Burlington Records

Sometimes I really need a day like this….

I was at Burlington Records on Thursday 9/17/09 opening up doing some cleaning and a group of guys walk in. Pretty quickly I’m like, hey, you’re Chris Robinson, which he agreed was in fact the case. I’m not super familiar with the rest of the current line-up of the Black Crowes, but most of the guys were there too, including Luther Dickinson from North Mississippi Allstars.

I’m not a celebrity whore, never wanted to be backstage. I like to be about twenty feet out from the stage right in between the speakers. I know some people who always want to meet musicians, get autographs etc, but it’s just not my thing…and the Black Crowes happens to be one of my favorite bands of all time. Though I haven’t followed them too closely over the last 10 years (family, new house, opened two new record stores, you get the picture),  the guys at my other shop, Riverwalk Records, are known to shake their heads when they come in two days straight and I’m still playing the Black Crowes. My favorite album being “Three Snakes and a Charm “which I think came out in the mid-90’s.  Between 1995 and 2000 I saw the Crowes 10-15 times at venues like the Crest in Sacramento, Maritime Hall in SF, HORDE in Denver and at Shoreline. I think the last time I’d seen Chris play was with New Earth Mud at High Sierra Music Festival in maybe 2000, before I moved out here to Vermont.

Anyhow, I figure these guys want to be treated like anyone else, so as I see the records they are picking out, I suggest some stuff, and let them know the’re a basement full of LP’s as well if they really want to do some digging.  Except Chris and Luther, the rest of the guys clear out after a while.

Luther brings up some records to the counter, and then Chris comes up and starts putting records on Luther’s stack, saying he needs this LP and that, one being Richard and Mimi Farina’s Greatest Hits on Vanguard. As Chris goes back over to the stacks, Luther quitely asks me to stash them behind the counter adding, “I can’t keep up with Chris”.

I remembered seeing they were coming to town to play Higher Ground and planned to buy tix, but had totally spaced it. My mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer five months earlier, so I’d had one foot on the airplane the last few weeks and hadn’t thought about much else. In fact that day, my bag was packed and in the truck, in case I had to fly to Denver to be with her due to recent complications, though it was looking like I wouldn’t have to fly out that day as my brother was on the way to be with her. I asked Luther if he knew if there were still tickets. He wasn’t sure but, immediately offered to put me on the guest list, even adding a +1, punching my name into his phone. We talked for a while about how it was weird that at our age (we’re both about 35), that we’re starting to lose family and friends.

So after Luther takes off Chris asks if he can check out the basement, leaving hefty stack of records on the counter. I take him down there to the dungeon, which had a bunch of fresh stashes in it, and showed him where I thought he’d have the best luck based on what it seemed he was after: late 60’s country-tinged psyche. There was a great stash down there, and he came up with some Sir Douglas Quintet and some other oddities about a half hour later. I started ringing him out and he saw a rare Jerry Yester record called Farewell Aldebaran in the case that he wanted, and asked me to add it to the stack, which I said I would. 

I know I said I’m not an autograph guy, but I am a poster guy, so while he had a pen in his hand to sign the credit card slip, I had him sign a 1996 Further Festival poster I had pulled from the shops inventory of original concert posters. He then asked if there were any more vintage Grateful Dead t-shirts upstairs at The Getup, which you enter from the record store. I wasn’t sure, but sent him up to look. He ended up with an original 1970’s Peter Tosh tour shirt.

Chris leaves the shop and then these two fine ladies, Alissa and Melissa walk in.  I have to tell somebody what just happened, so I do. They said yeah we saw them come in but couldn’t be that close to their idols, they were huge fans. They’d seen the previous nights show in Providence, RI.  Alissa said she’d seen them over 100 times.

About this time I realize I forgot to add the Jerry Yester record to his stack. I mention this to the girls and say, oh well, I’ll bring it to them tonight at the show. They said they thought that kind of service was worth a song request and asked what I’d like to hear them play. I said “Girl From The Pawn Shop”, which the girls said wouldn’t happen as they played it in Providence and they don’t repeat songs one night to the next. So I asked what they wanted to hear. Alissa said “Feather” or “Appaloosa”. So I made up a note about how this girl was a huge fan but wanted to keep her distance, and slipped it into the records protective sleeve for delivery that evening.

The shop was jammin’ that night so I got to the show at the last minute and met my store manager, Pat Quimby out front. He knows some of the Higher Ground security people so we passed the record along, hoping to get it to them at setbreak, so Chris would see the requests, but security said there was no set break. Oh well.

Great show, really had me blissed out. I only recognized about 4 songs but thoroughly enjoyed hearing all the new material I’d missed while raising my family and settling into Vermont. Needless to say they didn’t play the requests as they probably didn’t get the record until after the show. Honestly, I just hoped he got it as he’d asked me to include it a couple times and I spaced it out. That and its a $100 record I didn’t want lost in the backrooms of Higher Ground.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The following week, Pat calls me at Riverwalk from the Burlington store and informs me one his Higher Ground security friends had dropped off a poster for us. It was a promo poster for Before the Frost, said  ”thanks jacob”, and was signed by the band.

Jacob Grossi
www.BurlingtonRecords.com