Making Music with Fuzzy’s Fine Guitars

Sam Valliere offers open-mic nights, lessons and recording space at his Warwick shop, Fuzzy’s Fine Guitars. Photograph courtesy of Fuzzy’s Fine Guitars/Photo by Sarah Lawhorne

Fuzzy’s Fine Guitars was born out of a childhood dream to create a community out of making music. Musician Sam Valliere launched the Warwick music store in Airport Plaza a year ago to provide a place where people can purchase both new and vintage guitars, pedals and amps, and have a space to gather and share talents. Guitars and other string instruments like ukuleles and banjos hang along the walls, and an area with a vintage chaise lounge and a coffee table sits in the back, where visitors can linger and talk shop. Valliere’s gray and white Shih Tzu, Dolly, wanders the store greeting visitors.

Valliere bought his first guitar at age fourteen, chosen from a catalog. It was delivered in a box to his dad’s home in New Hampshire, after he moved there as a kid from Oklahoma. To pass the time, he taught himself how to play the instrument using tab [tablature] books. “I bought the tab book for Siamese Dream by The Smashing Pumpkins. And I had the CD, and I just kind of spent the whole summer with that book and learning Pumpkins,” Valliere says. “I never really put it down after that.”

He started jamming out with other kids, learning songs, and eventually upgraded to a Washburn Idol, which he still uses today. But it wasn’t until he turned thirty
— after graduating high school, joining the Marine Corps and serving in Iraq — that he started his first band. He returned to Oklahoma, where he studied graphic design and marketing at Oklahoma State University and worked at a guitar shop in Stillwater. The owner was getting ready to retire and Valliere considered taking it over, but it didn’t work out. Eventually, he left Oklahoma to work remotely as a graphic designer. After spending time in Los Angeles during COVID, he pondered his next move.

The idea of opening a music store still lived inside his heart. When Valliere moved to Rhode Island to help a family member in Providence, he fell in love with the city’s local music and art scene.

He decided to open Fuzzy’s Fine Guitars last June to give the music community a place to buy new and used guitars, and find and repair equipment. The store also offers guitar lessons through Dave Testoni and Devon DiGiacomo, and voice lessons with Mary McAvoy. The store has a recording area, and local high school kids come in to practice and record tracks.

Fuzzy’s Guitars also hosts occasional bass clinics and holds open mic-nights on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month. “It’s an opportunity for people to come out and show what they’ve been working on,” Valliere says. “It’s a little like a show and tell.”

Valliere thinks back to when he worked at the Stillwater guitar store and how he always wanted to own his own shop. “A lot of people have said guitar stores are dying and that they’re not sustainable because of the internet,” Valliere says. “I’ve known otherwise for a long time. I had been thinking about how to execute it correctly for over a decade. And I think I’m doing it.” 1800 Post Rd., Warwick, 500-2582, fuzzysguitars.com