The local music scene continues to grow with a new “word of mouth” venue that is quickly becoming the talk of the town.
Side A Vinyl is located at 1610 Monte Santo Ave., in a charming, yet nondescript house at the edge of Summerville. However, don’t let the unremarkable facade fool you. The building is chock full of vinyl LPs in every genre imaginable and is home to a full recording studio.
Co-owner Derek Dugan, says he loves the fact that his retro business is located in a home built in an era when the victrola was the only way to listen to recorded music.
Dugan admits he is a bit of a music nerd.
“I like the whole experience, It is not just the warm sound you get with vinyl, but the whole experience, looking at the packaging, photo inserts and lyrics,” Dugan said.
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Collecting vinyl records has surged to the point that sales of vinyl surpassed sales of compact discs in 2022, according to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and has remained dominant ever since.
Dugan says the reason is obvious to the collector; CDs have roughly the same sound quality as an MP3, to the audiophile it is sterile and even remastered recordings from the 1960s on the CD format sound almost robotic compared to vinyl. Modern musical releases also lack all the fun and excitement of unwrapping a classic LP like “Rumors” by Fleetwood Mac back in 1977, when an album came packaged with liner notes and, sometimes, little clues about how the album was made.
It was through the liner notes that fans of Rush figured out that the hauntingly familiar voice on “Time Stand Still,” was Aimee Mann, of ‘Til Tuesday fame and that Pat Benatar’s wildly talented drummer had the nerdiest name on the planet: Myron Grombacher.
Early fans of Duran Duran, especially the girls, would got giddy in the knees when the Fab Five included a full-size poster showing the boys in all their wind-swept hair and parachute pants glory, posing with a tiger, and was the perfect size to be hung on the wall next to the poster of Madonna and her crucifixes. Just a few years later, boys would follow suit, taking the eventually banned Robert Williams’ poster depiction of a robotic rapist out of the album sleeve of “Appetite for Destruction” by Guns ‘N Roses and pinning it up next to the posters of Ratt and Eddie from Iron Maiden.
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Artists of the time, starting in the 1960s with the Beatles “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” spent almost as much time and money designing the album art as they did creating the music. Combined with art were the lyrics and liner notes such as Queen’s pommish disclaimer, “And no one played a synthesizer!”
Several years ago, Dugan began collecting and selling LPs on the internet and that led to a massive collection of albums that were being traded through his living room. The success of his online business led to him partnering with local music legend, Joe Stevenson, who was interested in creating an “artist’s corner,” where songwriters and groups could record their music and also present their music live “on the front porch.”
“Joe and I have known each other for almost 20 years, working charity concerts together and we both want to see Augusta’s music scene continue to grow and we think we found the perfect place to create just that kind of atmosphere, where we can foster talent and sell some records to those in the hobby of collecting,” Dugan said.
The demographics of the people collecting vinyl, according to Dugan, runs the gamut, from Baby Boomers looking to add to their Beach Boy and Creedence Clearwater Revival collections, to the younger crowd looking for oddities from Daft Punk and Panic at the Disco.
Aside from the vinyl retail store, the partners have built a fully functional recording studio with Stevenson at the controls and have begun hosting live music in an intimate outdoor setting. According to Dugan, Augusta didn’t stop producing significant recording artists with Brenda Lee and James Brown. The massive country act, Lady A, is just the most recent set of local talent to break through nationally and Southern-Rock fusion artist, and lakeside High graduate, Eric Lee Beddingfield has long been a Nashville sensation having written the perfect tribute to the “Possum,” George Jones, with his hit “The Gospel According to Jones.”
Both Stevenson and Dugan are convinced there is even more emerging music talent in the “Birthplace of Funk” just waiting to be discovered and they have designed the recording studio component as a means to foster emerging artists.
Technically, Side A Vinyl has been open at its brick and mortar location for about a year, but Dugan and Stevenson have been purposefully low-key in their approach.
“We aren’t in competition with anyone, we want to grow the music scene, so we are building our audience one member at a time,” Dugan said.
Currently, the business hours are Wednesday – Friday 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. and 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturdays, but Dugan says they are planning to extend the hours during the summer months.
“Come on out and bring your lawn chair!” Dugan said.
Future plans are to extend the “front porch” concept to the back yard. Dugan says they plan to convert the outdoor area behind their building into a more proper venue for showcasing new artists.
Scott Hudson is the Senior Investigative Reporter, Editorial Page Editor and weekly columnist for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
