Brandon Rowley and Zachary Johnson stored large collections of records in their personal living spaces until they decided to expand their collections and share them with the Moscow community.
“We both had lots of records,” Johnson said. “We were kind of wondering why there wasn’t a cooler record store in Moscow, being a college town and all. So instead of waiting around for somebody else to do it, we decided we would.”
Deadbeat Records opened in November 2010.
“It’s nice when (students) discover us,” Rowley said. “We get a lot of WSU kids because we sell records at Adam Hart music in Pullman.”
Their space is small, but the employees of Deadbeat make special orders for customers who doen’t find what they’re looking for on the shelves.
“We’ll do our damndest to find it and give it to them at a fair price,” Rowley said.
Johnson’s favorite part is getting to listen to new music as well as helping people find music that they like and seeing when people are happy their product.
Rowley said in donation cases, they still try to give a student $10 for a box of records.
“Even when you get a box of donated records — if 95 percent of it is pure garbage, that 5 percent that isn’t garbage could be worth a lot, you never know,” Rowley said. “Or at least be standards that will sell and make the money back.”
Dylan Eller, a University of Idaho student and Deadbeat records employee, said the work atmosphere is often lonely because sometimes there will be four-hour stretches without clients.
“My job is to sit and listen to music, and that’s pretty cool,” Eller said. .
But he said customers, when they show up, are usually friendly and he tends to have good conversations with them.
“They’re coming into a record store so they are obviously into some of the same stuff as you,” he said.
Deadbeat Records will be ready for “Record Store Day” Saturday and handing out free goodies to anyone who walks through the door.
Molly Spencer can be reached at [email protected]