Twin Town Guitars, located at the corner of 34th and Lyndale Ave. S., won "Best Place To Work" last week at the 2021 Minnesota's Retail Champions Awards.

"Every day we feel honored to have such talented staff and teachers working at Twin Town Guitars. We also feel proud to be part of this community, and we are extremely grateful to all the musicians, from beginners to professionals, who support us!” said Carrie Bell, Twin Town's Director of Music Education and co-founder.

The company was founded in 1997 by Carrie and Andrew Bell, taking over the corner location that was previously held by Benedict Music, who sold vintage guitars and offered instrument repairs for 13 years. Since then, they've more than tripled in space, added a separate drum studio, and put 100 Minnesota-made solar panels on their roof to power the store.

Twin Town offers a variety of music classes for the public, including a "sampler" to allow people to test several instruments, multiple levels of ukulele lessons, songwriting, and more (most of them end with shows at the Uptown VFW, too, which sounds pretty dang fun).

As a bonus, here's a short video of Loki's Folly, a Minneapolis-based band featuring two sisters and their brother who started out by taking lessons at Twin Town, ripping it up on their corner at Open Streets Lyndale.