Keith “ Ketman” Shirasawa

So I’m in Chicago again on business. I’m also researching my latest potential musical equipment purchase. So I place a call to Gelb Music in Redwood City… THE place to go in the Bay Area for anything musical. Now, Gelb Music stands as the antithesis of stores like Guitar Center. Its not some big, noisy, chaotic warehouse staffed by and endless turnover sushi-boat of clueless burnouts and college kids. Quite the contrary, Gelb music is a small, independent shop employing largely the same group of people I’ve come to know over the last 15 years. Now, my discretionary income isn’t what it used to be, so my visits to Gelb have fallen off in the last few years… so it came as quite a shock to learn that Keith (they guy I usually asked for whenever I called Gelb) has passed away just this past August. Here’s the memorial page on Gelb’s site…

1. Keith was an amazing guitar player and an even more human being. I still can’t walk into Gelb without expecting to see him smiling behind the counter or dishing out a ration of sarcasm.
   I was fortunate to go to his funeral and to see just how many people he touched so deeply.
   The world would be tremendously better if we all left the kind of positive energy when our time here is up.

   Posted by  on  01/16  at  12:47 PM