To Have and to Hold: My Vinyl Year

Until very recently, I had not been to Maine. Hence, what I had in my head was an idea of Maine. A Family Feud-esque word association: Lobsters. LL Bean. And I guess Steven King lives there? As an outsider, Maine feels way the hell up there and that seems to be the appeal: it’s away from stuff. Untouched—maybe?—from all the noise down here. A thing that comes to mind is this sketch from the very short-lived Dana Carvey show: skinheads in Maine:  (Yes, that's Stephen Colbert on the right.) What’s the joke here? I mean, they probably do have bigotry there, but the sort of self-conscious, “bigotry is my identity” thing feels hilariously out of place. Wouldn’t a true Mainer be too busy—lacing up their Bean Boots…hiking in Acadia…pulling up a lobster trap—to bother hating anyone? It's easy to romanticize a place when you haven’t been there…or when you spend a week there at a quaint AirBnB on a quiet street in a nice neighborhood...or when you visit a famously cold place in J...

The internet finds out what you like and sends you more of it. I didn’t actively seek out a traveling record show, but I apparently had clicked on enough vinyl-related things to inspire Instagram to send a Record Riots ad my way.  It’s a traveling “show” that entails a rented room, fold-out tables, and fanatics selling their wares to other fanatics. It reminded me of the baseball card shows that I attended as a kid in the 80s—lots of hands digging through lots of crates…a few select rarities on display behind the table…and the feeling that you are glimpsing your potential future self: If I persist with this stuff, I might one day be on the other side of the table. This particular event was at a fire station tucked away in the suburbs of Frederick, Maryland. Other Record Riots take place up and down the east coast. I met a friend in the parking lot, and we both questioned whether we’d gotten the address right. Then we heard music. Someone was playing Wet Leg on a boombox. We walk...

Asheville, North Carolina reminds me of Portland, Oregon in the late 1990s.  Research independent bookstores in Asheville and the question comes back: Are you looking for a feminist bookstore? An anarchist bookstore? One that serves wine? Are you looking for a bookstore that sells coffee? A coffee shop that sells books? (Cue Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein.) When I moved to Portland in the late 90s, people would say to me: Huh…why Portland? Just a few years later, the nation was a bit more aware of the city. (I will claim little to no credit for that.) Walking around Asheville gives me that vibe… a smaller city that’s got a good thing going and would be happy enough to keep it a secret. Smack in the center of town there’s a warehouse-sized resale shop, where you can browse a few dozen old typewriters, vintage movie posters from the 70s and 80s (remember Krull ?), and more crates of records than one could reasonably flip through in a day.  It says something about a city w...

Byrdland Records is new.  It’s one of many new things in a D.C. warehouse district that—until somewhat recently—was industrial, mainly home to food wholesalers and restaurant suppliers. This neighborhood’s new life began with the arrival of Union Market, an upscale food hall where every vendor is the very best in its class.  It didn’t take long before high-priced condos went up, and hip cafes, bookstores, even a second food hall. Along with this growth came a music venue, SongByrd , and—a block or so away—a record store, ByrdLand. This March, I set out to find something at BrydLand. ByrdLand is small, as many of these record stores are, featuring a main room and then a backroom. The place is squeaky clean, and, being new, why shouldn’t it be? The main room includes an old fashioned recording booth (I’d seen one of these before at Third Man Records in Nashville). ...and then the backroom has some used records, a couch and some chairs... ...and then—mostly as décor—an old jukeb...

Serves me right. Last time I wrote one of these things, I had some snarky words to say about poet-songwriters being depressed in New York in the winter. So naturally I found myself on a train heading to New York about 6 or 8 hours before a blizzard was scheduled to hit. To be honest, I was giddy. Manhattan in the snow. And me without a car to get stuck, without a walkway to shovel. Without my kids with me, I felt like one: I owed the world nothing. Let the snow fall. Let the city get pummeled. Let the magic happen. And it happened. When it hit, it came down sideways. The wind screeched against uncountable fences, grates, and walls. With my N95 mask on, my breath fogged my sunglasses. Without the sunglasses, I was blinded. I trudged and slipped past more than one church. I didn’t stop in and pretend to pray, but I could see the logic in it. But all that happened several hours after I arrived. I did get in a decent amount of time to wander about without a bunch of weather in my fac...