THE STORY 

Eddie Frawley was born and raised in Whittier, California.  He says that, at that time, Whittier was a great place to grow up.  His story of ‘Central Coast Music’ actually begins in his childhood.  His dad owned a Pawn Shop in Santa Fe Springs.  Eddie grew up working in his dad’s store and learned every day from his dad about how to run a business and how to treat people.  He also started playing guitar as a kid and was really into all of the amazing music that was coming out during those amazing years of musical history.

 

After graduation, Eddie joined the Air Force.  After his siblings were grown and moved out, Eddie’s parents decided to leave Southern California and move to Cayucos.  In 1979, Eddie visited his parents here on the Central Coast.  Being a musician, he decided to check out the local music store, Payne’s Music, in Morro Bay.  He remembers walking down Morro Bay Boulevard and thinking to himself that he would love to have his own music store someday in that same building.  Amazingly, here, all these years later his dream was realized and he is now running the 2012 Business of the Year in this historical building.  

 

His business, however, did not start in his current location.  In 1990, Eddie was living on Main Street between Pacific and Morro Bay Boulevard.  This house had a store front connected to it, but was empty when Eddie moved into this house.  At the time, he was selling advertising for Charter Cable.  Keeping his day job, one day Eddie put a guitar out in the front room and “opened Central Coast Music” in the evenings.  Then there were two guitars, then three.  You get the idea!  And that is how Central Coast Music began.  

 

Eddie continued to do business at that location until 1994 and then moved around the corner to the old “bakery building” that is now home to Rio Salon.  He did business there and although he still had his Cable advertising job, he was transitioning from doing that less and less and running the store more and more.  In 1997, Eddie moved out of that building and up one block to a building a couple of doors down from the Bay Theater.  (He jokes that he was running from the IRS one block at a time.)  By this time, he finally let go of his “day job” and was running Central Coast Music as his full-time job.  

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In 2005, Eddie had the opportunity to move again, into the building he dreamt of running a music store in some 25 years before.  And that is where you can find him today asking each person who walks in the store how he can make their day better.  And Eddie does make their day better.  His goal is to have you leave his store with a smile on your face.  People come in to Eddie’s store from near and far and some come in, they say, just to get their “Eddie fix.”  He loves people and if you go into his store you will know that right away.  When he says, “Make yourself at home,” he’s not kidding!

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