Vinyl spins again in Dallas Dust off your record collection; new record shops are popping up in North Texas As long as hipsters have been growing beards and wearing fedoras, we’ve been promised the return of the record store. For years, stories on that subject have read like cover versions of an old hit: Audiophiles are back in the groove, ears cocked toward the warm, beckoning crackle of a needle on freshly spun wax. Nostalgists have returned for the experience, ya dig, the artwork and liner notes and gatefolds filled with yesterday’s seeds and stems. Urban outfitters, armed with cut-rate Crosleys that obliterate your records after three spins, don’t want to miss a beat, either. Finally, the rumor is true, at least in Dallas: The dead business model lives again. Last week marked the grand openings of two new vinyl-mostly stores in Dallas: Spinster Records on West Davis Street in Oak Cliff and Josey Records in northwest Dallas, on Josey Lane and LBJ Freeway. They join a just-opened third offering: Off the Record in Deep Ellum, filled with Good Records’ good records and booze — because the two have always gone together.

Spinster Records in Oak Cliff

“I hope they do well and enjoy it and love it,” says Bill Wisener, of 33-year-old Bill’s Records, to the new kids on the block. Wisener’s shop is lovingly referred to as the Last Record Store. “At one point I would have said I don’t understand why you want to do it,” he says — open a new record store, that is. Spinster is a boutique tucked next to an indie eyeglasses store and a chocolatier. Its owner, David Grover, vows a heavily curated stock of some 3,000 pieces ranging from punk 7-inchers to obscure offerings by native sons and daughters. He also sells hardware, from entry-level turntables to high-dollar pro models. A musician and record label owner when he lived on the West Coast, Grover attributes the rise in record stores to a sort of “retro-fetishism.” As he puts it, long ago the quartz and digital watch killed off the handmade mechanical timepiece. David Grover, owner of Spinster Records But now, he says, people want that old-school tick-tock wrapped around their wrists. “People are like, ‘I want to get a cool handmade watch,’” he says. “It’s flourishing. The same thing happened with vinyl. It’s more tactile. You get this record and you can hold it and look at the artwork. It’s more active listening than going to Spotify and putting it on in the background.” Josey Records is Spinster’s opposite, a sprawling 15,000-square-foot sound warehouse with a guesstimated stock of 100,000-plus pieces. Like Spinster, it will feature a stage for in-store performances, and its owners promise to sell turntables like the ones set up as listening stations. There’s a lounge and an art gallery — and room enough for much, much more.

Spinster Records

“This is definitely about a love for the format,” says Luke Sardello, one of four partners involved in Josey. He and two others, JT Donaldson and Waric Cameron, worked for Wisener long ago and speak lovingly of wanting to honor the legacy, as well as the days when Sound Warehouse and Peaches Records & Tapes sold vinyl by the ton. “Vinyl’s the format I’ve personally collected since the late ‘80s and have never strayed from it,” Sardello says. “But there’s also a bit of a cultural resurgence Dallas is in, and we wanted to take part in it. The original idea, ironically, was to do it in a more boutique style, but the more we thought about it, the more we decided we wanted to do it beyond a record store. We thought about making it a cultural center where you could hang out, meet some friends, look at the artwork and listen to music.” Josey Records That’s exactly what you can’t do in the Age of Digital, where sharing means posting a link to a Spotify playlist on your Facebook page. Vinyl sales are just a fraction of a fraction (of a fraction) of the music industry’s business: Last year, according to most accounts, customers collected about 6 million new records, while Nielsen SoundScan reports there were some 50 billion video and audio streaming downloads in 2013. But it is a growth business. In September, American Public Media’s Marketplace reported just 1 million 12-inch records rolled out of stores as recently as 2007.

Ben Hixon places price tags on records in preparation for the opening at Josey Records.