Summit Music has cleared out, and across the street, Honey Child Music has shut its doors. (Photo by Dustin Racioppi; click to enlarge)

By DUSTIN RACIOPPI

Within days of each other, two Red Bank music education shops shut their doors last week, dealing a double blow to Monmouth Street’s reputation as a place where kids learned the basic chords that might someday land them on the stage of the nearby Count Basie Theatre.

Summit Music, which in recent months shifted from instrument sales and drum repairs to kid-focused instruction by joining forces with the national School of Rock chain and Little Rockers, quietly cleared out of its space, at 52 Monmouth Street, just before Memorial Day.

Maureen Tieri, who’s owned Summit the last three years, could not be reached for comment.

Diagonally across the street from Summit, longtime children’s music shop Honey Child Music went dark after losing the lease on the space at 73 Monmouth.

The departures leave Monmouth Music, at 30 Monmouth Street, as the sole instrument and instruction shop on a street that boasted three.

Honey Child owner Sherri Ehrlich — also known as Miss Sherri — says she’ll continue her business in various venues, including the Middletown Arts Center, beginning later this summer.

Although Ehrlich has made a living offering a long list of children’s-based music programs for 14 years, she, like Tieri, added another element to her business earlier this year by starting Red Bank Rockers, which took kids of all skill levels and shepherded them through the music creation and recording process.

All her programs will continue, but in different locations, she said. Her exit from a fixed brick-and-mortar location is a result of the depressed economy, she said.

“The economy is tight in Red Bank. People are not spending as much,” Ehrlich said. “It’s crazy. You just can’t make a living.”

Property records indicate that the former Honey Child space is owned by an entity whose managing member is Theodore Kutzin of Little Silver, while the building used by Summit is owned by Anthony, Frank and Armand Crupi of Ocean Township.