There was a time back when Hartley Peavey opened his guitar-amplifier business above his father’s Meridian, Mississippi, music store that the location — just 100 miles from the Delta — was perfect. But as Peavey Electronics grew from a modest supplier of local bluesmen into one of the seminal names in stadium shows, its address became something of a curse. To fly commercial to New York, Nashville or just about anywhere else Peavey’s customers might be playing meant (and still means) a ticket to one place: “We have a joke around here,” he says. “You have to go through Atlanta to go to hell.” Fortunately, to solve the problem, he didn’t need to make any pacts with the
devil — just with a used Piper owner, for a PA-260. Peavey piloted himself in those days. He doesn’t anymore, although “if something were to happen to my pilot, I could sure as hell land the plane.”
Today, he relies mostly on a Beechcraft 350 King Air, and over the years has also owned a G2 and a G4 Special Performance. It was after he bought the bigger G that he expanded his private hangar at the local Air National Guard facility, turning it from a “two-holer” into an impressive “three.” Take that, Hotlanta.
