The first time Barb Mosher saw a steel guitar when she was a little girl, she was hooked. She was visiting the new chick hatchery in Spring Valley and a musician was there playing his steel guitar. She sat down in the front row and didn’t move until he was done playing, not even getting up to get lunch because she was afraid that someone would take her spot.
After he was finished playing, Barb asked him if he’d teach her how to play. He told her that if she could find five other kids to sign up for lessons, he would come to Spring Valley once a week and teach them all. Barb wasn’t about to miss her chance, so she talked five of her friends into taking lessons with her. However, steel guitar is a difficult instrument to learn and one by one, they all dropped out, which meant that the lessons were no longer available for Barb, either.
Barb halfheartedly took piano lessons from her mother, but her heart was still set on steel guitar. When she was a junior in high school, she got a job as a nurse’s aide at the hospital in Austin, Minn., because she knew she could take steel guitar lessons at a music studio in Austin.
Within a short time, the owner of the studio asked Barb to start teaching steel guitar. On Fridays after school, she would take the bus from Spring Valley to Austin to teach lessons on Friday night and then stay overnight so she could teach all day on Saturday as well before taking the bus back home. When she graduated high school, she moved to Austin and took a full-time job at the music studio.
One day, a man came into the studio, signed over his Hormel paycheck and told her to buy as many guitars as his check would cover and send them to a ranch for troubled boys. His name was Roy Lily and it wasn’t long before he asked Barb to join his band. They played on the Austin tv channel at 6:30 on Saturday nights and at Union Hall for a two-hour family show ,along with other gigs.
After several years of working at the music studio, the owner, Mr. Lindstrom, decided to sell it and move to Colorado, where a musical chorus he had written was being played. He offered to take Barb with to work at the studio he planned to open in Colorado, but she declined. She had always lived in the Spring Valley area and wasn’t interested in going that far away.
So Barb moved back to Spring Valley to live with her parents and open her own small music studio above a store. After she got married, she began teaching music lessons at home. She was also able to give lessons at the Grand Meadow school for five years during the ‘70s and then at St. Johns Lutheran School in Wykoff for another five years later on. Two years ago, Barb’s children urged her to cut back, and so she stopped giving lessons at St. Johns, but still teaches at her home in Spring Valley. Since 2008, she’s played at the Cowboy Church in Cherry Grove and also plays at other churches, nursing homes, etc.
Over the years, Barb has learned other instruments beside the steel guitar, adding accordion, piano, and guitar to her repertoire. She gives lessons for each one. She plays mostly country and gospel music.
Barb currently averages about 22 students during the school year, a number that drops to half that during the summer months. The youngest student she’s ever taught was five-years-old and the oldest was 90. He was her backyard neighbor and was looking for a hobby to fill his time after his wife passed away.
In Barb’s music room at her home, where she gives lessons, a piece of her musical history hangs on the wall. The guitar that her father purchased in the early 50s and learned how to play on, is hers now and is well-loved and worn.
“I’ve had lots of good experiences and met lots of great people,” Barb said about her 65 years teaching music. She plans to continue giving lessons as long as her health allows