April Showers Couldn't Dampen Record Store Day

The evil-looking radar maps on Friday night's weather report made The Spin concerned about how the 10th annual Record Store Day would go down, since we've come to view this second Christmas for record collectors as our very own mini-SXSW with a choice lineup of free concerts all over town. Turns out we didn't have much to worry about, as local record shops put backup plans into effect, keeping folks (mostly) protected from the elements on Saturday. The chilly damp punctuated by occasional downpours surely kept some folks at home, but everywhere we went, we saw bustling crowds and smiling faces peering from beneath ponchos and umbrellas, bopping along to a plethora of the best rock bands you could hear anywhere.

We strolled up to the Grimey's compound at noon to find The Gripsweats going to town for the early crowd inside The Basement, where all the sets that would usually take place in the parking lot had been moved. Good thing, too, as another deluge began just as the group wrapped their set of boundary-stretching instrumental funk. Upstairs in Grimey's proper, Mayor Megan Barry took over the DJ booth, where someone left her speed control on 45 RPM instead of 33. Dance producers, take note: We were digging pretty hard on the drum-and-bass version of Kings of Leon's "Waste a Moment" that resulted.

Down in The Basement, we watched a little local rock history as Raging Fire ripped through These Teeth Are Sharp, their first new record since the George H. W. Bush administration. It felt like we'd stumbled through a wormhole into the storied Broadway club Cantrell's: Some of the songs date back to the band's original run, but all of their post-New Wave Southern gothic tales about finding freedom between the cracks in rigid social norms felt fresh and new. The group played like they hadn't missed a day of practice, too, with frontwoman Melora Zaner bobbing and grinning like she had secrets to tell, Joe Blanton (who was filling in for the band's late co-founder Michael Godsey) soloing like something was chasing him and drummer Mark Medley on telepathic lock with his bassmen — that was John Reed for most of the set, and later, a special guest appearance by original bassist Les Shields.

Meanwhile, over at Third Man Records, the small parking lot outside the retail shop was filled with pop-up tents to keep visitors dry as they waited for their turn to get into the store, and Matchless Soda was for sale to anyone who needed help shaking off sleep. The bar outside the Blue Room served up breakfast cocktails including bloody Marys, mimosas and something called a Blue Series Swizzler (a tropical concoction involving pineapple juice, blue curaçao, orgeat syrup and rum), and there was free music all afternoon from Lilly Hiatt, Steelism and Adia Victoria.

“This is the earliest soundcheck we’ve ever had — 9:30 a.m.,” Hiatt said to the polite crowd, which was quiet but appreciative (it was a little too early for rock ’n’ roll hollering, apparently). Hiatt’s smooth mix of Americana, blues and Tom Petty-inspired hooks sounded especially great on the dreary day. Appropriately, she closed out her set with a song called “Record,” a fitting tribute to how a good album can soothe an aching soul. It’s a fact everyone in that room was surely familiar with, seeing as how they were out in the cold and rain by noon on a Saturday to give a little love to one of the city’s most important independent music factories.

Dodging another downpour, we ducked into Fond Object's new location on Fourth Avenue downtown. To keep everyone dry, the bands originally scheduled to play at the Riverside Village shop were added to the downtown lineup, resulting in a super-sized bill of 20 bands. The building doesn't look big from the street, but it was kinda like a TARDIS inside. We wound through a knot of patrons flipping through the bins in the record store to a door in the back wall, which led us down a short hallway (past a small room where stylists from Rudy's Barber Shop were cutting hair and donating proceeds to Southern Girls Rock Camp) to a third space about the size of The Cobra's live room. 

There we made one of our favorite discoveries of the day: The Medium. The fresh-faced quartet, occasionally assisted by a fifth member who filled out their big vocal harmonies, played well-crafted guitar pop that sounded like they've memorized Badfinger's No Dice and Wings' Band on the Run — always a plus in our book. There was a gritty edge to their enthusiastic performance that made us reminisce about The Features. 

Looking through the doorway to the stage in the street-facing window, we realized that The Minks were already playing their raucous, bluesy psych, though they were far enough away that we couldn't hear them. Last time we saw Nikki Barber, Ron Gallo and his band RG3 were backing her up. Her new band seemed to be settling in just fine, with one song in the middle of the set stretching out like sparkling, swampy rock ’n' roll taffy.

If the weather was going to derail the festivities anywhere, it was going to be at The Groove, which barely has room inside for a band. But two giant tents covered the backyard and made it reasonably hospitable for the top-shelf lineup on deck. Though there were puddles and mud slicks to watch for around the edges, it felt good to be under shelter and watch miniature rivers roar by whenever the clouds burst. When we arrived, The Weeks were playing new tunes — we caught the country-tinged "Grind Your Teeth," which didn't make it onto their brand new record, Easy, and the wistful-reflection-turned-anthem "Talk Like That," which opens the album. 

Next came James Wallace and his Skyway Man, whose jubilant space gospel is always a delight. Filling in for regular touring member Charlie Whitten was topflight guitarist Sean Thompson, whose liquid licks brought more echoes of the Grateful Dead to the party than usual. There was more dancing during this set than any we'd seen all day. The emotional highlight was "Terre, 9999," an epic dispatch from a future in which earthlings live beneath the ocean, which climaxed in a fierce duel of solos between Wallace and Thompson that almost didn't happen: Thompson broke a string early on and finished replacing it just in time for his cue.

Robyn Hitchcock knows how to make us feel a little better about the undercurrent of dread that wells up every time we read the news. "The world is full of terrifying things," he said as he tuned his guitar amid a set of classic cuts and songs from his new self-titled album, "but you can still put a song on a record and it stays there. Not even shuffle can alter where it really is. And there's yet to be a machine that shuffles vinyl." Then he launched into Robyn Hitchcock's opening track "I Want to Tell You About What I Want," a vision for a kind of selective telepathy that lets you know what it's like to feel someone else's feelings. 

It would've been a thrill to cap the evening by watching All Them Witches shred on the roof of Porter Road Butcher as originally planned, but seeing them at prime chest-rattling distance in the tent was just fine. With every album, the group stretches its sound further, and their latest LP Sleeping Through the War strikes a fine balance between hallucinogenic psych sounds and early-Sabbath heaviness. In person, though, they leaned toward ferocious old-school speed and power, playing old cuts like "When God Comes Back" and new ones like "Alabaster" at ramming speed.

Our cup runneth over with local rock this year — there were bands yet to play back at Fond Object, and we hadn't even made it to Vinyl Tap, The Vinyl Bunker or Boulevard Record Shop, all of which were entering the RSD fray for the first time. But with wallet empty, feet soaked and ears ringing, we had to call it a night, and stumbled off home.

Be sure to check out our slideshow to see all the photos from the day's events.

In The Spin — the Scene’s live-review column — staffers and freelance contributors review concerts under a collective byline.