Collectors, musicians cherish community through vinyl connections

In 1961, 10-year-old Gerry Williams cut grass to save up for his first record. 

At the height of his collection, he owned around 15,000 personal records and his Washington, D.C.-based store, Orpheus Records, housed an additional 200,000 for sale. 

Now, Williams is the organizer of Carrboro’s bi-annual CD & record show, which he began in 2004. The next show will be held on April 13 at the Carrboro Century Center and host a group of 35 vendors  with 42 tables worth of records, CDs, posters and other music memorabilia.

Before his shows, Williams also owned Roots CDs & Vinyl, a now-closed record shop in Carrboro. Although the shop was in business for four years, he said he opened the store at the worst time — a rise in digital downloads became fierce competition against physical media. 

According to a study by entertainment data company Luminate, however, vinyl sales have begun to increase over the last few years, rising from 13.1 million in 2016 to 49.6 million in 2023. A study from the vinyl industry organization Vinyl Alliance found that 80 percent of Gen Z members surveyed own a record player, with 29 percent indicating themselves as die-hard collectors. In 2023, 15.6 million physical music items were purchased through Discogs, with 11 million of those sales coming from vinyl alone. 

“I think everybody kind of has a lot of different reasons for coming back to vinyl,” Williams said. “And, for me, it's just something I grew up with.”

He said it has been fun to see a growing number of young people that did not grow up with vinyl attend his CD & record shows. Often, Williams added, college and high school age people have a lot of questions about vinyl, which he enjoys discussing with them.

“It’s fun to see vinyl collectors and the diversity that we can see in that now,” Williams said.

Jack Bonney, the general manager of Carolina Soul Records in Durham, said many college students he interacts with are interested in music and come to the store looking to expand their collections. He said that this has contributed to a healthier market for record stores in the area.

Bonney said he thinks Discog, the music database and virtual marketplace, has greatly contributed to the vinyl resurgence. He said theCOVID-19 pandemic attracted people to online vinyl shopping over the last five years and gave people the time to become interested in collecting. 

He said the vinyl community across the Triangle has also been sustained by the large local music scene. With around 235 venues in the area including Cat’s Cradle, Motorco Music Hall and Red Hat Amphitheater, the Triangle sees a wide range of artists and music events.

“I think when you have a community where there's a lot of musicians and artists, you're going to have a better record store scene in general,” Bonney said.

James McGurk, Chapel Hill-based DJ professionally known as DJ Ras J, utilizes vinyls for his DJ sets across the Triangle area — a skill he learned from a turntable in his high school cafeteria. 

McGurk has since had an expansive career in the music industry, including interning with Biz Markie and Kool G Rap, distributing vinyl of “Protect Ya Neck” for the Wu-Tang Clan and working with John Mayer on his album “Room For Squares.”

“With vinyl, it's like having the physical copy of something in your hand [which], I think, adds a lot of depth to your experience with the music,” he said.

While a lot of DJs use laptops or CDs, McGurk said there are still plenty of vinyl DJs and a large community of vinyl enthusiasts in the area. 

He said events like the Carrboro CD & Record show create a more physical and personal nature around music that streaming platforms like Spotify usually do not cultivate. Walking around a show and picking up a record, he said, leads to casual conversations between people about music and life in general.

“Through my travels and festivals and parties and record shows, I've met so many incredible, interesting people that have added so much to my life just through my connections of vinyl,” McGurk said.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misstated the date of Carrboro's biannual CD & record show. The show is on April 13, not April 12. 

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