TAMPA, FL — After losing nearly everything in the powerful hurricanes that battered Florida's west coast two years ago, a St. Pete Beach couple rebuilt their life around their shared love of music. Now, they're celebrating the grand opening of their new guitar shop, Legends Guitars, in Tampa on Saturday.
Julie and Matt Fisher knew the financial risk when they left their corporate careers to buy the now-closed St. Pete Guitars, a small 700-square-foot music shop on the beach, in late 2023.
That major life change was stressful enough on its own, without losing just about everything they had months later.
In quick succession, the couple had sold their large Safety Harbor house, bought a home on the beach, and purchased the existing guitar shop. Then, in the fall of 2024, Hurricanes Helene and Milton hit.
"Helene flooded us, and then Milton came right behind and ripped the roof off," Matt told Patch.
His wife added, "We lost everything."
The guitar shop fared well enough during the storms, but business dwindled in the area.
"The beach was dead. Nobody was going down there," Julie said.
The experience also forced the couple to prioritize their basic needs over running the store.
"Do we have a toilet? Do we have a bed? Do we have underwear?" she said. "Those were the priorities."
But slowly, they rebuilt both their home and their business. Though they made the difficult decision to close St. Pete Guitars this year, they've been focused on creating their new shop from the ground up.
The community will gather for the opening of Legends Guitars, at 3133 W. Kennedy Blvd., on Saturday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
For the Fishers, the new shop is more than simply another business venture; it's a second chance to live out their dreams.
Julie, a Detroit native, and Matt, who grew up in Kentucky, met in Louisville when they were 18.
They first bonded as part of the local punk scene and have shared a love of music ever since.
An avid player, Matt has also been obsessed with guitars since he was 11.
"He is a guitar savant," Julie said, adding, "I play a lot of things badly. He plays everything well."
He's long collected, bought, and traded guitars, pedals, and other musical gear, and the couple has talked about opening a store for years.
They even considered doing it while living in California years earlier, but with young children and busy careers, the timing never seemed right.
Julie built a career in marketing for a large wine and spirits company, while Matt worked in education. Their careers took them around the country before they eventually settled in the Tampa Bay area.
They finally decided to take the leap and bought St. Pete Guitars.
"We had always wanted to do this," Matt said. "It was just the one thing that we always came back to."
The timing proved to be brutal, though, as Hurricanes Helene and Milton hit the barrier island with a one-two punch during the 2024 hurricane season.
The store itself survived, but the surrounding beach community was devastated, and business was dead.
Meanwhile, they held onto their corporate jobs, slowly burning out as they juggled hurricane recovery and St. Pete Guitars.
Tired of traveling for work, especially the time away from home and family, they left their corporate roles to focus on rebuilding their guitar shop off the beach.
At first, the couple wanted to move the store off the barrier island into St. Petersburg, but another opportunity unexpectedly appeared.
Replay Guitar Exchange, an independent Tampa guitar store that had become a fixture in the local music community, announced its closure.
The Fishers had known the people behind Replay for years. When they went to visit and talk to Kent Sonenberg, the store's general manager, they learned the buyers lined up to purchase the shop had fallen through.
It was an easy decision for the couple to work with Sonenberg to step in to buy the store.
"We walked out of there, there wasn't a doubt in our mind," Julie said. "This is what we're going to do. We've been working since January to make this happen."
During that time, they scoured the Tampa area for a new location for the store, which had lost its lease in Britton Plaza, eventually landing in the space they now call home on W. Kennedy Boulevard.
And rather than reopening as either St. Pete Guitars or Replay, they brought back a name with its own Tampa history: Legends Guitars.
Sonenberg, who is also a part owner of the new business, originally opened Legends on Hillsborough Avenue in 1999. He operated the store until 2013, before joining Replay.
When the Fishers and Sonenberg decided to combine their businesses, he suggested bringing back the Legends name.
"He was kind enough to suggest and gift us the name Legends Guitars," Julie said.
Now, more than a decade after the original store closed, Legends has another chapter.
"People are excited," she said. "Everyone knows it."
The Fishers spent months preparing the roughly 3,000-square-foot space, more than four times the size of their former St. Pete Guitars shop.
The new shop is designed around an idea they call "radical inclusion," Julie said.
Instead of a dark store where expensive instruments sit locked in glass cases or behind counters, the Fishers want customers to pick up guitars, plug in pedals and amps, and actually play.
"It's a player shop," Matt said. "You're supposed to be able to come in here and get help from anybody in this store, and sit down and try things out."
That philosophy extends to the shop's atmosphere.
The store includes a bright open space, themed lesson rooms, local artwork, a colorful array of vintage and high-end guitars, and other touches meant to make the experience feel more like a gathering place than a traditional music retailer.
There are guitars ranging from approachable instruments for beginners to collector-level pieces worth tens of thousands of dollars.
But the Fishers don't want customers to feel intimidated by the expensive gear.
"The vibe of this shop is you should be able to walk in and pick up and play anything," Matt said.
The store is intentionally designed to welcome people who might not traditionally see themselves represented in guitar shops, including women and newcomers to the instrument, Julie added.
"Music is a universal language," she said. "Everybody that loves music walks into the shop. They speak the same language."
The store also plans to work with local musicians and music organizations, including efforts to support women in music and young musicians.
For Julie, opening Legends has also been an opportunity to finally build something of her own.
She spent years working in marketing and helping build brands for other companies. And while St. Pete Guitars taught her plenty about running a music store, including what she wanted to do differently this second time around, she wasn't able to design the shop from scratch.
"We learned a lot of what to do," she said. "We learned a lot of what not to do. We learned a lot about what was missing."
This time, she and her husband took those lessons from running St. Pete Guitars and built Legends from the ground up.
The result is a business born from a particularly difficult period in their lives and their perseverance as they moved forward.
They still love St. Pete Beach and the community there, and were torn about leaving the beachside town.
While the decision to open the new shop in Tampa was difficult, the move made sense, the couple said.
"Tampa's a guitar town," Matt said. "There's a lot of musicians in Tampa, and Tampa doesn't have an independent shop. This was the right place for us to be."
The response so far has reinforced their decision.
Even before the grand opening, people have been stopping by to see the new store. Strangers have recognized them around the city, and even recently, while in a crosswalk near the shop, a driver called out to them, "Hey! You're Legends Guitars!"
"The response from the community has been overwhelmingly positive," Matt said.
Julie sees this as evidence that the store is already welcomed into the music community.
"This is definitely not a push; it is a pull," she said.
Legends Guitars' grand opening on Saturday will include live music, vendors, giveaways and opportunities for customers to explore the new store.
Music-industry representatives from brands including Martin, Taylor and Fender are expected to be on hand, and the store is planning several giveaways donated or sponsored by vendors and community partners.
Among the prizes are guitars and acoustic-guitar accessories, as well as concert tickets for upcoming shows, including Rise Against, 38 Special and Robin Trower.
Sonenberg will also be at the grand opening, bringing the story of the original Legends full circle.
For the Fishers, the event marks the culmination of months of work and a new beginning.
"It's just really incredible to have everything all happen kind of at once," Julie said. "Me leaving my job, us deciding what we were going to do with a guitar store, this market being open, which never happens."
She added, "And we're doing everything a little bit differently than most people do."
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