In the picturesque town of Lewes, England, there is a little music store where the tea kettle is always on and the turntable is always spinning.
Union Music Store is tucked away on Lansdown Plaza, with posters and guitars lining the windows of the funky, navy-blue shop. Longtime friends and business partners Danny Wilson and Del Day bought the shop a year ago and haven’t looked back since.
“Me and Del started a little label together about three or four years ago,” Wilson said. "When the original owners were selling the shop, they knew us from our label and asked if we wanted to take on the shop for them, which is interesting.”
Before Wilson and Day bought the shop, rows of CDs lined the floor. Now, one can find rows of vinyl records lining the floors and walls.
“We bought a lot of the things that the previous owners had, but it was mostly CDs, so we’ve changed it a lot" Wilson said. "Originally, the shop just sold Americana and folk music, and now it sells jazz and rock, and a lot of stuff apart of what's popular on the charts.”
Unlike other record shops that carry a wide array of popular genres and new trending albums, Union Music Store is stocked with unusual finds and eclectic albums — both second-hand and brand new.
“We try to stock kind of weirder more left-field stuff than other shops,” Wilson said. “A lot of second-hand stuff comes in, and all the new releases and re-issues comes from all the distributors with the big labels or little labels. But there’s a bunch — probably six or seven — more distributors that we have accounts with and every week we put in an order with different companies.”
Wilson said he believes the shop reflects his and Day’s style, but also that of Lewes and its people.
“Lewes is quite an artsy town and I think the people here really help support us,” he said. “Firstly, Lewes is a fairly wealthy town and it’s really quite bohemian in lots of ways, so we’ve been able to be more left field than we thought immediately. We thought we would have to build up to it a bit more, but the weirder the stuff we buy ,the more likely it is to sell, interestingly. But obviously, there’s all the classic rock stuff that sells, too.”
As with any unique shop, Union has gained a number of regulars — some of which swing by every day to flip through newly-acquired records or seek insight on musical topics and opinions.
“We have a lot of regulars that come in every day,” Wilson said. “They don’t buy stuff every day, but the kettle is always on. There are people that come in literally every day for a cup of tea and a chat — it’s nice. It’s amazing if you start running a record shop how quickly a little community forms around it. We have real regulars, you know, people that very soon start to trust your judgement on things — if it’s trustworthy.
"You will get found out very quickly when you know your stuff, because people who come into record shops every day are pretty nerdy in that they will know everything about records. Quite often, these people come in looking for something that they don’t quite know about, and we stock loads of re-issues and re-releases of very obscure stuff."
Wilson cited the example of Suzanne Ciani's "Flowers of Evil," which is ’70s electronic.
"There will be regulars that come in here and see that and would be like, ‘Oh, that’s amazing,’ and wouldn’t necessarily have had to heard it before. They’ve gotten to the point in their collecting and their listening, that anything that kind of sounds mainstream in any way isn’t interesting to them. I’ve actually got a customer that doesn’t like anything that sounds musical, so he kind of likes essentially noise — but he still collects records.”
Wilson’s interest in vinyl records started when he was young, and since then his personal collection has continued to grow. He estimates that he owns over 2,000 records in a variety of styles, and isn’t opposed to purchasing albums based on their cover art.
“I’ve bought plenty of records because I like the cover art, and the whole saying that you can’t judge a book by the cover — I think sometimes you can,” he said. “If you can’t hear it or can’t read it while you’re just browsing, then you got to have something that’s going to talk to you.
“I remember one the first records I ever bought, I was probably about 11 or 12, and I went to a car boot sale and found this record by this real kind of hippy guy named Steve Hillage. I didn’t know who he was, but he just looked like a total cosmic dude. I remember just looking at his photo on the cover and thinking, ‘I’m going to buy that.’ I still like him even now — so I’m quite a fan of judging a book by its cover.”
So, if you’re looking to expand your record collection, or just want a fresh cup of tea accompanied by a friendly chat, Union Music Store is the perfect place — and remember, sometimes judging a book by its cover can lead you to new experiences.
