Then.

Hi, my name is Simon.

The first album I ever bought with my own money was, a Nicki Minaj album.

I think it was Pink Friday.

The first one.

Hi, my name is Leslie.

The first album I was eve given was Fleetwood Mac Rumors by my dad.

Hi, my name is, Travis.

The first album I ever bought for myself was a, Queen compilation.

I think it was Queen two.

The name is Kira.

My first record that I bought, but I realized I could buy records.

Was Samurai Shampoo.

The new Jarvis album, for the new Jarvis Samurai shampoo album.

And in tandem, the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack.

Now this is a media storag unit that's called a vinyl LP.

And this is a media storage unit called a seven inch 45.

Both of these have been around the block.

Both of them are a little worn, but they still sound better than that MP3 or iPod.

Remember, there' nothing like a good vinyl fix.

So the question is what else are they lying to you about?

I want everybody to get up now.

Let's do the Saint Louis break now.

Come on.

Oh, God.

Break it down.

Oh, not in Chicago.

Let's get together in the Saint Louis.

Break that.

You.

Well, the roa show is right here in Nashville.

Everybody knows Nashville is Music City, but right now, we are at what quite possibly is the most visually stunning independent record store I've been in.

And I've been in record stores all my life.

It's called Grammy Records, and my good friend Doyl here is the captain of the ship.

Hey, Tom, how are you?

You know, overwhelme by how beautiful this room is.

You were telling me that, it was originally a Pentecostal church.

Yes.

It's a mid-century church.

Was built in 1965, same year I was born.

Actually.

And, Yeah, it's just a beautiful space.

It was a churc right up until we took it over.

So we had to, you know, go through codes and get it changed to be a retail establishment.

But as you can see, the ceiling is amazing.

There's a lot of wood in here, and you really have to bring all the record racks.

But customers tell me they remind them of pews.

So, I don't know, it kind of all works.

And we've had these forever in all our locations, but physical pews for the vinyl.

And this is not your first store or even your second.

This is your third, right?

Correct Yes.

Well, being in this store is a great, reminder that, yes, Nashville is, of course, associated with modern country music.

But there's a lot more in Nashville as far as the local music scene and stores such as this that, shall we say, goes beyond what's on country radio.

Absolutely.

Well, you know, Nashville's always been that way.

We have bands in the 80 that have knock your socks off, raging fire, Chateau 15.

The world found out a little bit about Jason in the Nashville Scorchers, but, none of them ever hit.

None of them ever made it Nashville never became a scene.

But it's always had fantastic local music of all kinds.

We've got a great jazz club.

Rudy's, but, you know, in this modern era with Jack white here and the Black Keys and the Kings, Leon and on and on.

I feel like people know we're a rock and roll town as well as country music town.

You know, one of the things that that Grammys is really, like I was saying, and we made it our business model now is through, our long term reputation in Nashville and all the amazing artists that live here.

We do get a lot of opportunities to do live in-store performances, and signings here in the record store.

So, customers and fans get to meet the artists up close and personal, see an intimate, often acoustic, the not always performance.

And, you know, over the years we've had Wilco and Metallica and Mumford and Sons and you know, some pretty big names.

My favorite probably of them all is Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, just to feature them in our store.

I was so enamored of that scene in New York City, and, we brought them down.

Grammy and I brought them down for their first ever southern tour and offered them a guarantee at the exit in on a Wednesday night and got 350 people out and they made their money and we didn't lose any money, and we sort of helped establish them in Nashville.

And so they thanked us, once they got even more traction, and they were regularly touring nationally by coming back and doing that one store where our in store was, the time when Sharon Jones gave m a wonderful offhand compliment.

She looked at me coolly and went, so you own the store where my boys spent their paychecks this week and did.

So tell me this.

I understand that, this store has a relationship ship with a young woman by the name of Taylor Swift.

Yeah, well, Taylor, well, you know, she reached out when the pandemic hit and, offered to try and help us, which was just a bolt out of the blue.

I had no idea.

Apparently she has shopped here.

That's what her publicist told me.

She, is friends with people that we know.

And, Yeah.

So they said, what does Grammy need to make sure you survive?

And I'm like, I don't know.

I have no idea how to ask this woman.

I don't know what to ask for.

So we put our heads together and we just made a list of the most immediate needs right in front of us.

Obviously rent.

We didn't want to lose the building, but also, we have a group health insuranc plan for a full time employees, and the thought of them losing their health insurance during a pandemic was just too much for me to take.

So we we put that and some other things and sent it off.

And they came back and said she wanted to pay for our, group health care plan for three months.

And she sent direc relief checks to every employee and to me and Mike, the owners as well.

And let it be said, I, I found out about that, not through Taylor Swift's publicity machine.

This was kind of done on the down low.

Yeah.

And it's only when you told me that I went, wow.

Yeah.

John Prine was, you know, a hero of ours and a wonderful guy and a regular customer who came in and shopped and bought stuff regularly.

So when he put out his Tree of Forgiveness album, his his final album, we offer he offered to do this for us and if he bought the record at Grammys, you got a special free show at the Basement East, which is the venue tha my business partner also owns.

And so we sold 650 records exclusively to customers.

And this is before we had a shoppable website.

And these people all waited in line all day long to buy the record.

It was like the old day camping out for concert tickets.

People made friends with other Prine fans.

It was just magical.

And then everybod got to go see this special show.

And we moved to this building and had his mural on there.

We wanted to do something with him, so we came in here and did a Q&A and we let custom we let fans submit questions.

We had a little drop.

You come in here, write a question to John Prine and drop it in the box.

And then we gave him all t his family before the interview, and they picked the questions s he didn't know what they were, but they picked questions they knew would get him telling stories, I think.

And we had him up there on the stage and, we asked the questions and took a couple from the audience, and it was a blast.

And so special you are.

And it's Suzy Astic, participant in a thin that's called Record Store Day.

Are we?

In April of every year?

We were there from the get go.

So we and, the fact of the matter is, it is, as I've referred to it before, the, gathering of the tribe and the raising of the fla and the proclamation of glory.

Absolutely vital music.

The kids that get in line for Record Store Day and camp out for an Olivia Rodrigo record, you know, and, just like the, the, the older dudes are camping out for the Grateful Dead boxset, you know, and they interact with each other and share experiences.

And I had some of my longtime regulars tell me how much fun it was talking with some of the young folks in the line, and they were really cool and really into it.

They were glad to see it, too.

So yeah, it's invigorating.

So the question is, what was your first LP?

Well, I've never been able t answer this question properly.

I'm always surprise that people can just throw out the name, but, what's my first LP?

Well, it would probably have to be the records I pulled out of my mom's collection because she had Meet the Beatles, and I fell in love with it.

And then an older friend told me more about the Beatles, and I had to know more.

So I had my grandmother buy me a Beatles record at the department store and it was that Hey Jude album.

Not like the most, like, you know, entry point record you would pick.

But I didn't know their catalog.

And it's great.

And I love, Paperback Writer on there.

I play that song over and over and over again.

And then I got a paper route and I bought Alice Cooper's School's Out with that money.

So the first record I bought with my own money is that my first album?

But then also when I got a real job, my first record was Tommy by the Hook.

So those are al the first outlets, if you will.

This is a great store.

It's got a great spirit and vibe.

It makes Nashville look good now.

Oh well, thank you, Tom.

Thank you.

And, you walk in this place and then you just have to have a musical day and all.

I'm.

With one of the owners of brownies.

My man, Mr.

Grimes is going to tell us about a very famous band that played in this room.

Yeah, I'd have to say that, June of 2008, we had the biggest show we ever had here.

Basically, I think most people were aware of a band called Metallica in 2008, Metallica were in the, throes of starting some promo for the upcoming record called Death Magnetic.

And, also kind of dealing with some pushback, you know, from some of their fan and people regarding Napster and things like that.

And they really wante to kind of get on the good side of record retail management, their fan club, everybody.

We were presented with an opportunity to boo Metallica and the record store before their performanc at Bonnaroo on June 12th, 2008.

We were very, very excited.

As time progressed.

First we were sworn to secrecy, be very, very quiet.

So we had been told, though, if the word gets out about this, it's not happening.

If you guys if somehow the word gets out, it's not going to happen.

And, so we just kind of cross our fingers all day.

They show up at 4:00, start sound checking.

It's great.

Meanwhile, Grammys is open upstairs and there were people shopping in the store and they're going, that sounds like Metallica down there.

They're like, nah, it's a metallica cover band.

We were a little.

Did they know they were actually hearing Metallica?

But the event was only ope to people who were invited, i.e.

the, record label P, Q prog management writers, and then the there was like, fan club.

We're told they were they were going to be, invited to a metallica related event and were instructe to meet about three and a half blocks away at a place called Reservoir Park.

And they would be walked to this event.

And so when they all met there, like 75 of them, they were alerted by Q Prime Management and everybody do not get on your phones.

Do not text anyone.

You were being rude.

You're being walked to a metallica related a related event where Metallica will actually perform.

And it was so they they walked down and we came down and there was basically they were all lined up outside the gate here that that, borders the alley.

It was raining and it was like this thin where, like the electricity was in the air.

They're in here cranking and it's all wet.

And, Whenever this happened, all of a sudden, eight cops walked through the front door of grimy and walked bac through the back of the store, down the back steps, and formed a semi-circle right in front of the entrance to the club.

And at which point w had already walked everybody in and I looked to the Q Prime management person and they said to me, what are the cops doing here?

And I said, I have no idea.

The cops never have to come here.

Well, somebody needs to go speak to them.

I said, I'll take that upon myself.

So I walked over to these cops and I was like, hey, guys, what's going on?

And they said, we understand tha there is a show about to happen.

And I said, yes.

And they said, is it Metallica?

And I said, yes.

And they said, can we please what's.

And so these cops were just like freaked out.

They were so happy.

And we got the kids in the back.

They got to listen to Metallica come and play.

And it was incredible.

And, you know, so they played 175 nights, 75 people on June 12th, 2008, and then they played us 75,000 people the very next night.

And, little did we know that they capture every one of their shows and decided that it would be a good idea to release the performance tha was supposed to be at Grammys, but at The basement as a double live 1 ten inch called Live at Grammys.

And the rest is kind of history because the next about wheneve we found out about a year later, it was up from some blog and like, you know, they're going to put this record out on vinyl like next month.

We're like, we had no idea.

And then the week that it came out that was on the cove of Billboard magazine, Metallica Lee's it released his liv record from small record store.

You tell me about some other acts.

I know there's been some bands and played in here.

Well, yeah, well actually we do 125 acts a month.

It sounds like that makes.

It's it's it's.

We just pack them in.

It's there's there's that much talent here in town, which is amazing.

And what's great is like a room this size, which is 150 cap, is like the perfect incubating space for the up and comers.

And, you know, so we've had, you know, for, for every, you know, 15,000 acts you haven't heard of that have played here.

There are some that you certainly have heard of.

We had regular occurrences or regular, performances here back.

Kacey Musgraves before she got her record deal, Brothers Osborne got their record deal from doing a raucous set here.

And, we hosted some of the very, very first performances and actually the very first performance of All by No Alcohol and Ever.

And a gentleman who is up and coming right now, his name is Wells.

He's kind of a Bob Dylan, John Prine type troubadour writing topical songs and, really making a name for himself very quickly.

Other bands like Old Dominion and, you know, and things like that and, and some and some of some I've even delved, delved into getting some of my heroes to come by, literally the, two of the guys from Blue Oyster Cult and Dennis Dunaway from Alice Cooper have a band called Blue Coop, where they basically have mad records, writing new material, but came down from New York to play a gig, to do a showcase for, an agent.

And I was like I was preparing myself for them to display all these songs that they had just written.

But that's not what happened.

They came and played the voic to Colton Alice Cooper catalog with just three of them, and not tears streaming down my face.

Like to have somebody like, because Alice Cooper and kiss 100% set me on fire to do what I did.

So I was like, it's really cool to host those guys, and there's just so many up and comers that are, you know, I don't know who's going to be big in two years, but there's certainly a few of those guys going to be playing here at the basement.

We're in Nashville.

We just had an incredible interview in the basement that is part of the Grammys record empire here.

And if you ever come to Nashville, you ought to come check it out.

Y'all.

I I'm always reminded of the fact that every time I go into an independent record store, it ain't cookie cutter.

We're not in Spinal Tap Nashville.

We're in vinyl tap.

We have the owner of Vinyl Tap right here, Mr.. Todd Tetrick.

And, man, tell us about your store in 30s or less.

Well, we've been here, since 2016.

We opened on Black Friday, that year, coincidentall the day before my 40th birthday.

So it was one thing that I wanted to achieve by my 40th birthday and did i right under a smidge of a day.

But we're Nashville's only, craft a beer bar and venue and a record store.

I've had the name for a long time.

Of course, watching Spinal Tap and thought, what if we had taps and vinyl would be vital?

Tap, I believe.

So here we are.

I believe Uriah Heep was the, template for that movie.

Yes.

Yeah, probably so.

But you, you operat not only a record store and bar, but you have very interesting, hours of operation as well.

You open at 3 p.m.

on the day?

Yes.

They open till midnight.

Yes.

3 p.m.

on Monday and Tuesday and then moon on the other day.

So all the other days and open till midnight or 1:00 am, depending on the day.

And I understand that, the, how to put it the synchronicity of your business is that the bar brings in more customers in the evening.

And at a certain point, some of them see a LP here and go.

I need that.

Yes, very much so.

It definitely helps the booze with the inhibitions when you're considering buying expensive records though.

And it's just one of those things where, you know, the two things make sense to me together.

And I didn't understan why that wasn't a thing already.

For the most part.

And places are starting to pop up that are so more and more so, but the why can't I can have a beer when I go to a show, why can't I have a beer when I'm at the record store?

Oh, here we are.

So I have to, at this point ask you what was your first LP?

The first one I remember getting.

I remember being in a department store when they used to sell records.

There was no cash cast or not or something like that.

And seeing the kiss, a live to album at the at the front and I was probably I mean, oh, I don't know, 5 or 6.

We were very young at this point.

I get that being like, I want that, whatever that is, you know?

I don't know what that is.

And my mom was like, okay.

And so brought it home.

Yeah.

And I still have that copy.

And so it began.

Yes, absolutely.

And then we also and then, you know, I'm born in 76, so, a couple years later, there's thriller and there's Purple Rain, and we had those and, you know, I had the poster of Prince poster on my door at home and all that sort of thing.

So it just snowballed from there.

I also notice you happe to have a stage in the bar area, so, local performers come in, Yeah, we have, a shows a couple times a week, a lot of jazz and a lot of instrumental stuff that is kind of, cool for people to be.

They can be here and they could pay attention or they don't have to.

And it's not bothering them in negotiations, and it's not so loud that it's run in patrons off.

So we have a really cool there's no lack of local awesome musicians here to play all the time.

So what you do is you provide a soundtrack for people who are thinking while they're drinking.

Yes, you got it.

And then we also, you know we partner with a lot of record labels and artists and there's so many in town.

So when there are, you know, new records coming out, we have in-store performances and signings and have done a lot of those now over the year.

So you have the stage, you have the bar.

What is your favorite in store?

My favorite in store in inside, in the room, was, amazing artist on Third Man Records called Olivia Jean, who was one of the mor delightful people I've ever met.

And, her and her band came in and, you know, rattled the windows.

Usually a lot of times it'll be like, oh, we have a, a solo artist, and they're just there by themselves.

And their plans have stripped down, you know, songs fro the new album to the End Store.

Well, Olivia rolled in and played her entire show that she was doing on tou with their band at full volume.

And you could not move on here.

I mean, all the way, you know, anywhere there was a spot for people to stand, they were packed in.

There might have even bee little children standing outside looking through the window and they were marveling, yes.

And, we do huge bashes on Record Store Day, though, as well.

And so we've had in the last few years, you know, anywhere from 12 though, like 15 artists played during the day inside and outside.

But, for example, like last year, we had phosphorescent headline and that was a really cool.

So we've had, you know, tons and tons.

There was no lack of people.

We had Luther Dickinson play last year.

Yeah.

And, Josh Headley, like, there's been many, an artist to come in here for record store Day as well.

And that's, you know kind of counts as an in-store.

And also, I also love watching when traveling musicians come in to your store you can see in their face, oh, this is a safe place for me.

Yeah, absolutely.

And we got we see a ton of people.

I mean, there's always touring bands coming through and, you know, they pop in here, which is incredible to me.

So it's pretty, mind blowing.

The people that I've met a this point that are, you know, have been such an inspiration to me over the years.

And I looked up to and then all of a sudden I kind of know them.

That's really wild.

Just so.

Yeah.

Great feeling.

Yes, very much though, as I said before, we're not at Spinal Tap.

We're at vinyl charts.

And I really love this store.

And how about a drink?

Hi, my name is Rain.

The first album I ever bought was The Strokes, Rim on Fire, my name is Jack, and the first record that I bought that I can remember was Graduation by Kanye West.

Hi.

My name is Chris, and, know, like, it was like my first album was met at work, business as usual.

Hi, my name is Amanda Smith.

My first ever album was the Backstreet Boys first album, hello I'm Jonah Bozeman, and the first album I ever bought was a Dead Milkmen big gree lizard in my backyard, sitting.