“I sometimes feel a little tinge of jealousy when I hear friends talk about childhoods spent listening to their parents’ classic records from the likes of Dylan, CSNY, and Zeppelin.”
“I don’t remember hearing much other than classical music around the house growing up. So I was left to weave my way through music discovery at my own pace. Without the ease of things like iTunes or Spotify, I spent a lot of time at my local record store. At 15, I fell in love with the Clash and the Beatles, but it wasn’t until a little later in life that I really fell in love with vinyl.
Foraging through an antique store in St. Louis, I came across this great little “Wildcat” portable record player. I took it home and “borrowed” some records from my boyfriend. I think the first one I ever listened to was David Bazan’s synth project called Headphones. Come to think of it, I still have that record.
My early days playing music were spent in the punk rock scene, where we recorded on 4-track tape machines in basements and then dubbed our own cassettes one by one. It was freeing to create something on our own and put it out there. I would make T-shirts, tapes, patches, buttons, posters, all by hand…real, tangible, physical things.
Making music is a physical thing, and putting that energy onto a physical piece of vinyl just seems right. Honestly it’s so much more work and preparation to put a release on vinyl, but the first time I ever heard my own voice floating off a turntable, I was smitten.
I remember thinking ‘Wow. Everything I do has to be on a record from here on out.’”
—Beth Bombara
Beth Bombara’s self-titled full length release arrives in stores June 23, 2015. On vinyl.
