A recent theft has struck a wrong chord with the owners of Case’s Music in the Soo.
Jake Rendell is hoping to recover a special lap steel guitar that was removed from a case and stolen from his store this past Saturday.
The instrument is part of a 300-piece collection that was given to the Queen Street Music School on consignment by the family’s owner Jerry Legacy, a locally recognized collector and musician who passed away last year.
As SooToday recently reported, many of the restored instruments — from guitars and violins to accordions and eclectic folk pieces — have landed in the hands of aspiring students and are making music once again.
The weekend incident was captured on video and Sault Police are involved, said Rendell.
“He was in the store for quite a while actually,” he told SooToday. “He was playing some other guitars, and there were some other people in the store. It wasn’t an abnormal start to his visit. He chatted about a few things.”
“There was a moment where our employee was talking to another customer, and he just kind of ducked down and slipped it into his bag,” he added. "It's disappointing."
While the collection features a number of unique and rare instruments, the lap steel was among the most special as Jerry Legacy actually handcrafted and assembled the guitar himself.
Old photographs depicting the building process from November 1997 were included in Legacy’s documentation that came with the extraordinary collection.
“There’s not a ton of information on it, but it was a really cool piece of his collection that we’re trying to recover,” Rendell said. “It sounded great. There’s not too many lap steels out there, and definitely not ones that were made by someone local.”
“I’m assuming he made the body himself and used parts from other instruments to flush out the electronics and things like that,” he added. “Other than his initials on the headstock, there’s no other branding, so it’s definitely something he did from the ground up.”
Measured only at two feet long, the lap steel was not among the instruments on the wall at Case’s Music, but instead sat in a display case.
“It’s a smaller instrument you put on your lap and play with a slide,” Rendell explained. “Hopefully we recover it.”
While they hadn’t put a price on the guitar before it was stolen, Case’s owner said it’s likely valued around $500.
It had been treated as an instrument where people could come in the store and play it for fun, which resembles the nature of their “Play it Forward” program.
Running for the past two years, the program invites residents with limited means to try out Case’s instruments and “get that music back in their life,” said Rendell.
Locals can donate used instruments, no matter the condition, and Rendell will take the time to make repairs and donate them back to the community or scrap it for parts for the program.
“We’ve donated lots to the hospital’s mental health and addictions program, as well as a couple other organizations in need,” he said. “We’ve had people come in and mention they haven’t been able to afford a guitar in a while, so they come in and just play our instruments. If we have something that fits their needs, we just give it to them.”
Since SooToday last caught up with Rendell and his team, another 25 Legacy instruments have found new owners, bringing the total number of pieces re-homed to nearly 100, or one-third of the entire Legacy collection.
“We’ve had collectors come down from North Bay, and we’ve had lots of phone calls from folks in Toronto and Sudbury and all over Ontario looking for specific things,” he said. “Even if it’s just parts and things like that.”
Aside from the incredible nature of the instruments themselves, Rendell said a massive highlight in recent weeks has been the number of locals who have popped into the store to share the relationship they had with Legacy.
“And it’s not just folks from the older crowd who were his age, but some of our previous students who are in their early 20s,” he said. “They’d say they used to go to Jerry’s house and play, or their parents knew Jerry, or he did repairs on their instruments back in the day.”
“We’ve gotten to know Jerry even more through this process,” Rendell added. “It’s really brought a lot more of the community back in the story that we haven’t seen in a while.”
While he’s disappointed that Saturday’s incident has highlighted some unwanted negativity, Rendell remains hopeful that better days lie ahead for Legacy’s treasured lap steel.
“I don’t care to go aggressively after justice from this person,” he said. “We’re more interested in just recovering the item and spreading the love. Obviously, this person needed an instrument for some reason, so if he brings that one back, I’d happily set him up with a different one. That’s more important to me than anything else.”
