First C I ever bought was Avril Lavigne.

Let go.

The one was Skater boy on it.

High on Teacher and Life.

First album would be doctor.

Hello.

Hi, I'm Aisha and my very first record was Janis Joplin's Greatest Hits, and I got it at Vintage Vinyl.

My first record that I bought for myself, that wasn't a kid' record was Up Where We Belong.

The love theme from Officer and Gentleman by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes.

My first album was We Sing, We Dance We Steal Things by Jason Moran.

Now, you know citie such as Chicago and New Orleans and Nashville and my hometown of Saint Louis are rightly identified as the places where American music was born and developed.

Before going to all the corners of the world that's absolutely true.

However, there's a town in Texas that, since the 1970s, has become a hotbed and center and showcase for excellent music.

The capital of the Lone Sta State is what I'm talking about.

The city of Austin, some of the very, very greatest musicians this planet's ever seen are from Texas.

From Freddie King to Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Bands such as Z.z Top asleep at the wheel, talking about the King of Western Swing, Bob Wills and Willie Nelson.

Their DNA is in the atmospher of Austin every day of the week.

And oh, by the way, they've got some great record stores and we're going to be visiting them too.

Hey, we just got here at the music Mecca of Texas.

Austin.

Ready to see some incredible stores, read to hear some incredible stories.

Ready to check out the music.

All right.

We are here at the granddaddy of all independent record stores, Foundation shop, Waterloo Records, recognized worldwide as one of the greatest stores on the planet.

We're about to go inside now.

I'm going to talk to my old friend John Kuntz.

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

Right here, right now.

We're at the legendary store in Austin, Texas, and I'm here with my friend John Kuntz, who's been in the music business as long as I have, maybe longer.

Just looking around at the store, I'm reminded of how amazing it is to see the revival in vinyl, and there were certain stores that never did with carrying vinyl, even when all the smart people were saying death of the LP.

Right.

But, it seems to me that the stores that kept the faith and kept makin sure vinyl was available right?

Where are the stores that are still around?

Exactly.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, back after the turn of the century, they say 90% of the record stores went away, and the 10% that survived a good portion of the like, they were the ones that, had never given up on vinyl.

And, I mean, it's come back, you know, so much stronger than I ever suspected, but, it's, it's just so gratifying to, you know, to see, a younger generation that, you know, had had no need for owning or collecting music other than you know, just what they could download their stream.

And, you know, the difference between being a renter and being an owner, and also kind of helping support the entire music community, i all of its many facets is just, you know, it's, at that point, you really are part of the, you know, the i total environment and otherwise you're just kind of passing by, I think.

Well, what it means is a store such as yours, it's as if the music community is an organism.

And it's a collective.

And, one of the ways I've put it is it's the difference between being in a satisfying relationship to phone sex as far as vinyl as opposed to a download.

Well one thing I always say is that, the difference between analog sound waves and a bunch of zeros and ones trying to emulate an analog style, you know your body knows the difference.

You know, these are analog listening devices.

One day we might evolve to where they're digital listening devices, but right now they're not.

And it's, you know kind of the difference between, you know, a sandwich with white bread where you pulled out, 70 things, put eight back in, and now you call it enriched as opposed to, you know, a whole grain bread sandwich.

It's it's like it's it's night and day.

You know, Neil Young said a couple of things that I truly agree with.

He once made the remark that he thinks that people in the future will look back at music from the 1990s and say, wow, I wonder what that music sounded like.

Too bad they didn't.

Recorded in analog shopping for music online is the worst.

Long download times.

Viruses and technology is literally and I do mean literally impossible.

I just want to listen to music.

How many people do you think have gone on to have careers in music, either as musicians or in the music industry who are alumni?

Quite a few.

Quite a few.

It's really satisfying, isn't?

It really is.

Yeah.

John Yoo, one of the head honchos of the record store Day Brain Trust.

So, along with a shared sense of musical community, Record Store Da allows the opportunity each shop has to showcase the local acts to stand and shine at the very businesses carrying their releases.

John, what was your first record?

First.

45.

First.

45 first LP first 35 was, Jimmy Dean, big Bad John.

Great talking record.

Right, right.

And, actually first LP was was two.

It was, rolling Stones big hits, High Tide, Green Grass and Ravi Shankar Live at Monterey on World Pacific.

Yeah.

Your first one here was about three weeks after the first record had come out.

And, that was up and on and store because, for one thing, it was the largest audience she'd ever played to in her life.

And her mom and, her first piano teacher came down from Dallas for the in store.

And it was just it was magic.

And, at the time, that was a developing artist's CD.

So it was like selling for ten bucks or less.

And we had so many people that day at the end store that bought, you know, not one copy, but to five.

There was a couple of peopl that bought ten copies and went, yeah, I'll throw down $100 because I've got ten friends that that need to hear this music.

So no question.

Waterloo has been a musical driving wheel in its town, and no better example was an acoustic performanc by this up and coming young band from the Northwest Coast on Monday, October 21st, 1991 at 4PM If you've ever wondered where the word Western in country Western comes from.

It comes from the great state of Texas.

It comes from one of the most important musicians to ever come out of Texas.

We're talking about great Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys.

Huge influence on the likes of Willie Nelson.

Today, that music he made is carried on by asleep at the wheel, headed by Ray Benson.

And it is totally in the DNA of country and western music.

Whether or not country and Western fans know that my father was not a big, big music fan, and I only heard him talk about going to see music in a way that I could tell was really important to him.

And that was when he was about to ship out to the Pacific Theater as a paratrooper in World War Two.

I remember him telling me, you know, I saw Bob Wills one night in San Diego at the pier.

And for a whole lot of peopl in the South, the Bob Wills band was the epitome of dance music with a country feel may come as a surprise to you that during the 1940s, Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys were right up there in popularity with the likes of Tommy Dorsey or Benny Goodman.

Well, I'm standing here with them.

Plunkett of the very impressive store in Austin, Texas.

End of an era.

And the era of end of the year has been going on 14 years.

15 years now.

15 years.

And you're in your second location?

Yep.

Bigger.

Better.

Bigger.

And we own it, which is great.

I think I look to you ever go into those early conferences, and I think you and Darren from Shake It and a couple other guys, and we never thought we'd ever have our own space.

And I was like, man, that would be so grea because it gives you a security.

You don't have to worry about moving out and all that.

So that was always a goal of ours.

And it just kind of we were forced into it, but it worked out.

So I don't know how y'all did it.

This well.

We never owned our building.

Okay.

But, luckily I've got a great landlord.

That's great.

Who loves our store and what can you say about the the the revitalization of vinyl?

Yeah.

I mean, I'm looking through your stacks and you're will well stocked.

I would say at this point.

And for a store such as yours or mine, our only problem is making sur to keep the music in the racks.

Or, you know for sure.

Yeah.

Luckily with us, we've been around long enough, just like y'all.

So you kind of.

You just have to kind of jump around at getting different sources like who's got this?

And oh, the getting good, the getting good on this band.

So we can we have a really good catalog.

But there's other bands that just there's nothing to get.

So and you have a steady, steady supply of used records, which is good.

So yeah, just kind of jumping around trying to find stock and or you're in one of th great music cities of the world.

Austin.

Right.

What is the indie band or the indie artist you know of in this city that you think, man, he or she really has it going on?

Oh, man, I there's a lot.

If I mentioned I'm going to miss some people, but I think like we've always been fans of like say Molly Birch and I would say Jess Williamson, she's on Mexican Summer.

She lives in LA now, you know.

But you still can't of is Austin.

Black Pumas.

But when you say well, it's still indie but well Black Pumas are opening for the Rolling Stones.

That's great.

Yeah.

That says everything you need to know about them.

Yeah.

Otherwise Saint Louis, Austin, New Orleans, Chicago, obviously Nashville, we're all great music cities.

And there's to me a special relationship with a store suc as yours to the music community.

I mean, you tend to be sort of the, the, the gathering house and the area where both the artist and the music lover are able to be standing side by side with each other.

You know maybe you're having an in-store, maybe they have a brand new release, or maybe it's their day off and they're in buying music for themselves.

And that's why we're here.

Well, I think it becomes I mean, just I look back to me when I was shopping for records as a kid, it was like part of your routine, your ritual.

And that was like.

And so I could see these people coming back and they were just like, oh, you know, and they come in every week or whatever every Wednesday.

Two and they check these certain sections and it's part of their, you know, I don't know what you'd call it, but like an oasis or, just their routine.

I think here's the current term a safe space.

Yeah.

Safe space.

Sure.

Yeah.

1983 Stevie Ray Vaughan is touring on the strength of his very first album on the epic label called Texas Flood.

I saw him at a club on the Mississippi River, and it was on a Tuesday night, and I think there might have been 45 people there.

He treated it like a rehearsal.

Made sense to me.

Three years after that first appearance, he's selling out the biggest room in downtown Saint Louis.

It's Brother Jimmy Vaughan's band, the Fabulous Thunderbirds were opening the show.

Stevie Ray's final appearance in my City was in 1989, standing toe to toe with Jeff Beck.

When I heard Stevie Ray Vaughan for the first time, I realized that he had made a brilliant synthesis of not only his blues godfather, Albert King, but he had also incorporated the genius and the legacy of Jimi Hendrix and his improvization that made for an incredible musical attack.

Here in Austin, we're at the memorial statu for their favorite musical son, the man who Albert King considered his blues godson, Mr. Stevie Ray Vaughan.

So right now we are in your stereo equipment room.

I am looking at vintage tube amps.

I'm looking at vintage speakers.

I'm looking at fairly recent equipment that has been made.

And, wow, when we first moved in, we thought, oh, we'll have a doorway through here.

And then once we kind of got everything built, we thought, this is really nice, is kind of like a library.

And there'll be some people that I want to try this system with this.

And so it takes a lot of patience, but they're good at it.

So the very first record was was a I grew up on The Beatles.

So I remember going, my mom would take me.

We had this deal, like if I wa good or what, I can't remember.

But we go to Jcpenney' and they had a record department back there and she goes, every time we go, you can pick one record.

And I was like, oh, bu it had to be good and whatever.

And elsewhere I said, well, I want a Beatles record.

And the girl, the sales lad said, well, this just came out.

Dave, myself, she was this just came out was Yellow Submarine and I was like, I didn't see the movie or whatever.

And it's kind of cartoonish, but I was like, okay, come on, I'll get that.

But I was debating because there was also a Yoko Ono.

I think Two Virgins was out.

That was like, should I get this?

This looks weird, but I don't remembe how old I was or like 13 or 12, but I went for the Yellow Submarine.

That was my first record.

I remember that I bought my first Frank Zappa record, Freak Out.

Yeah, in the bargain bin of the JCPenney.

Yeah.

And I was a kid because once more that that's that's one of the things about vinyl and CDs.

The LP is much mor a piece of art in and of itself.

I remember looking at that cover of Freak Out going, oh, this looks interesting.

Oh yeah, for sure.

If you're a kid growing up in this era, it's not going to be the same because you're not going to remember holding it down.

Well I would no, no.

Yeah, yeah.

In fact, at our store, the employees often will say to a customer asking for somethin they may have heard, that week, you know, the flavor of it, right?

Oh, well, you know, that's download music, right?

Right.

We don't really have that because it doesn't exist.

Yeah, yeah.

Now for sure.

Before the name Stevi Ray Vaughan became world known, his older brother's band, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, was the biggest thing to have come out of Austin, Texas, back in 1976.

I was working at Peaches in Dallas and up all the beat up station wagon with the trailer behind it and two street guys come out of it, and they asked me if I've got any kind of cassettes by the blues master out of Chicago, Junior Wells, I explained.

We did, and they took a look around.

They got back in the car and those two gentlemen with harmonica player vocalist Kim Wilson and the guitar player Jimmy Vaughan.

The 1980s, they had their hits.

They became the biggest thing out of Austin at the time.

But in the late 1970s, in the era of disco, they were this hard working group that was also the house band at Antone's, backing the biggest names of blues in those days.

And I can tell you this, it wasn't the Bee Gees and the name of the stores and tones.

Good to see you, sir.

I mean, you've been to Saint Louis few times and I'm happy to be abl to meet your acquaintance here.

Love, Saint Louis.

Yeah.

Welcome to us.

So, you know, Austin has such at this point, an international reputation as a music center.

How long has has it been that way?

Was it that way, you know, before the, Austin City Limits show or.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, it's always bee a healthy music scene here, and, Austin's kind of a even back in the early, early 60s and I guess back into the 50s.

It's some kind of an oasis in Texas, very liberal town, you know, and a lot of artists and, musicians and, you know, creative people who are attractive.

It attracted here and, you know, it was Healthy Music City in the 60s with 13 full elevators and all those bands like that.

And I up into the, a place called the Vulcan Gas Company, which is kind of Austin's answe to the Fillmore Auditorium, the the hippie psychedelic dungeon is for ethical ism.

Yeah.

And, and that led into the Armadillo Club, which had some world renown.

Right.

And it's always, you know, all sorts of music, blues music and countries, rock n roll.

I mean, it's yeah, it's a very healthy scene.

Yeah.

It's all it's all here in the, in the soup.

The store actually opened in 1985.

The clubs from 70, 75, of course, both are the, creation of a gentleman, named Clifford Antone.

Yep.

Clifford.

I always thought of Antone's club in, in Austin as a place that really kept the faith.

As far as the blues, including during the era of disco.

And when, you know, blues really ha become an almost invisible music as far as the media.

But here was this club, and you could go hear the best of the best in there because, Clifford and was somehow able to get the likes of, Bobby Bland and Albert Collins and, you know, it was a, place where the Thunderbirds worked out.

And of course, there was this other guitar player.

I can't remember his name.

Oh, yes, Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Yeah, yeah, here was a club with an owne that was willing to do whatever it took to get the best artists, both on the Chitlin circuit and the young artists coming up in that era in his club, giving them a place to play.

And, you know, any plac where Albert King would go down from, Saint Louis to play, you know, did their hair and and drive on down to Antone's in, in this town.

He must have liked the place.

Well, Clifford wa very passionate about the music.

You know, he would out of his own pocket, pay play for all of his heroes to come here.

Muddy Waters and Jimmie Rodgers, Walter Horton, Luther Tucker.

Hubert Simon would often be working the club, breaking the door when he wasn't playing or, you know, it was it was a great time.

You know, like I say, sometime the crowds would be sparse.

It was when he opened, it was kind of the height of the, progressive country scares.

A lot of people curl up here when all that was taken off, Willie Nelson and, you know, very wily Hubbard cats like that Jerry Jeff Walker.

But, he opened his first show was Clifton Chenier.

Yeah.

He's from he's from Port Arthur.

So he loves the music from that Gulf Coast region, for sure.

And, I don't know, he would just do whatever it took.

So Clifford and Tony passed, I believe, in 2006.

Yeah.

And, there was the club, there was the record store.

And I think you were telling me that, the employees at that point bought the store right when he passed.

Yeah, a little after he passed.

Yeah.

And, now, you and your wife, Eve, you're both working musicians, right?

And, you both have day jobs.

Yeah.

And music.

I couldn't ask for a better day job.

We have a lot of, you know people from all over the world.

Come, here's a bit of America.

We call it Ford's barbershop here sometimes.

So Codgers hanging around, talking about music and.

So what was the first record you bought?

I'm just thinking about that.

And, and and, let's think like it might have been, Johnny Cash.

Don't take your guns to town, son.

You remember that song?

Oh, yeah.

And, you know, the early 60s, but I grew up, there's music all on my house.

My parents were big music fans.

My mom loved Bob Wills and, you know, Milton Brown in the brownies.

She, you know, she hung around some of the dancehalls in Fort Worth when she was a kid.

You know, that's where I'm from.

Fort Worth, by the way, what would you say your favorite or the most memorable, for good or bad and for the been a lot of great ones.

We had to model for play here and, lazy last year.

Later a few times.

We usually back them up.

Nick Kerns and he's played with us with Lester here.

Josh, I don't know.

We've had so many over the years.

On the lot of people just come in and sound like we had Barbara Lynn and Albert Collins and folks like that just, you know, meet and greet type thing.

But, yeah, he's played here a few times.

Gary Clark Jr.

So and my wife grew up together.

They've known each other since third grade, taught each other guitar.

He often credits her as, you know, the first person to show her stuf on, show him stuff on guitar.

So John Clay said, yeah, I gave and I gave Gary Clark Jr couple lessons, but I could see he really didn't need to be shown too much.

Yeah, I mean, my, my so and daughter both in the music.

My son, is a hip hop artist and, but he loves all the old James Brown, all the funk stuff.

We often deejay together.

My daughter, has a punk band called Sailor Moon who were, her voted, you know, best punk band in Austin.

But she loves, you know, everything.

Sun Ra to Professor Longhair.

You know, it's just like.

So I'm very happy.

With the way things are turning out with the younger, younger folks, checking out the scene in Austin was a musical pleasure.

And I said my own private vinyl fetish when I found a rare blues 45 at Antone's called goo for the.

But you never know what's happening at our home on the Del Mar loop.

There's a sold out show right down the street, and the headlining band wants to drop by for a visit.

Hey.

Hi, I'm Marissa from Mannequin Pussy.

Hi.

And I'm Maxine from Mannequin Pussy.

And the first record I ever bought for myself on vinyl, Black Sabbath's Master o Reality for sale for, like, $6.

And I thought, I have to have this.

My first record I ever bought for myself o vinyl was Magical Mystery Tour.

The Beatles actually own the masters, so this album,