“My journey into vinyl started in the early 2000s. I was living in Dallas off of Lower Greenville. My friends were living on one side of a duplex, and I was on the other side. There are a lot of old homes in that neighborhood, most with old wooden floors. My neighbor Alicia was holding onto her grandad’s record player (she said it was strictly Johnny Cash when it was in her grandparents’ hands), and I’d hear it from next door or when I was over hanging out.”
“It was a ’60s Sears Silvertone Solid State Console, and man did it sound good on those old wooden floors. We moved on to different streets in different houses in that same neighborhood, and I ended up with the record player. It sits in my current place about 12 blocks south in Lakewood; the needle had been funky, and the arm a little wrecked, but with the help of my friend Jason, we got it back to good.
I go through the older side of my collection with a little bit of a laugh. I didn’t know what I was shopping for back then. I was excited to grow a collection, but pretty dang broke, in and out of town on tour as the drummer for Young Heart Attack, Polyphonic Spree, PW Long. That led me mostly to Half Price Books and to The Kinks, XTC, the Stones, Dylan, and a lot of soul records.
These days, I’ve been listening to a few I picked up at Good Records, like Luna Rendezvous, Yo La Tengo And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out, and that new Kasey Musgraves record Golden Hour sounds killer on vinyl. Currently listening to Ike & Tina Turner’s Workin’ Together.
Putting my first test press on that same Silvertone console was an experience. I feel like this record player has soaked up all of my influences and now it’s all coming out on this debut Taylor Young Band record. With compressed music like CDs, and now all of the streaming services, it’s a breath of fresh air to hear the real lows and the real highs of vinyl. It feels like it makes the music itself more real.
So, it was only natural I put this first record out with my friends at Hand Drawn Records. They’ve been around since 2011, and opened up a record pressing plant in 2017. They are doing some major expansion this year and will make a lot of the vinyl you’ll see hitting shelves in 2020, and hopefully in perpetuity. It feels like a good home, and I couldn’t be more excited.”
—Taylor Young
Mercury Transit, the debut full-length release from Taylor Young Band arrives in stores March 6 via Hand Drawn Records—on vinyl.
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PHOTO: WILL VON BOLTON
