Jensen Guitar & Music Co. opened their doors on De La Vina Street in 1973 selling guitars and other instruments. Today, Jensen’s is not only Santa Barbara’s go-to guitar store, but also a musician’s dream: Tucked in the same innocuous strip mall for over 40 years, Jensen’s has evolved to become a community center, of sorts, offering music lessons, instrument repair, live music, and every type of stringed instrument — all the while boasting an undeniable soulful vibe.

Founder Chris Jensen

To preserve that community for years to come, Founder Chris Jensen, who is officially retired, in 2013 launched the Jensen Music Foundation. Still in its infancy, the Foundation collaborates with the Santa Barbara Bowl Education Outreach Instrument Fund program to play a key role in coordinating instrument collection, repair and distribution for Santa Barbara County youth music programs.

Most recently the Foundation was awarded a grant to establish the first-of-its-kind folk guitar after school program in the Carpinteria Unified School District. With seed money from the Instrument Fund and an initial purchase of 20 guitars, starting fall 2016, the program will provide music lessons to elementary and high school students.

Greg Harrison

We sat down with Greg Harrison, executive director of the Jensen Music Foundation, to learn more about how the Foundation supports Santa Barbara’s youth through music, and how his relationship with the Santa Barbara Bowl Foundation and the Instrument Fund changes children’s lives.

“The Bowl is really cool; they do so much in this town for music education,” said Harrison. “Plus, they don't blow their own horn; they don't brag about it, they just do it. It’s really pretty cool.”

Bowl: Tell me more about the Jensen Music Foundation.

Greg: It was founded in 2013 by Chris Jensen, the owner of the shop, and Rod Hare. Rod and Chris had been friends for a very long time, in fact when Rod was a kid his mom used to drop him off at Jensen’s to hang and play guitar while she shopped at Alpha Beta [now Ralphs]. Rod struck up a friendship with Chris, taking lessons and what not, and they’ve been fast friends ever since. Fast forward to 2016, he's an adult now, cofounder of Notes for Notes, and he’s a Jensen Music Foundation board member and the treasurer. But really, this whole thing was his idea. He’s been pushing us to make it happen, so it's his baby, his presence has been integral.

Rod put in Chris’ ear that they had to find a way to keep Jensen’s music store — and all the stuff that happens there — going after he retired. Chris can’t do this forever, and it’s a brick and mortar spot, just like Folk Mote Music and Sojourner, which just recently closed. These were all unique businesses, and their closing leaves a gaping hole in the community.

So Chris started the Jensen Music Foundation, with some seed money from the Santa Barbara Bowl Foundation, to begin working toward preserving Jensen’s music shop in the form of a community, a non-profit that can sustain itself via some retail element and a community center.

That is the big picture vision. Basically shift what has been happening there for the past 40 years into a new place and make it bigger and better.

The vision is to include a professional wood shop, where anybody in the community can learn to care for or create an instrument from scratch, maybe a cafe, a place you can have coffee by day, and a jam room, a green room, if you will, for folks to come jam together by night. The best part is at night it will turn into a community performance venue, the recording studio, the wood shop, the cafe, the electric shop, the acoustic shop, and the lesson studios.

Bowl: What has the Foundation achieved so far?

Greg: We have a board and I am executive director, so I'm actually in charge of making this happen. We are focused on getting the after school music program running for the fall. A lot of kids don't go home after school because mom and dad are working, especially the younger ones. Some of the kids have to stay at school until five or five-thirty at night. So we saw this opportunity to find a few instructors and pay them to hold weekly guitar, or ukulele, or mandolin, or whatever classes as a part of the kids' after school activities.

Bowl: What requests have you cleared through the Instrument Fund; how has it made a difference?

Greg: For example, Sam Adams, a teacher at Cleveland Elementary, was our last delivery. We funded instruments for his classes, so it's working! He requested six guitars, the Bowl funded them, we ordered them through the shop, and we delivered them! Now Sam has the addition of six Lucida guitars for teaching guitar lessons.

We also reach out to music instructors and school principals with the message, ‘Hey the Bowl is a resource!’ I remind them all the time about the resource and to take advantage of it!

Bowl: What else?

Greg: Chris Jensen is really amazing. In our new Jensen Community Center we envision Chris picking and choosing what he wants to do: lead workshops or wood shops, because he is a master. You would not believe the things he is able to fix on instruments, guitars come in with holes in them, necks that are broken off, and he fixes them, and you can't even tell, it's unbelievable. It’s a skill that he would love to pass on so I can see him doing that, since he really loves just working on the instruments and teaching people how to do it.

Bowl: Final thoughts?

Greg: It’s exciting for me to be involved in something that will potentially leave a wonderful, permanent mark on Santa Barbara, and something that can be a benefit for this town for generations to come.

Checkout the first of our Q&A series where we met with Nick Rail, from Nick Rail Music.