Starting week two of paternity leave and right now my wife and two daughters are asleep in the living room while American Pickers preaches the allure of smalls to no one in particular just a little after midnight.

I'm kinda amazed that I was even able to hit the Music City Record Collectors Convention today. My wife grabbed a flyer at Five Points Pizza a little over a week ago, it remained in my pocket through my 2nd daughter being born and turned back up just in time for me to make the effort tot attend. In what may be construed as a war of the record show in the Nashville world, this upstart programming went up in direct competition with the Alpha Record Show.

So I drop off the wife, kids and mother-in-law at Opry Mills and scoot back toward the airport to hit Alpha...stop at three different gas stations in an effort to get six D cell batteries for my portable turntable, only finding four before saying "fuck it" and just checking out what is by far, ultimately the most depressing vending of records I've ever seen in my life. A dozen dealers, tops, if not half that, desperation in the air, just almost nothing of interest to me and talk of elevated blood sugars and being in your fifties and still living with your parents...I do not think Alpha has much life left in Nashville.

I find the final elusive two D cell batteries to bring my trusty Vestax Handy-Trax portable back to life (and some Cheetos to boot), Drive up the road to the Music City Record at the Music Valley Event center, a Nashville neighborhood I've never hit before and ultimately reminds me of Gatlinburg, not knowing we had a Willie Nelson museum so close to where I sleep at night. Not sure if that's a good thing or not. This convention, only being held for the second time, was SO ALIVE. Upwards of sixty dealers from across the region, a wide selection of wares, natural lighting, smiles...this was a record show I could get behind.

I realize that a seven-day-old baby, a senior citizen, a three-year-old who's potty-training is best described as "spotty" training and a lovely wife recovering from childbirth might not last too long, I do all I can to make the best of my time. I seek out Keith from Alabama. I've bought records from him before, online and in-person, and he seems to get Detroit stuff somehow, which is the main thing I'm looking for. We exchange few words and I begin to dig.

Not sure how many people are actually hip to him, but Kain still seems eternally slept-on from my perspective. He was a founding member of the Last Poets and his "The Blue Guerrilla" album stands alone to me, as if it was recorded on Mars. I didn't know that there was ever a 7" released from the album, but "Ain't It Fine" b/w "Nubian II" is too good to pass up. I probably say the phrase "Ain't It Fine?" to myself once a month...and it comes directly from this song. This thing is affordable on Discogs...just trust me and grab it. The laconic poetic spoken word delivery seems almost entirely divorced from the smooth instrumental backing with jazz flourishes, but that's sincerely a compliment. I think I could probably make one of these songs work in a DJ set. Maybe.

Some people may be aware of Ecorse, Michigan's Revival label based on the anthology released by Numero. I found Shirley Ann Lee's "Without God" b/w "My Faith is in Thee" on Revival and I'll be honest in that I bought it primarily because it has AR-987 in the runout groove, indicating that it was pressed at Archer Record Pressing in Detroit. I've got an unhealthy pre-occupation with ANYTHING that came out of Archer. So while I'm pretty green when it comes to gospel, this is something I can jump on.

Finally, the Soul Tornadoes "Go For Yourself" b/w "Funky Thang" on Burt. I'm familiar with these same songs on the Detroit label Magic City but was completely unaware of this label/pressing. Instrumental funk that reminds me of late nights spent at the Detroit Contemporary when I was underage and just intent on "hanging out" at Funk Night...I didn't care about drinking or drugs or girls or whatever else everyone else was into...I just liked being around. If I was brave, even dancing. And particularly, getting dressed up on my own terms.

Framed on my desk are two separate photographs, one of myself and the other of my then-girlfriend and now-wife. These are photos I've explicitly chosen to be forced to look at every day. Taken one after another on an evening in 2001 or so, I'm wearing sand-colored Levis sta-prest, a short sleeve, polyester collared shirt in navy blue with white and red accent stripes, all highlighted with an original White Panther Party pin on my chest and modest black zipper boots. Malissa is wearing a drop-dead stunning black and white mod dress, hair up in a cute ponytail. A dream. We were on our way to Funk Night. I think this may be the best I've ever looked and FELT about looking in my life. Standing next to her certainly helped. These are photos I've explicitly chosen to look at every day and I still smile just remembering the feeling in the air at that time.

Further inspection shows Soul Tornadoes was pressed at Archer with AR-1074 etched in the run-out groove, getting me interested in a completely arbitrary way. Furthermore, it appears that Burt was distributed by Nashboro Record Distribution, a label/distributor that did lots of cool shit in Nashville back in the day. A Nashville/Detroit record connection is something I can always get behind. And yet even further investigation shows a cursive "GI" in the run-out groove, almost certainly meaning that it was cut by George Ingram, long-time vinyl mastering engineer (since 1969!), owner/operator of Nashville Record Productions and most-excitingly so, one of my favorite people I've ever met in my job at Third Man, the guy who's cut more Third Man Records than he can even remember and is always quick with a joke when he pops his head into my office.

The way all these elements of my life, going back decades, across different cities and different mindsets and different sensibilities is one of those unpredictable beauties that hits me smack in the face when I grab the Soul Tornadoes record. This is one of the difficult-to-explain reasons I collect records. As my 3-year-old hit me with three consecutive FaceTimes in five minutes, I know that my time is over, throw Keith $60 cash for the three records and head back to the mall to pick up the girls. Sure, if I'd hyper scrutinized each release and cross-referenced them against Discogs and Popsike I'd probably be able to get the same three titles for half the price. But is that really the point? I'll take the story and the jogging of memories for an extra $30 any day.