Mik Davis, record store manager for T-Bones, said that people were lined up at six in the morning waiting for the café to open so they could get their hands on abundant exclusive records that were released for the special day. “It is good to see people come in,” Davis said.
Davis said the store got people from first time visitors to their loyal customers to come enjoy the atmosphere and music this event has. “It is great to see [Record Store Day] expand and grow over the years – that [it] can still bring in new people, as well as, regulars who have been here since the beginning.”
“The width and the breath of the event has expanded dramatically,” Davis said. “There was a moment when [T-Bones] was the only record store participating [in Record Store Day] in Mississippi.”
“There are now three record stores in the state that participate,” Davis said. “That really says something for this ongoing vinyl trend that everyone studies and talks about. Every year it is the same cycle. It is crazy trying to get all the [records and merchandise] in the system, trying to align the planets and put [the event] together, but when you walk outside and see the line of people here and talk to them, you get a surge of adrenaline that makes it all worth doing.”
The purpose of Record Store Day is to celebrate independent record stores across the world. Davis said T-Bones takes pride in being one of the many independent stores that participates in the global celebration.
Irwin Nelson, sophomore biological science major, said that the appeal of records is having something tangible. He discovered T-Bones through the event and has gone to Record Store Day at T-Bones for the last four years.
“[Record Store Day] is a great excuse to have fun,” Nelson said. “It’s become a tradition to come to T-Bones on Record Store Day.”
“We are in the business of helping people find music, so a day dedicated to that is a day where we really get to overemphasize the things we love about records, bring in DJs and put [items] on sale that we normally could not afford to,” Harry Crumpler, owner of T-Bones, said. “We try to make it as much a reward for customers as a celebration because they are why we are here.”
“You cannot deny the convenience of streaming, but when I am at home and critically listening or [maximizing] enjoyment of a record that means a lot to me, it has to be vinyl,” Crumpler said.
“Streams sound good and get you through traffic or when you are just checking it out, but to hear the sound come out of a couple speakers on a turntable is a rare gift and it encourages people to listen to the music instead of just playing it,” Davis said.
“In this day and age, music is great, but it is omnipresent and easy to be taken for granted, but vinyl for the most part is not to be taken for granted because it is an experience,” Davis said. “[Records] are tactical. You are reading, looking at things and listening intently to things trying to hear things you’ve never heard before.”
