“Virginia at the pharmacy across the street called me and said ‘I hate to ruin your day off, but your building is on fire,'” recalled Dennis Balesdent.
By the time he got to his Foord Street record store in Stellarton, the fire department had put out the blaze in the apartment upstairs.
He managed to sneak one look at the wreckage that had minutes earlier been the culmination of a life’s passion for music and the technology that allows us to share it, before being chased out of the charred building.
He had no insurance.
His knees held out until he got to the parking lot.
That was March 16. On Friday, Balesdent was waiting for two crates of something sacred. A blues section for a reborn Ohm-N Audio. We’re talking Lead Belly, Mississippi John Hurt, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Sonny Terry kind of sacred.
The hundred records will round out the new Ohm-N Audio at its new home on Provost Street in New Glasgow.
As retail reels under the body blows of online ordering and a pandemic, it’s good to listen to a man who lost his business to fire, was hit by a pandemic lockdown and turned 50 within a week in March.
“I stopped counting my losses at $20,000,” said Balesdent. “I’d never thought I’d have that much, let alone have it to lose, so I figured I’d better stop counting there.”
Blessings are better tabulated than sorrows.
Customs clerk, iron worker, fire restoration worker, Balesdent had decades of doing what it took to get by before turning a side hustle fulltime in 2017.
It had started with two blown speakers belonging to his grandmother. Someone cranked up the volume and blew the cheaply made speakers three decades ago.
Balesdent, then 18, was all set to carry them to the curb when his uncle weighed in with a book on sound system repair.
Speakers led to amps and turntables and an affinity for a technology he sees as having reached its peak in the late 60s and early 70s.
“The analogue signal is more pure,” said Balesdent, contrasting it with the digitized equipment of today.
To give technology its due, it's also what connects him to a worldwide network of aficionados.
Amongst the equipment for sale is an Onkyo T5-5000 whose woes stumped three technicians in California before he bought it to his secret weapon – an old pro in Stellarton.
Last year he shipped a 40-year old Yamaha amp to Kazakhstan.
His own pride and joy, a 50’s era turntable that he rescued from an American air base and rebuilt, sits on a black walnut plinth made by a friend in Parrsboro and bears a custom arm made by a Latvian airplane technician.
He named it the The Kubric, “because of all the shining parts on it.”
Business has been picking up since he moved to downtown New Glasgow. He sees the effect on foot traffic of each bit of bad news courtesy of the pandemic, but he also sees a future for Ohm-N Audio.
“I’ve done a lot of things and I always found I did better when it was salary or contract positions, when it was about getting the job done not the hours that went into it,” said Balesdent.
“This is mine and it does feel more enriching.”
