Paul's Guitar Hideout comes out of a lifetime connection to music. Not as a business idea. Just something that was always there.

Music was playing from early on. Peter Gabriel's So on car rides. Ozzy. Judas Priest. Something that made me feel understood, not just something playing in the background.

I met Travis in 1999 when I was 12, through his brother. We'd get together, play guitar, make up songs, hang out. It never really stopped.

By high school, that turned into bands. Playing around the Capital Region, opening for bands we'd grown up listening to — Breaking Benjamin, Hawthorne Heights, Bayside, The Presidents of the United States of America. That was beyond anything we'd imagined — the kind of thing that makes you realize music can actually be your life, not just something you do on weekends. The band was called Horse in a Box (neither of us named it). It made us laugh more than anything.

After high school, we got more serious about it. We formed The Loyalty — melodic sensibilities, pop music first, beautifully catchy and emotionally true. We were blindly deliberate about songwriting. We won a listener contest on WEQX and played with The Strokes in Albany on the First Impressions of Earth tour. Major record deals were on the table. Then they weren't. Like a million brilliant artists you've never heard of, life had other plans. That's where the production side of it started.

From there: years of writing and releasing records under Pillowhead, playing shows across the region, and eventually mastering work through New York Mastering Co. Pillowhead is where I found my best work — not despite everything that came before, but because of it.

The shop is a continuation of all of that. Not a pivot — just where it went.

It's inside The Shirt Factory in Glens Falls — a converted 19th century textile mill that's become a hub for artists and makers doing things a little differently. That felt like the right place for it.

Travis is still here. We spent years chasing music — same stages coming up, different paths after. It all came back around to this region, this building, this shop. It feels like the right ending to the story — or the right beginning of the next part.

Still writing and recording. At home I live with my best pal Riley, a rescue — an American Staffordshire Terrier from Lucky Puppy in Argyle, NY.

Paul's Guitar Hideout is located at The Shirt Factory in Glens Falls, NY. Use the Cooper Street entrance and take the stairs up. If you need assistance, give us a call and we'll come down.

The Shirt Factory
71 Lawrence St., Suite 201B, 2nd Floor
Glens Falls, NY 12801
Wednesday–Sunday, 12–5pm
(518) 217-8695 · info@paulsguitarhideout.com