Why, you might ask, would a guy want to stay in this crazy music retail business all these years, through multiple economic slowdowns (yes, Martha, I guess there actually is a recession going on since 4th quarter last year), through the MP3-iPod-ringtone obsessed generation and all during the internet invasion era? Well, I’ll tell you: PEOPLE. People like Mic Harrison & his High Score Band when they freely and enthusiastically bring their Knoxville rock’n’roll in here Friday afternoon. People like Jerry Douglas and Edwin McCain when they take the time from busy globe trotting schedules to collaborate with us in connecting with our customers and their fans in here. People like the guy from Ohio that shopped here two nights ago that needed an obscure Flatt & Scruggs LP that he couldn’t find anywhere in his travels that we had but it was a fairly beat copy so I sold it to him for $2. Later that same night there was the guy from Raleigh who was so excited to discover our kind of store via our website that he stopped in en route from Atlanta to North Carolina and bought a stack of vinyl and used CDs including an nice LP copy of Robin Trower’s Bridge of Sighs and proceeded to school me on some rock history involving Robin Trower and Bryan Ferry. I ended up sending greetings back through him to our mutual friend Rick Miller of Southern Culture On The Skids.

People like Caroline our veteran part-timer (now a junior in high school) who arrived here a while back a die hard fan of My Chemical Romance and is now as I write this blasting both the record store and the café side of the building as she spins the CD “Beyond Istanbul: Underground Grooves of Turkey” at rather decent volume level! I am also amazed and grateful to all the people (well most anyway) that bring us their rejects, leftovers, don’t need ‘ems, boxes of family estate items, yard sale finds of pre-loved CDs, LPs, DVDs and BOOKS so we can recycle them, make buck as we make all this splendor of stuff available to all of you to adopt and enjoy. Then there are the people like many of you who simply give us a few of your hard earned dollars in exchange for some music or a cheap movie and therefore make it possible for us to continue doing what we do which is act as a community center in disguise as record store (or is that the other way around??). Our mission: connecting people with music and music with people. Safe, healthy, peaceful (mostly:-)), community oriented, neighborhood based and that’s why our motto is We’re Still Here. Our other motto is Come See Us.

Below: Mic Harrison & his High Score Band

Jerry Douglass “Glide” - will be released nationwide August 19th on Koch Records

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