After fixing countless guitars and achieving viral fame in the process, Jayce Levi and his “World Famous” Repairland are leaving Indio—and the Coachella Valley.
Since 2021, Levi had been building a presence in the community. Pulling from his experience as a prominent MySpace musician, a Radio Disney songwriter and a longtime luthier, he helped “World Famous” Repairland become a hotspot for quick fixes, huge restorations, music advice and more, first in Palm Springs, and then Indio. Along the way, Levi posted his repairs on Instagram—and thanks to his masterful work and charming commentary, the Repairland Instagram and TikTok accounts have amassed more than 50 million views.
On Friday, June 5, Levi announced on Instagram that Repairland would be closing locally at the end of June—because Levi is taking his skills and his shop to Nashville. Before he closes, Repairland will host a moving sale on Saturday, June 20, and a free guitar setup class and Q&A on Saturday, June 27.
“There are a number of factors that led me to close the shop, but I’d say the biggest one is just opportunity for me elsewhere,” Levi said during a recent interview.
As Repairland’s online presence has exploded, a majority of his business is coming from out of town.
“My business has just grown so much since I came to the desert,” Levi said. “I went from having 500 followers to getting millions of views and all these things, and in the desert, most of my business comes from being online. As much as I love the local community and the local bands, the majority of my customers are coming from out of town or out of state, sometimes even from Mexico and other countries.
Meanwhile, Levi said local business has declined, due to the struggling state of the desert’s music scene.
“There’s no one here really making a full living off of just music,” he said. “It breaks my heart, honestly, because there are a lot of people here who are so talented and so good, but there’s not an infrastructure here that helps them make a living. There are some guys who might make OK money playing restaurants and stuff, or like me playing at the Red Barn, or busking, or whatever, but as far as venues who are willing to invest in themselves and invest in the community, it’s just not there yet—and that’s hard for me.”
Levi said he needs to provide for his growing family—“I’ve got another baby coming in,” he added—and moving the shop to Nashville will place Levi in the center of a healthy music scene.
“Here, we wait until the festivals and things, and that is a big boost in business, when in Nashville, there are more guitars there every single day than there are here during Coachella or Stagecoach,” Levi said. “For a guy who just fixes guitars and wants to just fix guitars, it seems like that would be a better option for me.”
Levi poured a lot of effort and energy into building up the local music world. He hosted a musical-instrument-drive concert, recorded desert acts in his Sunny Sounds Recording Studio and was set to be a co-owner of The Desert Rat, a music venue/coffee shop that eventually became The Dune Room, owned by Ron Mesh.
“I’ve tried my best to try to shape it and try to help push people in the right direction, but I’ve run into a lot of roadblocks over the last five or six years,” he said.
Levi intended The Desert Rat to be his answer to the struggling scene, but a messy fallout ensued. Levi claims that Mesh used a lease technicality to seize control of the venue, that the city of Indio enabled the takeover, and that many Dune Room concepts are copied from his original plans for the venue. (Of course, Mesh has a different version of what happened.)
“I try not to let it drag me down, and I try to mind my own business and do my own thing, but I do care about this community, and I care about the people here so much, so it’s hard for me to draw a blind eye to a lot of things that I see that are clearly wrong,” Levi said. “But if other people don’t want to say they’re wrong as well, and they just want to sit back and watch, there’s not much I can do.”
“All the harassment my business has gone through, all the lack of support from the city, all these different things—eventually, I had to come to a decision that I don’t think I can make this work mentally anymore.”
Jayce Levi
Levi said he’s remained positive by doing what he can to help the community.
“What I charge here for the services I do, the prices pretty much everywhere else in the country are more than double,” Levi said. “I set my prices like that because I wanted to cater to students and people getting back into it, people with PTSD, people who aren’t necessarily musicians but they are community members who love guitar—and that’s why my shop stays busy through the summer when everybody else shuts down.”
However, Levi said he had to accept that this business model wasn’t best for his growing family. He also said a lack of support from the city of Indio played a role in his decision.
“There came a point where I had to make the decision of, ‘Does my love for the community outweigh all these negative things?’” he said. “All the harassment my business has gone through, all the lack of support from the city, all these different things—eventually, I had to come to a decision that I don’t think I can make this work mentally anymore. … There’s never been a city employee in my business since I opened. City employees have never attended any of my events in the city. There has been a big lack of support from the city.”
In March 2024, Levi told the Independent that he was excited to be moving his shop to Indio, saying, “I really feel the energy is shifting to Indio.”
“You had Little Street on the corner doing some community events, and other businesses trying to do pop-ups, markets and more community-minded events,” Levi said. “Even when it came to concerts and stuff, it was like, ‘Hey, there’s community here; there’s art stuff involved; it’s a lot of stuff going on.’”
Since then, Little Street Music Hall closed down; Music House Indio stopped hosting frequent shows; and both the Academy of Musical Performance and the Oasis on Miles are leaving downtown.
“There are so many teenagers here who are left with literally nothing to do and nowhere to go, and they kind of had it before when we had Music House going and Little Street and all those things,” Levi said. “Then you start to take those away, or you let people who aren’t a part of the scene come in and try to dictate what the scene should be for no apparent reason. … A lot of these self-interested kinds of people are putting businesses in here where they open the businesses when they want; they do the things they want and have no input from the community; and then they wonder why their businesses are empty.”
Levi said he hopes the Music City will be more welcoming to his ideas than the City of Festivals.
“If I want to exist in a place like Nashville, I know that I’m going to have to work my ass off,” he said. “I don’t see where I’ll be able to not put my best foot forward there, because it’s so much more competitive. … I poured so much of myself into the community here that it did really affect my business. It’s my own fault, but I always thought, ‘Oh, if I just put all this time into the community, and I do this, the rewards are gonna be there.’ And it actually got way worse.”
