Chief Records

Awesome record store and awesome people that own it. Had some much items to purchase. Will be back for my vinyls.

Working for a public radio station where I can play anything I like, this was a difficult store to exit. Huge selection of actual real vinyl records which appears to be a liquidation of other radio stations. I can tell by the internal labels. In this digital age it’s kind of sad to think that there’s probably something here that has yet to be converted to a lossless file, but I was just a tourist at the time, and don’t have the time to go through all of it. Knock yourself out. I love this place and could easily drop a few thousand dollars in here in very short order.

It’s highly unlikely that you’ll actually bump into the actual Ernest Tubb at the Ernest Tubb Record Shop, and if you were to do so, that would clearly be worth a few extra stars, seeing as the man’s been pushing considerably more daisies than old school country twangs these days.
If you’re arriving on the slow train, that means that Mr. Tubb was a heavy-​lifter in the adolescence (and perhaps beyond) of the country and the western movements, and this simple shop aims to illuminate that idea by keeping some of that inspiration alive.
By layout, there’s not particularly anything remarkable going on, and some of the signs gave me a bit of a chuckle (mostly if you were to photograph them in tandem… they’re specific and honorific of the types of tracks they represent). But it’s an amazing little shop to that extent, and that’s part of the reason, no doubt, that musicians in the know with a keen sense of history make a pilgrimage here. Stopping into the Ernest Tubb Record Shop won’t transport you fifty-​plus years. But it just might make you wonder what it would be like if it did.