Record Store Day on April 13 offers lot of good stuff, from reissues (Pink Floyd, Robyn, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Frank Black, The Dream Syndicate) to brand new music (The Flaming Lips, Courtney Barnett, Julien Baker), to records you didn’t know you wanted (Alice Clark, Brett Smiley, Andrew Oldham Orchestra) and more.
Record Store Day returns this year on Saturday, April 13, growing steadily and reaching more and more music fans each year. Record Store Day was conceived in 2007 at a gathering of independent record store owners and employees as a way to celebrate and spread the word about the unique culture surrounding the nearly 1,000 independently owned record stores in the US and the thousands of similar stores internationally. There are Record Store Day participating stores on every continent except Antarctica.
Record Store Day is a day for the people who make up the world of the record store—the staff, the customers, and the artists—to come together and celebrate the unique culture of a record store and the special role these independently owned stores play in their communities.
“Music is an important part of our culture,” said Chuck Berry shortly before his death in 2017, “and record stores play a vital part in keeping the power of music alive.” These events and the records will keep Berry alive through his music and the fans who enjoy it.
A Record Store Day participating store is a stand-alone brick and mortar retailer whose main primary business focuses on a physical store location, whose product line consists of at least 50% music retail, whose company is not publicly traded and whose ownership is at least 70% located in the state of operation… real, live, physical, indie record stores, not online retailers or corporate behemoths or chains.
The stores that participate in Record Store Day are all INDEPENDENT, not only are they not owned by a corporation, they aren’t run or influenced or told what to do by the folks at Record Store Day either. They have complete control over their stock, store policies and which promotions they participate in. Any piece (commercial or promotional) on the Record Store Day website is available to them, but stores choose whether or not to carry them, totally their prerogative. Be sure to call ahead and check.
“An Independent Record Store means ‘Passion’ to us,” Sarah Dash of Labelle fame has said. “The passionate individual owner’s heart and love of music provides customers with an outlet for the emotion, love, and desire of music. The Indie Record Store is the heartbeat of the music business.”
Special vinyl and CD releases, along with various promotional products, are made exclusively for RSD and hundreds of artists in the United States and in various countries across the globe make special appearances and performances. Festivities are programmed independently by each store including performances, cook-outs, body painting, meet & greets with artists, parades, dj’s spinning records and more.
Here are the official Record Store Day participating stores in the Nashville area: Alison’s Record Shop, Boulevard Record Shop, CD Warehouse, Fond Object Records- Eastside, The Great Escape Madison & The Great Escape Nashville, Grimey’s, The Groove, Mckay Books, The Museum Store, New Life Record Shop, Ernest Tubb Record Shop, Third Man Records and Novelties, The Vinyl Bunker, and Vinyl Tap.
