After 46 years, the Richfield institution closes with no regrets; its rent doubled.

The Minnesota Star Tribune

There won’t be any more pickin’ and grinnin’ in Richfield after the Homestead Pickin’ Parlor, a hub for the Twin Cities bluegrass and folk music community for 46 years, closes on July 31.

“We go without regrets,” said founder Marv Menzel, who owns Homestead with his wife, Dawn. “I’m 82. I missed retirement for 15 years already. I’m not totally disappointed.”

Menzel said the decision to close was prompted by a new landlord doubling the rent.

“As capitalists will do, he upped the rent to the point where we could no longer profitably function,” Menzel said Monday. “He’s got to do what he’s got to do.”

Menzel declined to specify the new rent amount.

Founded in late 1979 in a nondescript strip mall on Penn Avenue S., Homestead Pickin’ Parlor is a multipurpose music store, selling instruments and recorded music, offering music lessons, repairing instruments and providing a performance space for frequent jams.

“It’s the heart of the [acoustic and bluegrass] community,” said Ross Willits, executive director of the Minnesota Bluegrass & Old Time Music Association and a former member of the Platte Valley Boys.

Garrison Keillor relied on a contingent of folk and bluegrass musicians that frequented Homestead to provide the music for his “A Prairie Home Companion” radio show.