Mountain Music Shoppe Seized by State
For more than a dozen years, Jim Curley’s Mountain Music Shoppe was an acoustic oasis in Johnson County; not just a place where people bought instruments but got together in picking sessions and attended intimate concerts by renowned folk musicians, from Stacey Earle and Mark Stuart to Tommy Ramone. The store was the center of a wide, local musical community.
The shoppe is no more.
This past Wednesday, Kansas IRS officials seized everything inside the store. Curley owed back taxes. He was working to pay them. “I was on a payment plan, I thought I was doing good, things were going great with the business,” he told me over the phone this morning from inside his empty store. But that wasn’t enough for the Man.
Curley says that lots of small businesses like his that were paying off back taxes are now being seized. “In this economy, small businesses are going to be dropping right and left,” says Curley.
Once the dust settles, Curley hopes to merge his experience with another store in the area, managing or even creating a folk department wherever he lands. “I’m gonna go where I need to go — I gotta make a living — but I’m hoping to remain in Kansas City,” he says.
In the meantime, Curley is faced with sorting out the mess caused by the state seizing other people’s items that were on consignment, items that were on layaway, tickets that had been purchased for upcoming shows that are now canceled, and so forth.
Curley wants anyone with unfinished business to feel free to call his cell phone at 913-645-5067. He says his phone is his lifeline right now. “I’m here,” he says. “I’m not trying to run from anybody.”
“I got issues, and I want people to know that I’m honest.”
