“In the ’80s and early ’90s in rural Missouri, vinyl was as prevalent as cornfields. Not because it was cool to have a record player, but because things were just far enough behind the times that everyone still had one in their house.”
“I grew up listening on a Sears Roebuck bookshelf unit that was given to my parents as a wedding gift. They still have it, and it still works 40 years later. The first song I remember hearing on vinyl was “Baby’s Got Her Blue Jeans On” by Mel McDaniel. I still remember the little house we lived in at the time, the player sitting on a shelf under the TV. I sat on the shag carpet in front of the record player in awe, singing along and yelling for my mom to come start the song over every few minutes.
My parents’ record collection was small. My mom loved the Carpenters and Captain & Tennille. My dad had a copy of Pretzel Logic that I remember digging into because I thought the cover photo was interesting, and “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” was catchy enough to draw me in. I think it’s safe to say my parents’ collection mostly consisted of popular music at the time. We moved out of that small house, into a 14 bedroom Victorian fixer-upper in the center of my small town. We lived upstairs, and my mom opened an antique shop in the lower level. This period of time sparked my interest in being a collector.
At this time, a lot of people in the city were beginning their fascination with vinyl by flipping through alphabetized shelves at hip record shops. The closest such shop was an hour or two away from my town. In a town like mine, it seemed like every weekend there were at least a few people having a yard sale or estate auction.
My parents would attend to buy things for their antique store, and I would scour the area looking for a dusty old box of records to flip through. Granted probably 90% of the time I was let down by what I found, but every so often, you hit the jackpot and found that box of records that Jimmy or Tom left at home years before to collect dust when they went to college, or got shipped out to Vietnam. Those were the days that made the letdown garage sales worth it, when you bought every Neil Young, Hendrix, and Zeppelin record for 25 cents a piece.
Fast-forward a couple decades and I still love to dig through records. I love the hunt, I love the artwork, I love being able to hold the finished product of someone’s artistic vision in my hand. I’ve spent the last 15 years on tour, and now the kid who once dug through dusty boxes in Missouri gets to visit record shops all over the world. Nevertheless, the thrill of the hunt remains the same as it ever was.”
—Bones Owens
“Lightning Strike,” the new single from Bones Owens, co-written with Better Than Ezra’s Kevin Griffin, is in stores now. Owens’ debut full-length release arrives in stores in 2021 via Black Ranch/Thirty Tigers.
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PHOTO: ELIZABETH BROOCKS OWENS
