Successful Peoria music store is celebrating 50 years in business, looking to the future

PEORIA – Jim and Edie Kidder had two young children when they started Kidder Music 50 years ago.

Jim’s employer, Byerly Music, had decided to sell the school music division of the business to focus on organ and piano sales, and Jim saw a good business opportunity.

“We talked about it for a long time. We had papers spread all over the floor and all over the living room, talking about how we would finance this and how much money would we need,” said Edie Kidder.

Though there was much discussion prior to the purchase, it wasn’t a difficult decision for Jim Kidder because he had been working for Byerly Music for nine years.

“If we hadn’t succeeded, it would have been because of a giant mistake,” he said. “I called on the same people that I have been calling on for the nine years with Byerly, and I knew the business. I would have really had to screw up not to be successful.”

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Edie Kidder, an English and Spanish teacher, had to make a few more adjustments.

“He assumed that I was going to be the bookkeeper, and I hadn’t even had high school bookkeeping," she said. “The old Byerly bookkeeper would teach me certain things by rote, and it didn’t make a bit of sense to me at first. ... Finally, it sort of began to come together.”

At 82, Edie Kidder is still doing the books at Kidder Music. Jim Kidder, 83, is retired, but still acts as a consultant for his daughter, Beth Houlihan, who has been running the business for a number of years. She began helping out at Kidder Music a very young age.

“We used to give music tests to the grade schools when they started band and I would bring them home and she would grade them for me," said Jim Kidder.

Houlihan loved the work.

“I was probably about 8 or 9 years old. I thought that was the coolest thing ever,” she said. “They were listening tests that helped to determine what instrument might suit you, if you were better at recognizing higher pitches vs. lower pitches or rhythms."

The business evolves and grows

Kidder Music was in the Byerly Music building in downtown Peoria until 1980 when it moved to a building on Crestline Drive in north Peoria. About 15 years later it moved up the road to its current location, 7728 N Crestline Drive.

Employing about 35 people, Kidder Music aims to be a one-stop shop for musical education. In addition to selling and renting instruments for school music programs, they also repair and recondition instruments. Three employees are on the road most days visiting schools within a 100-mile radius of Peoria to drop off supplies and pick up and return instruments in need of service.

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Kidder also employs about 16 music teachers who work with almost 300 students of all ages every week. They use classrooms and a recital hall in a building beside the main office, a recent addition to the Kidder Music portfolio.

“It was owned by Bard Optical. We leased half of it and remodeled half of it until we were able to buy the building and remodel the other half,” said Beth “We got it finished right before COVID."

The pandemic was difficult for Kidder Music. Closed for about six weeks, the business was further affected by the lack of music happening in the schools, when many rental instruments were returned to the shop.

“All our studio teachers had to learn how to teach music remotely using FaceTime and Zoom. It’s a lot harder because you teach them how to hold your instrument, and how to put your mouth on the mouthpiece,” said Floride Kidder. “When you don’t actually have the person there and the instrument there, it’s tough. But they soldiered on, and we did a bunch of remote lessons until people felt comfortable coming back in.”

The return to in-person classes required classroom alterations.

“You want some plexiglass? We got tons of it, air purifiers, all of that stuff,” said Jim Kidder. “It’s a testament to the fact that people want their kids involved in music, and they are willing to stretch to whatever lengths it takes to get them involved.”

United by the love of music

Fifty years is a long time to be in business, but some of Kidder Music’s employees have been there almost as long.

“We have been fortunate to have some wonderful long-term employees,” said Jim. “We’ve had five people who had been with us for 30 years. We have a couple of them that are have been here 20 or more years. And we’ve had employees that have left and come back. We call them boomerang employees.”

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The love of music unites everyone at Kidder Music.

“Everybody here plays an instrument or still participates in some type of musical activity,” said Houlihan, who sings in the Morton Civic Chorus.

Edie Kidder, who says that she learned how to read music before she could read and write, has played piano her entire life, and Jim Kidder plays the trumpet, an instrument he was introduced to at the age of 10. It inspired a lifelong love of music, a career, and ultimately, a successful business.

Leslie Renken can be reached at (309) 370-5087 or lrenken@pjstar.com. Follow her on Facebook.com/leslie.renken.

This article originally appeared on Journal Star: Kidder Music in Peoria celebrates 50 years in business