Back in the Groove
Record-store hopping — it’s what you do when you leave town and go to another, cooler city. At least, that’s how it felt after Kansas City’s top two record stores closed over the past couple of months. Sure, you could buy used vinyl at a few Half Price Books around town or at the efficiently maintained Vinyl Renaissance in Shawnee. But there was nothing to compete with Lawrence’s Love Garden, with its fun atmosphere and excellent inventory.
But last Saturday, I went record-store hopping in Kansas City — and, no, I wasn’t on an acid trip.
I started off in the West Bottoms, where Music Exchange has relocated. We thought it was dead, but I opened the door of an ancient warehouse at West 13th Terrace and Hickory and found myself nose to nose with Ron Rooks, the store’s legendarily eccentric owner.
He lifted a garage door to reveal a first-floor room packed with LP boxes. We walked into the labyrinth, and Rooks talked about how much he liked his new location, saying he’d never felt such a connection to a place. “It’s got an aura about it,” he said. But would anyone come?
Just then, two customers wandered in, so we went to the upstairs retail space, where a Fugs record was blasting through speakers perched on a huge ceiling beam. Most everything was still in boxes, and the customers left grumpily. Then a guy in a Club Wars T-shirt came in to look for records to supplement his DJ collection. Rooks told him which boxes to look in, and the DJ ended up leaving with a handful of purchases. Rooks says the store will officially open on June 19.
Already open and swinging is Zebedee’s, in a brightly painted house near West 39th Street and Roanoke. Its owners, Dave Schenk and Steve Rector, used to own Alley Cat on Main, a record store that closed 10 years ago. The genial Schenk says he wants to book local and national in-store shows and bluegrass jams in the parking lot, along with selling refreshments, displaying art and generally creating a communal vibe. “I’d like to see the house turn into a friendly place where people wander upstairs and drink tea and eat the French chocolates we’d get them addicted to,” he said. And buy records.
I headed a few blocks west to Prospero’s Books, where, in the basement, local poet Jason Ryberg is building a record store he’s going to call The Little Red Rooster. The collection was tiny (a fraction of what the Rooster will have when it opens this summer) but full of obscure rock, soul and jazz.
So, just like that, Kansas City has gone from being record-impoverished to practically teeming with new places to hang out and buy vinyl. That ought to boost your civic pride a little, huh?