WNXP’s Record Store Weekend Guide

Charlie Pignato — Operator, Variety Records, Columbia, TN
“This store originally starts out in 1958 as Ernest Tubb’s second record store. It was Ernest Tubb Two originally. In 1965, Ernest sold it to a local woman named Edna Lentz. And Edna didn’t want a store that was all country, she wanted a store that had variety. So hence the name. She stole the logo from Ernest Tubb’s Midnight Jamboree and put it on hers. She ran it from 1965 to 1995 and then saw the writing on the wall with record stores drying up, she shut it down. [Then] two friends of mine in 2013 resurrected the store. This was the last location it was in and the space was available. So they tracked her down to get her permission. She still had (the original) sign in the barn and some of the bins (we have now) are from hers. We really live up to the name Variety. I have everything here. It’s not like we’re just a punk store or just a metal store. We’ve got everything under the sun.”

Brenna Gentry — Co-Owner, Luna Record Shop, Franklin, TN
If she had to compare her shop to an album:
“It could go a lot of ways but the shop itself is actually named after a song on Smashing Pumpkins Siamese Dream. So I would say that (record) because of my musical tastes and my sister’s musical tastes mixed with the decor and the style of our shop and the somewhat minimalism of our shop mixed with the chaos of all the posters and everything is very much Siamese Dream. There’s highs, there’s lows. There’s beautiful slow parts and then it kind of kicks up a notch. And that album saved my life. And in some ways the shop brought back that same feeling.

At the time when Siamese Dream came out I was going through my most traumatic childhood experience. And once it came out, I remember just sinking into it. And I would write the lyrics out and I would listen to it. And like so many other teenagers at the time in the ’90s, it was the only thing that just kept me going and going and just pushing through and feeling like, even though I was in Franklin Tennessee at 12 years old, that I wasn’t the weird one. I wasn’t the ‘whatever’ and that there’s other people out there that felt the same way.”

Todd Hedrick — Owner/Operator, Vinyl Tap, Nashville, TN
Favorite Record Store Day memory:
“It has to be the first one. When that happened that was the first April we were open. We had only been open for five months or so. We packed the place out. This was five months after basically there being nobody here [Laughs]. So to see everybody come here on that day was insane. Caroline, who still works for me and does all of our events, booked the whole day full of music. I remember Liz Cooper & The Stampede played first, and that was exciting. Brittany Howard came in while I was working at the front desk, and that just blew my mind. I was like, ‘I can’t believe this is what this can be like.’ We talk about that because it was the busiest day we’d ever had and the most people, but now it’s been tenfold. That first one I felt so much gratification and joy. We weren’t even an approved a Record Store Day store yet. They wouldn’t even let us sign the pledge yet, so we could carry a Record Store Day product. We solely had a sale on the catalog stuff that we had, and people just bought it all up. It was pouring rain that day. We had Shotgun Willie’s outside as our one and only food option, before it even had a brick and mortar.

I can still see that one more than all of the rest of them, even in the last two years. Just picturing what it was like in there. Caroline and I have talked about it, frequently lately. It just sticks out more because I think it was such a turning point where it was like, ‘Oh, man, we can do this. This is going to work.’ People are into this, and we’ve gotten them here, and we got to get even more people here all the time, which we have been able to do, which is great. That is just like such a special memory. Just thinking about it now, just overwhelmed with joy. They’ve all been great. We’ve always had a great time and things have turned out well. But that first one, which was the smallest thing we’ve done for Record Store Day, is still the thing that sticks out in my mind.”

Phil Duran — Owner/Operator, LRB Skate and Record Shop, Murfreesboro, TN
“The focus here is to get little kids not only into music but also skateboarding and help promote that, be it live music or turning them onto new stuff. My son is really big into skating and he wanted to open a skate shop. I’ve owned a record store in the past [in Wisconsin], so I just said, ‘Let’s combine ’em.’ We opened November 11, 2023 softly and did our grand opening on February 23, 2024. We’re still working on it, adding stuff like a lounge in the back for the skateboard kids to play video games and hang out, feel comfortable, feel at home.”

Alison Warford — Owner/Operator, Alison’s Record Shop, Nashville, TN
“It’s a one-woman show here,” says Alison from Alison’s Record Shop on the west side. One thing that makes Alison’s unique is that she handwrites notes on every single record. Her notes tell you the condition the record and some other informational nugget like where it was recorded or what it may sound like. “I like to put that information out there for the customers so that they know what it is that they are paying for. It helps people to know what they’re buying.”

“The moment I decided to open this record store happened when we opened a hi-fi store and put some records from a friend of ours in it. We thought it would be great to have a record shop next door and then a couple months later the space next door opened up and we said, ‘Hey! Let’s open a record shop.’ And I figured since I was doing all the work it should be called Alison’s Record Shop.”

Keith Dixon — Owner, Swaggie Records, Nashville, TN
Keith worked merchandise in the touring crew for Darius Rucker and when COVID hit and touring stopped he turned his expertise in the music business to opening up Swaggie Records in the basement of the historic Stahlman Building in downtown Nashville. “We have a little bit of everything.”

“One of the most unique things that happened in this record store was on the day Jerry Lee Lewis died. I saw the news on TV and called my mother to let her know. Lewis lived in Nesbit, Mississippi, which is close to where my mom lives in Tupelo. I knew we had Jerry Lee Lewis records in the shop that I had gotten from an old storage unit in Mississippi. I went down to pull them and I flipped one of the Jerry Lee Lewis 45’s and I saw my mother’s name in red ink, written in cursive. Somehow I ended up with my own mom’s record in the shop.”

Mike Smith — Owner & Founder, Phonoluxe Records, Nashville, TN
“I have collected and been interested in records since I was 12 and I’m 70 now.” Smith was born and raised in London, then became a record exporter in Chicago and finally found himself in Nashville. “It seemed like pretty fertile territory,” he said. Smith opened Phonoluxe in 1987. At that time everybody was buying CDs but he put an ad in the paper saying that he was buying records.

“People really thought by the early 90’s that records were over and done with. People were just dumping records whole sale. I think a lot of good records got thrown out then, which is a pity.” I asked him why he stuck with it. “I like ’em. I’m a record guy. It’s probably the tactile nature of them. It’s a strange phenomenon really cause if you think about it, it is really a primitive method of transmitting sound in this day and age.
On the vibe, Mike says, “It looks like a throwback kind of record store. Whereas other people will be selling the newest indie stuff, we are all used. Probably a bit more old school, really…Fads and trends have come and gone, but we’re still here.”