“More than anything else, our local music community has shaped our band’s relationship with vinyl. I have lived in Murray, KY since age 5, and Shaina moved to town in 2007 to pursue a degree in philosophy. Murray is home to an independent record store, Terrapin Station. It has served as a mecca for music lovers in Western Kentucky since 1985. The owners were a couple of Deadheads back in the day, and followed the band on tour for over 33 shows before settling into their own record store. There is nothing quite like it in a several hundred-mile radius, and it’s a wonder the place even exists at all in a town with a population of less than 20,000.”
“Back before we were playing music together, we were unaware that we were gaining many mutual friends through events at Terrapin Station. Shaina had a pop project in her early years of college and had given copies to the store to hand out to customers with their purchase—I happened to be one of those customers. It would not surprise me if we stood side-by-side thumbing through records at some point, or had maybe bumped into each other at one of the many DIY shows the store put on before meeting in a humanities class in 2010.
After joining The Savage Radley in 2011, Terrapin Station was where we cut our teeth playing live. It is still to this day our favorite music venue around. Terrapin has allowed us to share shows with touring bands from across the globe, and not to mention countless bands across the United States.
There is really no way to separate our relationship with vinyl from the total experience of playing in a band, of being part of a music scene, of just hanging out and listening to music with friends, and finding shared interests with strangers who would become friends. It’s all the same thing. In our video, “Milk and Honey” the couple you will see are two people whom we cultivated a friendship with during time spent at that little record store.
Zack Winding, our leading fella in the video, is in a local band called Leonard the Band who we’ve shared many bills with at Terrapin. Sally Kate Byrd, our leading lady, has been a long time supporter of our music and someone you could always count on to dance when the music started. Everything about our music videos was meant to capture our local treasures, and that includes our friends, all of which in some way lead us back to lighting up a cigarette and dropping a needle down at Terrapin Station. (Yes, you can still smoke inside).
Anyone is welcome to sit in the back of the store on one of their many couches and listen to records until the doors close. A privilege The Savage Radley has fully taken advantage of. What vinyl does is it transports you. You have to have a physical interaction with a thing to make it work. It is tangible. You have to stare the art in the face, pull it out of the sleeve, and drop the needle. It forces you to pay attention to it. It is about this bigger picture that is painted when you listen to a record. There is a story being told, and you are invited to actively participate in that story when you put a record on.
Music defines periods of time in our lives, and so it stands to reason that if we don’t like where we’re at in life, we can simply change what we’re listening to, and in doing so, we turn the page and begin for ourselves a new chapter in our own stories. We have Terrapin Station to thank for giving us this chapter in our lives. Go check it out.”
—Stephen Montgomery
The Savage Radley’s debut release, Kudzu arrives in stores on June 30th.
