As you walk past Jimi’s Music Store, the sounds of heavy guitar riffs and blues melodies greet you, beckoning the potential rock god living inside you. It’s been this way for over 25 years as the store has been a Notre-Dame-de-Grâce institution since 1987 when Jimi’s took over from another music store that was shutting its doors. “A friend and I said let’s go for it,” says owner Eric Cossette. “We had a lot of gear to fill the store and get the business off the ground.”
Eric’s son Jimi eventually came on board and now the two run the store together. Eric named the store after his son, and he named his son after a certain left-handed guitarist who is undeniably considered one of the all-time greats: Jimi Hendrix.
Eric previously worked at Godin, the Canadian guitar manufacturer, when he was younger. “I learned everything about guitars, playing them, building them and repairing them. I thought I would never use that information. But sure enough when I opened my own store I realized, ‘Hey, nobody knows how to fix their own guitars.’”
