Elba Sessions

As I am sure most of you are aware, Record Store Day takes place next Saturday, 16th of April. We’ve decided here at Elba to scout around a bit and bring you some thoughts from Record Stores out with our locale. Today, we feature Drift Record Shop from Totnes in Devon. I’ve only ever made a ‘record store day purchase’ once before, I didn’t get up early last year to get the limited 7″‘s or anything but a couple of years ago, Drift Record Store gave away the Drift Records back catalogue, around eight albums, along with a few other bits and pieces. The majority of the artists I’d never heard of before but I now count several of these albums as some of my favourite albums, Tandy Hard – Tandy Hard, Birdengine and Thirty Pounds of Bone included.

We caught up with Rupert to get a bit more of a lowdown on Drift as well as getting his opinion on his favourite record store.

- Firstly, tell us a little about Drift and how you got started.

Drift has been in Totnes (small town in Devon) high-street since 1994, originally as a world music specialist but for the last decade specializing in contemporary rock/pop/indie/avant-garde/house/electronicia/minimalist/soundcape/disco… amongst others.

The shop has always been run on a rolling 12/18 month schedule of the best new music we here and love to promote. We’re very lucky that we have such a good set of customers (or perhaps good fortune in that we’re one of only about five record shops in 600 square miles) and it has enabled us to get behind labels like Woodsist, Souterrain Transmissions, K, Holy Mountain, Anticon, Tri-Angle… support and stock people doing really special things. Not too bad for an indie record store in a tiny little conservative safe heaven in the farming countryside. We can pretty much do what we want and I think that people recognize that we care about… so keep coming back!

- You have an online store as well as the shop. Is it important for a record shop to offer an online option in this day and age and do you find you get orders from all over the place?

We went online about 9 months back and it has been nice to meet more people that way also.

shop: www.thedriftrecordshop.co.uk
blog: www.driftrecordshop.com

- Does Drift have any plans for Record Store Day?

We’ve got a SMASH load of new music coming in so we’ll be trying to keep calm amongst the chaos of guys in denim looking for the illusive Queen 7″. Besides this we’ve been stock piling some great treats and we’re going to be dishing out (amongst other warehouse finds) Some rare Dungen vinyl, a couple of Warp Box Sets and a few copies of Thom York + Burial + Four Tet… so there’ll be some rare stuff flying about in the shop come Saturday 16th.

Come Sunday morning we’ll drunk still and have empty wallets and full record bags I am sure.

- You also have a label, Drift Records. How did this come about and do you find having it alongside the shop mutually benefits each endeavour?

The label came about primarily as a means to releasing my first album (The R.G.Morrison – Learning About Loathing) and just got a lot of good support. We’d put out Thirty Pounds of Bone and Birdengine pretty quick after that and we got some good momentum.

I think running the label made me very sympathetic in running the shop; I listen to all promos we get, I take things on sound not press release, spread the shelf space out a little… get behind things that maybe other shops don’t have the opportunity to. We root for the little guys!

- Some of my favourite albums in my collection were actually released on Drift, Tandy Hard and Thirty Pounds of Bone, do you have any future releases planned?

Thank you!

… Having said all that I did only this week start looking into licensing Townes Van Zandt material plus I saw band called ‘Barr Brothers’ who really blow me away… so you never know!

- Other than Drift, of course, what’s your favourite record store and where is it located?

I am and have always been a huge fan of Rough Trade (“west” now). It’s just such a great outlet. Waterloo records in Austin Texas is very thorough and very friendly. Amoeba Music in LA is just something else… be careful!

I love record shops… I always make a point of going and meeting people in them. Spencer at Rough Trade is tireless, Simon Pure Groove is a genius and Stephen at Mono is a great guy also.

- Do you remember the first record store you visited and what you bought?

‘Our Price’ in Torquay – I remember going to buy Blur ‘Leisure’ … I did own ‘Substance’ before that… mmmm James maybe? Frank and Walters maybe? I also had ‘should I stay or should I go’ on 7″… that was quite early?

- What’s your preferred format?

Vinyl… A nice heavyweight 10″ always gets me most excited. I bought two copies of the ‘Factory Floor – Wooden Box 10″ ‘ as it was just so pretty.

Now, I usually like to get the gig reviews/post match up pretty sharpish on the Elba Sessions site so please excuse me for being a bit lax this month! A mixture of putting on two gigs in two nights, organising Elba Annual posts, starting a new project, work and a few beers at the shows, have pushed back what will be (mostly) a photographic memory of the evening! This is what happens when you man the door! (Apologies, for the size of the photos, I just couldn’t get them to fit right this evening but there’s a link at the end to a gallery!)

Up first, for his first of three Elba engagements, was Conor Mason. Just off the boat from Derry, Conor started with a set of songs from his debut LP ‘When It’s Over’.

Next up, one of my new favourite bands, Rags and Feathers. It was the first time I’d seen them and already I can’t wait to go and see them again. They are well worth checking out and a lovely bunch. Julian and Andrea even had an impromptu DJ set on the Opry Wheels of Steel. All I can say is that they are just a huge slice of folky goodness!

The third band of the evening were The Moth and The Mirror. Fresh from a couple of dates with Frightened Rabbit (they also support them at their Dec 22nd ABC show) they were on top form and went down well with everyone. They were the perfect build up to the last band of the night, Le Reno Amps.

This was to be Lindsey’s last show with the Amps and the rest of the band ‘suited’ up for the occasion. After a country heavy opening set, the Amps fired on all cylinders with tracks from all three of their albums, with a couple of extras added in. There was even time for an onstage plea for a new bass player which I am to believe has still not proved successful. Finishing with a rendition of Johnny Cash’s ‘Daddy Sang Bass’, it was a fitting send off for Wolfie.

If anyone knows a bass player…???? (There is a strict criteria!)

Thanks to Steph Mulligan for the pictures, some can be viewed at a better size here…(more to come). Also, a huuuuuuuuuuuge thanks to Mags and her staff at the venue, you are unlikely to find more welcoming venue staff anywhere!

We are delighted to announce along with the peeps at Drift Records the details of a special christmas show!

When we heard that Elba favourites Le Reno Amps were soon to be a man down, we couldn’t just stand by and simply watch, we had to mark this sad occasion and the best way, it was decided, was to have a right good hoe down, and where better to have said ‘hoe down’ than the institution that is The Grand Ole Opry. A stellar bill has been assembled for Zinzi’s last ‘Amps’ gig on Thurs 3rd December including The Moth & The Mirror, Rags & Feathers and Conor Mason.

We hope you will join us to give Wolfie the send off she deserves on what should be the event of the week!!!!

Tickets can be had here…