant vocation in his life up to that point: teaching guitar lessons.
“I was like, you know, the one thing that’s been constant this whole time has been guitar lessons,” he said. “I kind of went out on my own and said, ‘I think I can take a stab at doing this full time.’ So I started teaching out of my sunroom at my house. Then we had a little pool house … that I converted into our first little music studio.”
He began teaching full time in January 2022 to only four students. Two years later, he had 20 more students, had added another teacher and was slowly running out of room where he was teaching at the Golden Triangle Theatre.
“More or less the thing was, we’re renting a room, but (the theater) could use the space because they’re growing,” he said. “We could actually use a little more space because we’re growing.”
Gillis began looking for a new location for lessons. When he learned the old Music Alley recording studio near the intersection of College Street and Catfish Alley was available, he had found the perfect spot.
Gillis bought the vacant studio from its former owner in June, and over the last two months, he and his team — two other teachers and a recording engineer — have been preparing it to reopen in the fall as Catfish Alley Studio. He said the studio will offer a membership to learn various instruments like guitar, bass, piano and drums, but Gillis also wants it to be a place for the community to enjoy.
“I would love for this to be a place where the door is open, there’s nice weather outside, and we can just bring people in that want to come jam,” he said.
The goal, Gillis said, is to inspire through experience, whether that experience is having a jam session in the studio community room or playing an instrument in front of an audience for the first time.
“I think one thing that sets us apart from everyday guitar lessons or piano lessons or anyone else who does it, is that we’re big on experiences,” he said. “If we’re a business, we sell music lessons per se. But what are you really getting? As a student, you’re getting the experience. You’re getting the confidence, and you’re getting a skill, hopefully a lifelong skill.”
He hopes the studio will also breathe some life back into Catfish Alley. The once-bustling commercial and cultural hub for African Americans has a strong legacy in blues and jazz music that is memorialized by a Mississippi Blues Trail marker.
“We just want to be a place where we can kind of honor the past,” he said. “It’d be really cool to be … a normal everyday stop on a visit Columbus tour or something where you can pop in and learn about the history of the alley.”
Gillis wants the studio to be somewhere that students feel comfortable and inspired to try new things. After all, trying new things is how he ended up in a recording studio instead of a paint store.
“I always want to try new things, and that’s kind of what we want students here to do,” he said. “Try new things, whether that’s go to (Munson and Brothers Trading Post) and play, record a song here, play at Market Street Festival … just get involved in the community and be exposed to different stuff.”
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 39 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
