About the owner

Thom Conant

(10/21/50 - 5/29/25)

Revised 3/6/26

Thom grew up in Eugene, Oregon the youngest of 4 children, with 2 brothers and 1 sister. He started playing guitar in high school, joining several bands with his friends and developed skills through persistent hard work that would later become useful in his teaching career throughout his twenty-somethings. In his late teens, he bought a one way bus ticket from Eugene to Portland with $50 in his pocket and started working hard to make connections in a new, bigger city. At the time, there were not a lot of guitar teachers and Thom saw this as an opportunity. In the late 60’s, not everyone had a guitar as they weren’t as ubiquitous as they are today. If Thom intended to teach, it was very likely he’d need to also provide the guitars to sell to his students.

Of the connections Thom first made in Portland, perhaps the one that turned out to be most pivotal was the one he made with Lyle Heater, owner of L.D. Heater Company one of the largest distributors in the Northwest and a major player in music merchandise on the west coast. Thom was offered by Mr. Heater to sell a half-dozen Lyle guitars without needing to front money of his own. One of Thom’s favorite stories to tell was of him standing on a street corner in downtown Portland in front of a shop, playing one of these guitars at full volume and singing along. The owner of that shop, annoyed with his playing, came out front and asked him to leave. Thom remained committed to selling his guitars and continued busking. Eventually the shop owner broke down and offered to buy all of his remaining guitars just to get him to leave that corner.

The commissions he made from those first guitars were reinvested to buy more and eventually Thom started teaching in a slot at Cascade Music while selling guitars to his students. In his late 20’s, he had become one of the busiest guitar teachers in the Portland area with students around the clock and no breaks. He also taught music theory and guitar class at Concordia University. Before starting Eastside, Thom worked at another Portland based small business called Music Village where he would meet other important people that he’d continue to work with later. It was here he learned more about the band and orchestra side of the music business. He saw a need for instrument rentals in the community and decided to open his own shop. 

Thom started Eastside Music in 1984 as a partnership with his friend Lindy Wunn. Thom ran the business end and Lindy handled all instrument repairs out of a small commercial slot in the Menlo Park shopping center in Portland. After just 1 year, Lindy went on to take a repair tech position at Portland Public Schools while Thom stayed behind and continued to run the business with the help of his wife Brenda. Thom’s son Jeff spent much of his childhood around the business and absorbed knowledge by observation slowly but surely. As soon as he was physically big enough, Jeff expressed an interest in getting hands-on and was shown how to disassemble and chem-clean a brass instrument.

Fast forward to the year 2000, Thom bought the building that Eastside is in today from St. Vincent de Paul and renovated it to meet the needs of a functioning music store. Jeff continued to work at the store part-time while studying at Mt. Hood Community College before eventually transferring to Oregon State University. In 2008, Jeff moved back to Portland and chose to work with his dad at Eastside again, taking on larger, more important roles around the business. Although it took many years, Thom eventually taught Jeff the inner workings of the store and the philosophies that shaped it. Jeff graduated from Portland State University in 2010. By that time he had become so passionate about Eastside Music, he decided he would one day take over the business when his dad was no longer around to run it.

Despite various hardships and economic challenges faced over the years, Eastside has continued to operate within its core principle of providing fair and honest prices to the community and helping schools obtain the products necessary to teach students about music. Thom’s philosophies revolved around providing very fair pricing to keep music accessible to all of the community. Well before the days of the internet e-commerce explosion, Eastside fought hard to keep the cost of entry low and instead of focusing on profits, relied on leaving an impression of satisfaction on customers to keep them wanting to come back.