‘A great legacy’: Music Land rocks on, despite guitar theft

BALTIMORE — Eleven years ago, Larry Noto took the reins of one of Harford County’s oldest music institutions. Since 2015 Noto has turned his father’s passion — Music Land on Gateway Drive in Bel Air — from a sole proprietorship to a corporation with a full-time staff of about a dozen, about 12 music teachers and additional part-timers. The store hosts open mic nights once a month, offers music lessons, has a repair shop, sells a wide variety of musical instruments and equipment, and has a consignment program that has brokered some interesting items, such as a $15,000 Martin guitar that was stolen from the shop in early February.

Noto said Music Land has operated on trust, with the goal of delivering a welcoming environment for everyone, and that the theft will not impact that.

“There are some practical changes to monitor the room a little better, put locks on hooks because I don’t want everything behind cages,” Noto said. “But this is the place you want people to try music and play music, and I don’t want to lose that. We want people to touch the instruments because that’s what you can’t get buying on the internet.”

Larry’s father, Joe, was the founder of Music Land — the store’s legacy dates back to the mid-1960s when, at the age of 26, Joe Noto opened a music shop in Baltimore’s Govans neighborhood, 10 years after he moved to America from his home in Sicily.

In the evenings, Joe Noto made appearances at local restaurants, clubs and other venues, playing the piano or accordion alongside his jazz band with a tobacco pipe hanging from his mouth. Noto became well-known in the state’s music scene.

“Everywhere we would go, someone would know my father,” Larry Noto said. “People come in the store to this day with stories of him and receipts signed by him.”

Joe Noto’s shop operated in Baltimore until 1971 when he moved it to a small house on Bond Street in Bel Air, where he officially named the store Music Land. Less than a decade later, Music Land moved to Harford County and then Joe Noto bought a lot of land in Bel Air and built the store’s current location in 1989.

He ran the store with no digitized inventory, website or digital payroll system. His customers would come in and were offered recommendations based on what Joe Noto knew that specific customer liked in terms of music equipment.

“If you were a Music Land customer, you knew your instrument came from Music Land because it would smell like Captain Black [tobacco],” Larry Noto said. “He was known for his pipe and people loved it.”

Joe Noto was diagnosed with stage 4 throat cancer that later spread to his tongue, and died in 2015.

At the time, Larry Noto had been serving as the director of marketing for the National Aquarium in Baltimore. After meeting with his father to convert the business, Larry Noto went home where he watched his life’s work take a turn as riots broke out in Baltimore City following Freddie Gray’s death from injuries suffered while in police custody.

“My work was telling people Baltimore is safe and a great place to visit, and now there are images of the city burning on the worldwide news,” Noto said. “I think I knew that night what I was supposed to do.”

Some of Larry Noto’s best memories with his father came from the family’s annual trip to Disney World. Noto would joke that the annual Disney trip was the only thing that got his father to leave Music Land since he wouldn’t leave work even to go to lunch.

Due to his family’s love for Disney World, Noto said he was inspired to name the business’s corporation Joe Noto’s Music Land — a sort of homage to Walt Disney World’s naming in honor of Walt Disney, who died before the park was built.

“It was very important for me when I took over to send a message to the community that we were going to move forward,” Noto said. “Everything Disney does is forward moving, but they remember their history.”

Noto’s father died about a week after converting the shop to a corporation at the age of 72, and Noto took over the business while continuing his role at the National Aquarium for a few months before transitioning full time to running Music Land.

Despite his father’s passion for music, Noto did not grow up as musically inclined as his father and had really no idea about the intricacies of instruments. He leaned on the connections his father had in the instrument manufacturing community and expanded the store’s staff to maintain the level of customer service his father delivered.

Noto’s evolution of the store also included the implementation of technology for everything from payroll to a website that allows staff to process orders from around the world. Outside of business operations, Noto expanded the store to 8,000 square feet by converting storage space that was formerly home to two other businesses, into a live music area.

“When I was talking to my team, I said we need to build a destination here because a guitar is a guitar and you can buy the same one online but people want that old-school music store where you can come and talk music, play music and celebrate music,” Noto said.

Looking back on the store’s 55-year history, Noto said Music Land has been through a lot since he took over 11 years ago, but he is honored to continue his father’s legacy.

“It hits me every now and again that is really an awesome responsibility, not just because it’s an opportunity to carry on my father’s legacy, but I know what this store has meant to a lot of people,” Noto said. “Fifty-five years is a great legacy.”