Revolver Records is set to close its doors this weekend after 11 years in downtown Phoenix, preparing to "ride off into the proverbial record store sunset," as owner TJ Jordan put it in the Facebook post that broke the news to customers.

And as the end approaches, Revolver is holding a store-wide clearance sale while pushing back its final day from Friday, Feb. 1, to the more ambiguous "this weekend" in more recent Facebook posts. All items are now 50 percent off the original price.

In that initial Facebook posting, Jordan wrote, "We have enjoyed being a part of all of our customers’ musical lives for the past decade, hopefully fulfilling our original goal of spreading our love of music thru what we believe is the best medium available...VINYL!"

This is only so much of a record-store sunset for Jordan, though.

'A more holistic arts experience'

Revolver's owner has already opened a new type of shopping experience, Mojave Coffee + Records, at 4747 E. Thomas Road.

"There's only 24 hours in the day," he says. "And you only get so many years of life. And a few years ago, I started looking at how I was spending my time and what we were doing for the community and such, and I wanted to have a more holistic arts experience, with coffee, books and film, but also records. Because those are the things I love."

For Jordan, doing a record store downtown with the overhead that comes with that location wasn't cutting it.

He was 33 when he opened Revolver.

He's 44 now.

"At this point in my life," he says, "I want a place to go that is a little bit more all-encompassing of a lifestyle as opposed to just a pure record store. I want to do something that's a little more my style. I'm 10 years older now. I've got a daughter. I want to dial it back a little."

The hardest part of leaving Revolver, which is located at 918 N. Second St. in downtown Phoenix (on the corner of Second at Roosevelt), was walking away from First Friday.

"To be honest, the No. 1 thing I stayed downtown for was the First Friday event, because we built that up into something that I'm really proud of," he says. "That was the hardest part of letting go."

When is Revolver's last day?

Revolver's final day of business is Friday, Feb. 1, allowing for one last First Friday celebration.

"Really, Revolver had done its job," Jordan says. "When we started, there were not a ton of record stores like there are now. Records were not back. The record renaissance was just starting, and we just wanted to open a record store that was record-centric."

At that time, he says, there weren't a lot of record-centric record stores.

"You had Zia," he says, "that had a little record section in their store. I know because I worked there. But they weren't heavy on the records. And then obviously Record Store Day played a big part. We were buying and selling records, having a great time."

But a number of factors contributed to a decline in record sales at Jordan's store.

What caused record sales to decrease?

"People started hanging onto their records," he says. "The downtown area blew up. The rents went up. Minimum wage went up. There was a period in 2014 where the city ripped up the street and I was so depressed because I had my monthly lease, my overhead, employees. The city ripped up the street and I lost thousands of dollars instantaneously."

He's proud that he managed to keep the store alive through all those setbacks. And for a while he was think of doing the Mojave Coffee concept at the downtown store.

"But it was gonna be a lot of work," he says. "And when I crunched the numbers, it just made more sense to do it here."

He's hoping to host live music at the new location. And he's already held a few listening parties on the weekends, spinning classic albums "and discussing them like an Oprah book club -- we call it the Classic Album Listening Hour."

Last week, he says, they played Steely Dan's "Aja" twice and sat around talking about it, drinking coffee and enjoying life.

"All we did at Revolver is just sell records," he says. "And that business model doesn't work anymore."

READ MORE: