Brandon Godman
Owner
No one states it better than Laurie Lewis, “Half god, half man, all fiddler”. At any point in the day, you can find Brandon Godman at the crossroads of his two passions- fiddling and lutherie, an all around, self-proclaimed fiddle geek.
Hailing from Kentucky, Brandon began playing fiddle at the age of 10 in local square dance halls. He developed his skills by playing in various bluegrass, country, and western swing bands around the region, and competing in fiddle contests throughout the midwest. His first bluegrass road gig was with Melvin Goins and Windy Mountain at the age of 17. Since then he has performed with various bluegrass and country acts including Karl Shiflett, David Peterson, Dale Ann Bradley, Doyle Lawson, The Band Perry and Jon Pardi. He has been fortunate to grace the stages of The Ryman Auditorium, The Grand Ole’ Opry, Carnegie Hall, The Ellen Show, The Tonight Show, The View and others.
From an early age, Brandon was lucky to have mentors who not only taught him how to play fiddle, but encouraged his undying interest in instruments and bows. During his high school summers, he worked at A Violin Maker’s Workshop in Cincinnati, OH where he started learning basic repair and helped maintain their rental fleet. After his move to Nashville, TN he worked for a brief period at William’s Fine Violins, furthering his skills in repair and sales while performing full-time on the road. In 2011 Brandon started working with Fred Carpenter at The Violin Shop, where he realized his destiny in the violin trade and eventually became a partner. During this time he studied with the luthiers who worked with the shop and other colleagues across the country to refine his luthier skills, and further develop his knowledge and identification skills of vintage instruments and bows.
Brandon left The Violin Shop to move to San Francisco, CA in 2016 to further his experience by independently conducting trade with other industry professionals in wholesale. Since then, he has been been exposed to thousands of examples of instruments and bows from around the world by visiting auctions, numerous violin shops, museums, handling collections, and developing relationships with colleagues worldwide. Looking back, he likes to consider this time his journeyman years.
In 2020, he officially opened The Fiddle Mercantile in San Francisco’s Mission District, serving the fiddle community of the greater Bay Area, and the broader west coast.
In February 2022, Brandon acquired The Violin Shop in Nashville from previous owner, Ian Panton. He considers The Violin Shop to not only be important to players locally, but an institution for fiddlers nationwide and is excited to help it continue to be just that through striving to provide the best service, instruments, bows and expertise possible.
Beyond playing the fiddle and running his two shops, Brandon also serves on the board of The Violin Society of America, is a guest co-host on the luthier podcast OMO. Currently he performs regularly as part of California-based Laurie Lewis and the Right Hands. In his free-time he enjoys hiking and exploring the great outdoors and being a train nerd (steam engines only, of course).
The Violin Shop Team
