“Hancock’s Fabric Store. Hancock’s Fabric Store always met my young ears to the score of a Sunday morning B-3 organ.”
“You see Hancock’s meant Sound Warehouse. My mom might have said we were headed to the former but I heard the latter. All other weekly errand runs were met with great despair except this birth mother of burlap table runners and Perisan silk scarves. For while my mom would weed thru the cornocopia of assorted imported fabrics before ultimately settling on something that fit comfortably within a middle-income electricians’ budget.
I would rocket to the other end of the strip center to the aforementioned expansive wood-panel-walled mecca of music. Sound Warehouse stirred something up in me. I would start at one corner always in a quiet rush; ever conscious that it wouldn’t be long before my mom would end her bolt rifling and short-circuit my sonic window shopping.
And there with bated breath I would invade all their orderly CDs caged in excessive amounts of plastic. Perusing over the cover art work like a “vacationer” in Amersterdam and reading the listing of songs imagining what they would sound like. I would start in the more contemporary contingent before always ending up in front of that white plastic separator with “bluegrass” written across the top of it in black Sharpie. The stepchild of all genres no doubt—a victim of my granddad’s vast but one note vinyl collection.
Then, after much strenuous decision-making, I would walk my purchase up to the Sound Warehouse floor boss—an unassuming, tall, lanky hippie fella with a name tag that read “Rich” and shaggy, yet curtailed hair that had obviously met its abbreviated fate in an attempt to “make manager.” Unbeknownst to him, this altogether unassuming, moustached twenty-something was my musical Harriet Tubman. His subtle offhand reactions of “I love this record” or “I didn’t know they had a new one out” as he surveyed my selections and rang me up were life altering; washing away the insecurities of an awkward early teen. Liberating me to trust my obscure, sub-genre musical choices.
He didn’t exactly say it but somehow I knew I wasn’t the only one that thought Bela Fleck’s Drive record was a master course in musicianship and that I wasn’t off base in believing that Doc Watson sang on “Praying Ground” with as much soul as anyone Motown could muster. Maybe it was just him being a good salesman or just being kind, but I loved hearing it. I was no longer alone on the island anymore.
Here was this man-of-the-world that liked what I liked. Damn the neysayers of my inner city middle school. This “Sweet Baby James” James Taylor look-alike was trumpeting my choices. Truth be known, he probably lived with his mom and spent all his off time writing letters to Rolling Stone about their “less than stellar” review of the latest Van Morrison record, but to me he was a hero. Hero? Yes, hero.
In a few years (yeah, late bloomer) I would be rescued from the confines of limited listening by the sounds of Nirvana’s Nevermind and Pearl Jam’s Ten blasting over the airwaves and everything would change. But “Rich” would be my buoy on the troubled waters that were the pre-teen years of this young music man.
Some people find their heroes coming out of fiery buildings. Some people find them flying above basketball goals.
But mine was found re-alphabetizing records in the Sound Warehouse in Fort Worth Texas.
God bless the record store.”
—Bryan Simpson, The Whistles & The Bells
Nashville’s The Whistles & The Bells’ debut, self-titled release arrives in stores on March 4.
