Kevin Mitchell explains why indie record stores are so important

Kevin Mitchell (Jebediah, Bob Evans) has been amazingly supportive of Record Store Day and we caught up with him to ask why:

It was in my mid teens, growing up in Perth that I started to get heavily in to rock and roll and bands and all the excitement that the 90’s counter culture had to offer.  I would discover music on the radio, or I might discover a new band at a gig. 

However there was one place and one place only where everything came together and that was at the independent record store.  Perth and Fremantle had some great ones.  They weren’t just stores that sold records.  They were community meeting places.  I would go in to 78 records in Perth and spend hours in there, browsing, listening, picking up the street press, finding out what gigs were coming up and buying tickets. 

Every way there was to engage with music, you could do it all in the one place. 

When I got up the courage to talk to the people behind the counter who I thought to be the coolest people on the planet, I got tip offs, (“hey, if you like THAT then check out THIS!).  This is why record store day is so important and why I want to support it every year.  It’s not just because I love vinyl records. 

It’s because in this new digital age of disconnection we’ve got to do what we can to protect and support our community institutions that bring like-minded people together, give them a place to go, to connect, to discover more about what they love and to just feel like they belong.  The record store is this place for so many music lovers both now and for the future