Brian Fair, frontman of metal band Shadows Fall, has publicly criticized the Trump administration over sweeping tariffs on imported goods — policies he says are already taking a toll on the music instrument industry in the U.S.
In addition to his role as a musician, Fair works for St. Louis Music, one of North America’s largest distributors of musical instruments and accessories. Earlier this week, he took to Threads to express concern over how the tariffs are affecting business operations and the broader music retail landscape.
“I work for a company that owns a variety of instruments brands: guitars, percussion, orchestral strings, brass, woodwinds etc. our landing costs have sky rocketed and those costs are being turned into higher prices that will be unfortunately be handed down to the consumers.
“We have tried to avoid increases where ever possible but a lot of it is unavoidable,” he continued. “Some of these brands used to be made in the US but that priced them entirely out of the market so production shifted to overseas many years ago.
“I work directly with Main St. brick and mortar music stores, some that are barely scraping by. These increases, no matter how small, will make it even more difficult for these stores to survive.
“I am by no means an expert on international trade but I am seeing the damage caused by these tariffs first hand and this is just the beginning,” Fair added. “Hope there is still a market left once the dust clears.
“Also, the idea that domestic or other manufacturers that are NOT affected by tariffs won’t raise their prices to match the market have not paid attention to history. We saw prices increased by those unaffected as soon as they were announced and as we see with inflation, once prices go up they do not come down for any reason. The market resets, everyone jumps on board to maximize profits regardless of their costs and keeps it moving.”
Fair’s comments come amid growing concern among small retailers and consumers alike, as increased costs continue to ripple across various sectors affected by trade policies implemented during Donald Trump‘s presidency. With prices climbing and brick-and-mortar shops struggling to stay afloat, industry insiders like Fair are sounding the alarm on what could be long-term consequences for the musical instrument market.
On the bright side, in a separate interview he also talked about the progress of the songwriting and recording sessions for the next Shadows Fall album: “We have a couple of songs that are totally done that may need some mix, but are tracked. And then we have the instrumental tracks for a lot. And we’re starting to work on vocal demos. Right now we’re kind of trading things back and forth. And we’ve got the skeletons to another group of new songs that we haven’t tracked instrumentally. So, all said and done, we’re gonna kind of keep just writing and recording kind of as things come along, but we have a good foundation of, I’d say, six or seven songs that are pretty much there and tracked instrumentally. And the vocal ideas are at least in a skeleton form; it’s a matter of getting in and getting time to record ’em. But then, like I said, there’s a whole other group of songs right behind it that we’ve gotta start working on too.”
“In the Grey,” released last December through Shadows Fall‘s new label home, MNRK Heavy, marked the band’s first new music in over 12 years.
