The teachers at Zounds Sounds make such dynamic mentors and instructors for the students because they have been around the music industry themselves.
Dallas native Marc Solomon founded Zounds Sounds after his music career brought him back to his home city. A Booker T. Washington HSPVA alum, he moved to Austin after graduation to play in a band called The Clowns. That took him to Los Angeles, where he played various gigs including one for Diddy’s (formerly known as Puff Daddy) rock remix of “All About The Benjamins.”
From there, Solomon's career took him to New York City. He finally made his way back to Dallas with a job at a music store.
“So, then, I was like, OK, I’m going back to Dallas until it lets me leave,” he says.
Between teaching at the store and gigging with his band Clumsy, Solomon would ride his bike through the summers giving guitar lessons around the Park Cities and Lakewood neighborhoods.
“By the end of the summer, I had a killer little thriving business,” he says. “I got a great group of moms that were just totally into what I was doing. By the end of the first semester that following year, I had to go get brick and mortar and find another teacher.”
Solomon eventually found a small building on Haskell Avenue, which became the first location for Zounds Sounds. Along the way, he met Amy Curnow, who is now his wife.
Born into a musical family, Curnow began singing at a young age and hasn’t stopped. (Her dad is a composer for symphonic wind bands, whom Solomon describes as “Mick Jagger for band geeks.”) She got her masters in vocal performance, which led her to Little Rock, Arkansas.
“I did all I could do there musically and found my way to Dallas,” Curnow says. “I started waiting tables in Deep Ellum. I started meeting musicians.”
She began to perform with Shanghai 5, a jazz-infused band, and then started teaching at Zounds Sounds. She is now a co-owner with Solomon, and the two teach an assortment of bands at the music school. The husband-wife duo have an 8-year-old daughter, who, they say, has already caught the music bug. And who can blame her, growing up amid these countless jams and bands?
Since the school’s early days on Haskell Avenue, the operation has changed. But through it all, the owners have adjusted, all while maintaining their ethos.
“We are definitely all about the lessons,” Solomon says. “Learning the instrument is the main thing, not necessarily being in a rock band … Learn your instrument. Learn it well. We are into the academia of music, if you will. We are all geeky about it, but we’re also a bunch of rock ‘n’ rollers.”
During the pandemic, the duo taught out of their garage.
“This one day after school, there was just a ton of kids coming out of our front yard,” Solomon says. “One coming out of a lesson, one going into a lesson, one who just knew people would be there so they came by. … I was looking at our front yard and I was like ‘Aw, Shit. I’ve seen this movie. We need a [new] space. We need it quick.'”
From Haskell Avenue to Garland Road to Solomon and Curnow’s garage to their current location on Shoreview Road — wherever the Zounds Sounds landed, the greatest gift it has given its students is a space for them to jam with other kids. Beth Cunningham, whose daughter is now 16 years old, started taking her to lessons at Zounds Sounds when she was only 3.
“The first time I really understood how unique Marc was as a teacher for these kids was probably that first year,” Cunningham says. “They did a whole summer camp. At the end they did a performance. My daughter was up on stage. She was just kind of hitting it every so often.”
Cunningham was upset at her daughter’s small role at first, and she called Solomon."We are into the academia of music, if you will. We are all geeky about it, but we’re also a bunch of rock ‘n’ rollers.” – Zounds Sounds owner Marc Solomon
tweet this
“He just walked me through how it was really not about the performance,” Cunningham says. “It was about her experience and just growing her love of music and her feelings of safety and to be on stage to be working with other people on stage.”
From that moment forward, the Zounds Sounds philosophy clicked for Cunningham. She wasn’t going to be a mom bent on her child’s performance drive and stardom, and she was ready to go the long haul with Zounds Sounds. Thirteen years later, Cunningham’s daughter is at Booker T. Washington HSPVA and still studies at Zounds Sounds.
“Now he is just coaching them on how to be a band, how to write songs, how to gig, where to gig so that when they ‘graduate,’ so to speak, and move on into the world they feel ready,” she says.
Leah Lane, a Zounds Sounds alumna and a force in the music scene as lead of several projects — principally, Rosegarden Funeral Party — has also stuck around. She started taking lessons at the age of 9 years and returned this year to work on marketing and administration for the music school.
“It’s awesome because [when] we were kids we were being taught by these guys who were really doing it,” Lane says. “The group of kids I grew up playing music with, they are all still playing music … It's so cool that none of us ever stopped. When I was growing up, [Zounds Sounds] was in an old bank building, an old tiny bank building on Haskell. There were guitars and amplifiers and drums everywhere … You are surrounded by musical instruments. You are also surrounded by a lot of encouragement and acceptance.”
Solomon, Curnow and all of Zounds Sounds will capture the greatness of these past 18 years with a SXSW-type alumni gig.
The 18th anniversary show and party will take place from 5 to 11 p.m., on Nov. 21, at the Granada Theater. Zounds Sounds students and teachers past and present will perform.
