We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: The COVID-19 pandemic sent the music industry spinning. Tours went out the window. Meticulously-planned festival sets and appearances were cancelled and never rescheduled. Album rollouts turned upside down and fell flat. It was a disorientating time, to put it mildly.
Nearly three years after the beginning of the pandemic, much of the business has thankfully shifted towards a new, more stable normal. But one section of the industry never stopped spinning, literally: Record lovers are still boosting vinyl sales.
In March, Vanyaland reported that Salem record shop Residency Records had relocated from Bridge Street to Church Street in the downtown area, netting four times as much space. The push? An increase in vinyl sales from the pandemic, probably the only positive thing COVID-19 did for the music industry.
As it turns out, Residency’s relocation was just the beginning. Two more well-loved shops, Wanna Hear It and Stereo Jack’s, entered prosperous eras this fall at new locations, and longtime Massachusetts punk label Bridge Nine Records has touched down with a physical shop in Beverly — all in the span of one fall. Combined with Residency’s new home, the three reestablished businesses demonstrate that the vinyl boom is in full bloom in and around Boston. The pickings probably haven’t been this lush for physical music since Tower Records folded.
“Vinyl is once again the number one selling physical media, for the past four years!” Wanna Hear It owner Joey Cahill tells Vanyaland. “Vinyl keeps growing and it’s fantastic.”
As we reported last year, Cahill opened his emo-focused record shop in Watertown at the tail end of 2020. Wanna Hear It began as a cozy nook on Main Street, packed with racks of vinyl, a wall of enviable band tees, and other goods from local small businesses, like vegan chocolates, candles, and earrings. But with albums consistently flying off the shelves, that cozy space became cramped faster than anyone anticipated.
“The records were swallowing us whole,” Cahill says. “The back hallway was overcrowded, the dingy basement was full, and I was bringing home more and more records since there was no space at the store. We knew it was a risky opening a record store during a pandemic so we only had a two year lease and that ended up being a blessing. As two years approached, we knew it was time to start looking.”
Cahill made the switch to 117A Galen St. this past October (pictured above), tripling the size of Wanna Hear It and tacking on a bigger basement that customers can peruse for serious crate-digging. With the extra elbow room, Cahill is bulking up on genres that are more distant from emo — such as jazz — and hopes to host events as he did at the Main Street shop.
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Former Cambridge staple Stereo Jack’s Records also underwent a major transformation this fall. The record store moved from 1686 Massachusetts Ave. to 736 Broadway in Somerville after owner Jack Woker sold the business to employee (and respected area musician) Chris Anzalone. With new tenant and cannabis dispensary Budega essentially pushing Stereo Jack’s out of its longtime home, clearing out the Mass Ave. shop wasn’t optional. Anzalone purchasing and relocating the business, on the other hand, was a clear act of faith.
While Woker began his retirement, Anzalone got to work moving thousands of records — and the original Stereo Jack’s sign — to its new Ball Square location, which opened in late September. While the footprint of both shops is roughly the same, the new era for Stereo Jack’s signals that the demand for vinyl is strong enough to not only preserve the shop, but also give it new life.
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The trend doesn’t stop in Boston, either.
Thirty-five minutes outside of the city, Bridge Nine Records spent 18 months transforming a 1930s North Shore car dealership into its first-ever flagship store. Founded in 1995, Bridge Nine’s history as a Massachusetts-based DIY label spans over 25 years and 300 releases. The brand’s “culmination of a 27 year journey” arrived in September, when founder Chris Wrenn unveiled a brick and mortar shop at 282 Rantoul St. in Beverly.
“You either find a cool retail space on a busy street, or a warehouse space way off the beaten path,” he explains to Vanyaland. “This space had both on a cool, busy street with a lot going on.”
Bridge Nine already knew what that “off the beaten path” life was about. For years, the label operated from a warehouse located in an industrial complex, cut off from most social interactions.
“I’d been in the space for 14 years and wanted to move for a while, but kept putting it off because who has the time to relocate almost 10,000 square feet of stuff?” Wrenn notes. “With the pandemic in full swing I was working hard doing the job of a few people who couldn’t make it into the office, but there were a lot less moving parts. I knew I had to find a new space and make it happen before I got pushed out.”
Wrenn committed to the space in Beverly — and the prospect of an official Bridge Nine record store — in the summer of 2020. After 18 months of renovations on Rantoul Street, he opened the shop to the public in mid-September, stocking a variety punk and hardcore music, selections from the label’s catalog, and Boston-themed apparel from Wrenn’s other company, Sully’s Brands. In terms of vinyl’s popularity, the timing couldn’t be better.
“I think people were stuck at home and reconnected with their love of vinyl,” Wrenn muses, reflecting on the pandemic’s influence in record sales. (Although he acknowledges the trend isn’t without its downside: “It is selling well, but it’s taking forever to get pressed these days,” he adds.)
“I don’t want to be hidden away in some mill building anymore,” Wrenn says. “I want to engage with people and be a part of a community.”
Thankfully, that music community is already present and growing — and with the arrival of these bigger, reestablished record stores, there’s no reason for vinyl lovers in Massachusetts to stop “spinning” anytime soon.