Art Matthews opened The Music Emporium in Meridian, MS in 1973. His very first customer was a striking, raven haired beauty named Debbie May, whom Art immediately fell in love with. Her face served as the inspiration for The Music Emporium’s logo, designed by Dave “Wizard” Goslin and Pat Covert. Debbie became Art’s wife in 1974 and the two gave birth to a beautiful little girl, Aislinn in 1975, and a boy, Josh in 1979. The two siblings were exposed to music at birth and grew up running the isles of The Music Emporium. They worked there throughout their teens and while home from college. As Art emerged himself in radio, Aislinn took over The Music Emporium after graduating from Mississippi State University. In the face of the ever changing music industry, however, Aislinn and the family decided to close one of the last great record stores in December of 2010.

Art recognizes the power of music to inspire and change people’s lives. Regardless of where they were from or what they were going through, Art takes pride in exposing people to music in positive ways. He is a master in tuning the customer’s ear to great music.

Inspired by his experiences growing up in The Music Emporium, and his father’s unique ability to connect with people through music, Josh Matthews began to work in music again in 2004.

“It is my hope to connect with people, just as my father does, through music. MusicBham, ultimately, is designed to strengthen our music community here in Birmingham and bring people together."

Josh lives in Birmingham, AL.

This is the "wpengine" admin user that our staff uses to gain access to your admin area to provide support and troubleshooting. It can only be accessed by a button in our secure log that auto generates a password and dumps that password after the staff member has logged in. We have taken extreme measures to ensure that our own user is not going to be misused to harm any of our clients sites.