Record Store Day once again defies you to sleep late

Since Record Store Day’s inception, nine years ago, the number of releases on the third Saturday in April has gone from just 10 special products to more than 300. If that feels tailor-made to aggravate hardcore LP consumers, consider that it’s also the road to clinical insanity for a record-store buyer. Especially given that the first orders for the big day — April 16 — are due in January.

“You just don’t know if an artist that’s hot in January is just some flash in the pan,” says Chris LaBeau, of Josey Records.

The flip side to that early deadline is that stores don’t know until a few days ahead of RSD which items will actually make it to them.

“It’s like Christmas,” Vinyl Renaissance’s Mark Davis explains. “It’s really fun.”

But even a springtime reprise of Christmas morning, with hundreds of records, isn’t enough for some area stores. Josey Records is releasing its second vinyl compilation of local artists Saturday, and it has booked some of the bands to perform in the store.

Bands are playing at several local shops Saturday. Brothers Music KC co-owner Cole Maggart’s Americana project, Coal Hunter and friends, plugs in. So does long-running country act the Mavericks, at Vinyl Renaissance. And there’s a 20-band bill at Mills Record Company.

The Mills show also marks the first opportunity to see the new space around the corner, says owner Judy Mills. “We’re going to stop construction for three days,” she explains. “How much or how little there is to see will be a surprise.”

What might also come as a surprise is that, because the musicians are donating their time, Mills plans to give away two eight-hour studio sessions to the bands — one each at Element and West End, determined by voting fans and customers.

For other stores, just getting all that product inventoried, priced and ready to go is enough. Neither Lawrence’s Love Garden nor the Vinyl Underground at 7th Heaven is doing anything other than selling records. It is, after all, Record Store Day.

“The day is exhausting already,” deadpans Love Garden’s Kelly Corcoran.

It’s a statement echoed by the Vinyl Underground’s Sherman Breneman, who says simply, “We sell records.”

WHERE’S RECORD STORE DAY?

Brothers Music KC
5921 Johnson Drive, Mission
Opens at 8 a.m.
Bands: LosCauz, Reality & Other Falsehoods, Coal Hunter and friends

Josey Records
1814 Oak
Opens at 8 a.m.
Bands: The Hearts of Darkness, Shy Boys, the Grisly Hand, others

Love Garden Sounds
822 Massachusetts Street, Lawrence
Opens at 10 a.m.
Bands: None

Mills Record Company
314 Westport Road
Opens at 8 a.m.
Bands: A.J. Gaither OMB, Heidi Lynne Gluck, BLKFLANL, others

Records With Merritt
1614 Westport Road
Opens at 8 a.m.
Bands: Merlin, the Mr & the Mrs, Via Luna, others

Revolution Records Kansas City
1830 Locust
Opens at 8 a.m.
Bands: Fiction Department, Noah Davis & Co., Instant Karma, I Heard a Lion

Vinyl Renaissance & Audio
7932 Santa Fe Drive, Overland Park
Opens at 9 a.m.
Bands: Starhaven Rounders, the Mavericks, Sterling Witt

The Vinyl Underground at 7th Heaven
7621 Troost
Open at 8 a.m.
Bands: None