“My grandfather and his brothers own an old farmhouse in the Berkshire Mountains of Western Massachusetts. The original house is nearly ancient, built before the Revolutionary War. It used to belong to my grandfather’s parents, and has since become a home away from home for five generations in my family. It’s an old, rickety structure on an overgrown, uneven green plot of land. The place reeks of mothballs and mold. But it’s a family gem nonetheless.”
“A few years ago, the family decided to put the old farm up for sale, after deciding that there were too many heirs to the property, yet not enough of them willing to take the time out of their busy lives to care for the poor old house.
The house has not yet sold. Still, my family, especially my grandpa, mourns the loss of the farm and the cherished moments and memories housed in its wobbly old walls. After all, it’s the memories that really form the structure of the old farmhouse; and it’s those memories that make it so beautiful.
One of my favorite things to do at the farm is to rummage through all of the archaic artifacts around the house. From playing the painfully out-of-tune piano, to digging through my great grandmother’s vintage coats, to stealing pots and pans for my Brooklyn home, there’s always something magical to find at the family farm.
One of my most fond memories from the farm was when I found my uncle’s old record player and a box of vinyl. I remember huffing and puffing to blow the dust off of the cover jacket of each record, as my cousins and I excitedly sorted through the box of music.
The cousins sat on the indoor porch, and played old Motown records like Mary Wells Sings My Guy on the vintage turntable. We were all circled around the old record player, fidgeting with its many loose parts, laughing at the corny, outdated album covers, and falling in love with the nostalgic sounds that emanated from the needle riding on the grooves of the vinyl. It was a moment of true discovery for me.
It was also during that summer that I was working on the creation of my upcoming EP, “Young Adult.” And, it was after that experience at the farm that I felt an even more pressing desire to create an EP that felt tangible and everlasting, just like the records I heard that day with my cousins at the old farmhouse.
I realized that, like the old farmhouse, the magic of those vinyl records lay in their ability to inform experiences and create graspable memories. Much of our digital, streaming, instantly on-demand experiences with music today are, in comparison to the vinyl experience, rather ephemeral and barely absorbable for more than a moment.
Generally, it is the experience that accompanies the music, or in the best case scenario, the music that creates the experience, which eventually becomes the memory we hold onto. That day, listening to the vinyl in the farmhouse, I was left with a lasting memory. Not because the music was so different from any other, but because the experience was. The fact was that my cousins and I had sat down and enjoyed something together. Something that countless family members before us had enjoyed too. That was what was different.
Today, I think a lot of the beauty of vinyl comes from the shared experience of a physical moment. The beauty of nostalgia. Like the old farmhouse, whose rickety old structure doesn’t look like much on the outside, but is held up by the love of a family whose memories form its foundation; so too does the music find its permanence in our lives by the memories of those with whom we share its fleeting vibrations.”
—Rodes Rollins
Rodes Rollins’ debut single, “Young & Thriving” is available now.
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