Endangered species

What’s destroying Tulsa’s record-store habitat

A few weeks back I stopped by Tulsa’s newest record store, Holy Mountain, at 1416 E. 11th Street, hoping to find owners Jay Hancock and Violet Rush behind the counter. Several customers milled about the deep, narrow, high-ceilinged room, talking with the trucker-hatted Hancock and panning the bins for gold. I set to idly picking through records myself, sleepily looking for nothing in particular while the crowd thinned out. I gasped when I flipped to a record I’ve wanted since last year. I ran to the counter, bought it, and fought the urge to throw it on the store’s turntable. 

That experience—a “eureka” moment in a brick-and-mortar record store—is becoming increasingly rare. In Tulsa, it’s an experience in constant flux, where the opportunity presents itself just as quickly as it recedes back into the void. For a town with such a rich scene and history in music, the question is often asked: “Why can’t Tulsa keep a record store?”

From shops of the past like Mohawk and Seasick to the more recent casualties of Under The Mooch, Vinyl Countdown, and Size, all have shared the fate of the closed door, leading some to call the record store a cursed concept here. Jay Hancock, who worked for three of those stores, says he has seen shops fail for their own reasons, and not simply because they sold records. Burn-out, moving to another state, the financial burden of providing for a family in a fickle market, and tough real-estate deals, he told me, have all helped kill record stores in this town.

“There’s definitely not a curse on record stores,” said Bart Ford, former owner of Under the Mooch, which closed in late 2009. His store, where Hancock helped, was doing great until the crash of 2008. Before the crisis, Ford said, sales were up every single month. “I didn’t see it coming, and when it happened, it was devastating,” he said. Apart from the global economic collapse was the downfall his clients were “probably too nice to point out,” he told me. Ford spent each month’s revenue solely to keep the doors open, and rarely bought new stock. His store ended up with the same stuff sitting around, and his regulars ran out of reasons to be regulars.

Ford believes there are ways for record shops to survive in Tulsa, however. One way is to roll the wax into a larger, more traditionally viable enterprise—in other words, sell records on the side. “Lottery tickets and cigarettes do great in this town, right?” he joked, noting that Starship, he believes, has survived thanks to that very model. 

Starship Records and Tapes has been in Tulsa since 1972, but it’s often overlooked when music collectors wonder to each other why Tulsa can’t keep a good record store. I asked store manager, Calvin Compton, why that was. “It seems some people feel that since we are a head shop, it makes us less of a record store,” he told me, adding, “I think that is complete bullshit.” 

He confirmed that the head-shop, merch, and gifts have enabled the store to sell vinyl for as long as it has. “The record store is more a labor of love,” said the 32-year-old Compton, who has been shopping at Starship since he was 14, and working there since ‘06. The store has endured its own unique struggles: the downward trend of demand for vinyl after CDs stole the market (and their floor space), plus a forced move from their iconic spot near The University of Tulsa in ’05. When the store moved its two small buildings into a single large one at its new location at 1241 S. Lewis Avenue, Compton says customers complained that the record selection had shrunk when, according to him, it actually grew. “There has not been in the last 15 years a store with as deep of a selection spanning all genres of new-release vinyl in Tulsa,” he said.

Though Starship can pursue its vinyl dreams on rolling-paper revenue, traditional record stores like Holy Mountain have chosen to flirt with the failings of all those before them. Hancock’s time at several failed stores hasn’t put a dent in his optimism. “Learning from all the mistakes that got us here is what makes me believe we’ll be around for a long time,” Hancock said. One thing he learned is something on which he and his former Under the Mooch employer, Ford, agree: the store has to serve as a cultural nexus. 

Norman, Ford said, is a small town, but Guestroom Records can survive there thanks to the culture the university in town provides. A city like Dallas, on the other hand, may not have the culture, but their million-plus residents don’t hurt, either. “Tulsa is right in the middle of that,” Ford said, adding that the store itself could facilitate the culture needed to keep itself afloat. Hancock and Rush are aware of that need for culture, and hope to cultivate an environment where customers can catch in-store DJ competitions, all-ages shows, or zine-making workshops—a place to meet new people, hear new music, and find out what is happening around town.

Size Records Tulsa, a division of the Oklahoma City mainstay where Hancock was employed, closed up its shop at 2619 E. 15th several months ago. Though it pulled its Tulsa storefront, the store consigned a large amount of stock to Holy Mountain. Size Records Tulsa couldn’t be a culture hub because of its size and location, said Hancock. “If three people were in the store, it was crowded,” he said. 

Rush and Hancock believe their store can break the losing streak and facilitate a community that buys records in the volume the store needs to thrive. “Holy Mountain will be around until the DIY aesthetic I’ve lived by for the past 20-plus years withers away and dies, and that isn’t exactly in the foreseeable future,” Hancock said.