The community home for music in Gravesend.

That’s the renewed aim of the town’s sole music shop, Elephant Music, after it reopened under new management.

New owners Rob Sherwood, 36, and Dennis Halberg, 53, were on hand to greet excited visitors to the Harmer Street store, which has undergone an extensive revamp since closing earlier this year.

The opening comes after the Messenger launched its Let's Grow Gravesend campaign in an effort to support local traders and make the town centre a great place for shoppers and shopkeepers alike.

Musicians can now look forward to an expanded selection of instruments, as well as new rehearsal and teaching facilities, which Dennis hopes will help give the store a fresh lease of life.

“We’ve repainted and cleared more space – it’s much brighter now – and we’re hoping to offer a bigger range of instruments,” he said.

“We’ll have guitars, drums, keyboards, amps, and we have cheaper options like harmonicas and recorders.”

Once the stock is in place, Elephant Music will also house opportunities for lessons, rehearsals and even recitals.

It is all part of the team’s aim to become the community home for music in Gravesend, and Dennis is passionate about giving locals the chance to fall in love with his hobby.

“People have had lots of words of encouragement for us. We’ve got room upstairs for lessons and downstairs we’ve got a rehearsal room where we’re hoping to hold little recitals. Kids who have music lessons... parents often don’t have the chance to see them so we’re hoping we could invite them in to watch their children perform,” he said.

“We don’t just want to focus on the business side. We really want to support music lessons, local gigs and encourage young people to learn to play instruments.

“We want to convince them that music isn’t just what you see when you go on The X factor or Britain’s Got Talent and have a microphone shoved in your face.” If it wasn’t already clear, the driving force behind Elephant Music’s revival is a sense of responsibility.

“This is Gravesend’s only music shop and it was about to go. It would mean going out of town just for guitar strings or shopping on the internet,” he said.

“There’s been plenty of the town’s shops go already. When you see Marks and Spencer’s go you think, ‘Well, what’s wrong with us?’, you know? It would be a shame to have seen a specialist shop like this go as well.”

Listening to Dennis makes it apparent that this is as much of a passion project as it is a business. He and Rob are IT workers who formed their own band, Moriarty and the Negative Waves, because of their shared love of music, and it is that same love which saw them save the store from extinction.

Former owner Bob Aslett was set to shut up shop after 22 years behind the counter until Dennis and Rob stepped in, and regular customer John Battelle is delighted that they did.

“Bob had a heart of gold. He loved this shop, I think he’d just had enough after 22 years,” said John, who is also a popular local musician.

Dennis agrees: “Bob’s a great guy. He rang up and said sorry he wasn’t able to come to the opening!”

When he does eventually pop by, he’ll no doubt be proud of what the shop has become, and of the plans to make it even better.

Gravesend’s musicians can certainly be assured that the shop couldn’t be in safer or more enthusiastic hands.