Troll Music

Troll Music has been part of Venice’s music community for more than 30 years, running a shop on East Venice Avenue that combines instrument retail, lessons, repair work, and rentals under one roof. Owners Billy and Crystal Day have built the business into something closer to a community hub for local musicians than a simple retail counter, and the shop doubles as a small live music venue, hosting performances that give area musicians, including students, a place to play in front of an audience.

The retail side of the shop carries both new and vintage gear, giving customers a wider range of instruments and equipment to choose from than a typical chain music store, which tends to stock only current production models. That vintage inventory also makes Troll Music a resource for musicians hunting for a specific older instrument or piece of gear that has been discontinued elsewhere.

Repair work is a core part of the business as well, with guitar and bass repair handled in-house rather than shipped out to a distant service center. For working musicians, having a local repair shop that can turn around a setup, fret job, or electronics repair without a long wait is a genuine convenience, especially compared to mailing an instrument off and waiting weeks for it to come back.

Troll Music also offers instrument lessons and equipment rentals, rounding out a business model built around supporting musicians at every stage, from a student renting a first instrument through a working player bringing in gear for repair or looking for a place to perform. That range of services, retail, lessons, recording, rentals, and repairs, is unusual to find combined in a single small shop, and it reflects three decades of the Day family adapting the business to what Venice’s music community actually needs rather than sticking to one narrow lane.

The shop keeps weekday and Saturday retail hours, closing on Sundays, though lesson scheduling can extend beyond normal store hours. Troll Music stays connected with customers and the local music scene through Facebook, Instagram, and a YouTube channel featuring performances and shop updates. For anyone in Venice looking for an instrument, a repair, a lesson, or simply a place to hear live original or cover music in a low-key setting, Troll Music remains one of the city’s most established independent music businesses.

Its East Venice Avenue address puts the shop within the same downtown footprint as Venice Art Center, several of the city’s galleries, and its custom framing shops, making it a natural stop for anyone spending an afternoon exploring the historic district on foot. Compared to the large chain music retailers found closer to the interstate corridors around Sarasota, a shop like Troll Music offers the kind of personal, long-term relationship between owners and customers that comes from three decades of the same family running a storefront in the same downtown neighborhood.