'A big spot in my heart': All Day Records remains a Carrboro staple for past 14 years

All Day Records, an eclectic record shop in downtown Carrboro, celebrated its 14th birthday on Sept. 29 with performances at the shop by local musicians and DJs. 

Ethan Clauset and Charlie Hearon founded All Day Records in 2009. They started out by acquiring records at thrift stores and other places to build their collection before they had a storefront. About a year and a half later they opened the store and have been going strong ever since, Clauset said.

The store finds its roots in dance music culture, which Clauset has been heavily involved in throughout his life. As an undergraduate at UNC, Clauset worked at student-run radio station WXYC as a DJ. He later found himself spinning discs in the local music scene at house parties and Nightlight, the now-closed club that was owned by All Day. 

Clauset enjoys DJing with tangible music, particularly vinyls. While Clauset has previously DJed using MP3 files, he said working with records is a lot more fun. Flipping through a crate of records has a different feeling than scrolling through files, he said. 

Dance music has always been Clauset's thing, and he and Hearon saw a gap in the local record market. 

“There wasn't really a place to buy house or techno, which was typically more common in places like where it's from — New York, Chicago. We wanted to open a store that would cater to us, basically, so that's what we did,” Clauset said.

All Day Records' catalog also includes disco, hip-hop, classic rock, blues, folk, experimental and more. 

“I try to stock as much Detroit stuff as I can, political stuff, whatever oddball things catch my eye,” Hearon said. 

The shop is a long, thin space with white walls that juxtapose the colorful and funky records dotting them. Upon arrival, visitors might notice the calm house tracks playing in the background, as well as a couch by the door with an *NSYNC and Nicolas Cage pillow on top. The couch sits on a raised platform that acts as the stage for events hosted at the shop, and on the platform are a record player and headphones for patrons to listen to items they find interesting. 

Along the corridor, there are tons of records to flip through, with the staff picks and most sought-after records shelved on the wall. On the back wall, record and CD players are up for sale, and boxes of older records lie on the floor in front of the checkout counter. 

People come into All Day Records for many reasons. Some are foot traffic patrons from Cat's Cradle, some are regulars who love records or collectors of specific types of music and some are coming to have their collections looked at and possibly bought. 

Philip Hollingsworth, a Chapel Hill resident, is a return customer to All Day Records. On Monday, he walked out of the store with two albums — “Slayed?” by the classic rock band Slade and the “Rain Man” soundtrack. 

“Part of the fun is going through a bunch of stuff that you have no interest in to find something that you might be interested in,” Hollingsworth said. 

For many, vinyl is a collector's experience. Tallulah Cloos, an employee at All Day and a local musician, has been a collector since she was young. When she first started working there, she got a collection from someone selling at the shop that had a lot of folk and bluegrass. Hidden in the stack was a signed copy of Elizabeth Cotten's “Shake Sugaree." Cotten, a Carrboro native, is a huge inspiration for Cloos, she said. 

“This place holds a big spot in my heart,” she said. “I don't really know what I would do or be without this space.” 

Spaces like All Day Records allow people to slow down and appreciate music in its physical form. 

“I really like the routine, almost like a ritual of playing records. I think that's important too,” Hollingsworth said. “People make a big deal about making their coffee and their pour overs a certain way. I want to treat my music the same way. It's intentional, putting on a particular record.”

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