My name is Kirsten. To say I’ve traveled a bit before landing in Austin is an understatement. Born and raised in New York, my fascination with music literally started before birth. Before I came along, my parents moved across the country so my dad could get the perfect radio job. Life in entertainment, that’s for sure. They settled back in New York, and long story short, my dad became a DJ at a local club, while being a mobile DJ on the side. Eventually, he opened a record store. Music is in my blood. But I digress. My first concert was before I was born, and my first after? I was a few months old. Once my dad has his store, I spent countless hours just lounging around networking and making friends there, and helping him at work when he needed it. I was going to record company parties and events, and my heart was sold.

I grew up, went to college, and began a career which, through a long road to say the least, landed me in Austin.  I’ve made stops all through the east coast, finally settling in Texas. Music was always, and will always be there. When I had the opportunity to move to Austin, the “Live Music Capital of the World”, I jumped on it. And I have absolutely loved being here so far. Music is involved in everything, and it’s just fun – simple but true. I came across CTXgrooves.com and realized something; while I’ve seen some of what the record stores in Austin have to offer, but I haven’t seen nearly enough. When I saw the post looking for help, I thought that was perfect – this way, I can see them, and for a purpose. I also get to meet new people along the way! Sounds like the perfect opportunity to me!

So what brought me here? A love of music and a love of Austin, simply. I figured this would be a great chance to immerse myself in the Austin music scene, and for you readers, to get to see everything from a different viewpoint. I probably don’t see things the same way as Joey, rightfully so, and I have a fresh new perspective of these stores. It gives me the opportunity to meet the owners and talk to them, and relay my opinions back.

This past weekend, I had the chance to check out some stores in Austin.  Before this, I’ve been in a few places looking around for specific things, but I’ve never truthfully delved in and gotten the chance to know the stores.

My first stop, recommended specifically by Joey, was Whetstone Audio.  I can’t say enough great things about this shop.  I got the chance to talk to Brian, the owner, and find out about his store.  I absolutely understand why it is important to love what you do, and find it completely admirable that people do.  His audio equipment is incredible, and I spent some time just examining it all, annoyed that I live in an apartment and really can’t have anything serious.  There was one wall, specifically, filled with different types of speakers, and they were awesome – a good chunk of time was spent admiring the different brands and designs.  I spent a long while going through his records.  It’s rare that I was into a music store and am completely stumped by artists, and that’s what his collection did to me.  I distinctly remember saying “I literally recognized two artists in this entire bin”.  I’m a 20-something year old girl, I shouldn’t know every band in a shop.  The tunes Brian had playing in the shop were chill, and made the entire browsing experience even more enjoyable.  It’s a beautiful shop, it really is, and I enjoyed my time there.  I grabbed a record to surprise my dad with, hoping he doesn’t have it (knowing he probably does).  I am so glad I got the chance to meet Brian, and definitely plan to go back there.  As I said, he has great sound equipment, and when I am ready to get some new stuff, he is the one I want to get it from.

Waterloo was next, and that was great too, but in a whole different way.  One of my favorite parts of Waterloo was the little gadgets they have everywhere – they are funky, and cool!  The posters all over were awesome too.  They were all huge, and captured all different kinds of music – that was really fun.  This store is the perfect mix of everything and it’s cool.  They had signs all over that they mixed the new and used CDs, so you only have to browse the artist you are looking for once.  It worked really well for shopping – it was nice to just look through, for example, Third Eye Blind once and see every CD they have in there store.  Waterloo has a separate room which holds mostly records and I really liked that, too.  Their selection was overwhelming at first, and I had to just pick a little section and go through that.  From what I saw, they had an awesome selection too – both rare and common – and it was organized great (organization is a HUGE thing with me).    They had a great mix of music, just from my wandering eye, and that’s worth a major nod.  It’s really helpful if you just want some new music and don’t have a specific genre in mind!  When I walked in, it was pretty crowded, and besides the fact that it was a weekend afternoon, I know why!  I definitely will keep Waterloo as an option whenever I need some music!

I absolutely adored Antone’s, my final stop.  Literally, anything and everything was in this store.  There was a wall of cassettes (which made 90′s-me happy!) and book cases and cases.  I browsed through the biographies and had to fight myself from buying them all.  There was a great, and different, selection!  I went through the record room for a long time.  They, also, have just about every artist I could imagine, and a great selection.  Records honestly are a lost art, and it’s a refreshing thing to see a bunch of them.  They also had great music playing while I was in there, and let it be said that music REALLY does make all the difference when shopping.  My last memory walking out of Antone’s was that I really am a fan of 45′s.  Do singles even exist anymore?  I remember 45′s (and by remember, I mean hearing about them), cassette singles, even some CD singles, but now, in the MP3 age, is there such a thing?  I obviously know you can download single SONGS on iTunes, and I guess that’s the answer to my question – it’s the same thing.  Either way, I probably spent the most time at Antone’s  going through 45′s – it was really awesome to see different songs, and I think that’s (obviously!) easier to do when there is one song per record!  Antone’s has an AWESOME selection, and I am so glad this store was recommended to me!

Whetstone, Waterloo and Antone’s were great starts to my Austin record store travel, AND to my contributions here on CTX grooves.  I am so so so grateful to have the ability to help out, and I am excited to delve deeper into this record scene.

I hope you enjoyed reading about my trips to the stores, and my little “about me”.  I can’t wait to have more experiences and for the readers to have the option to learn more about me!

As you all may or may not notice, I have not had time to regularly update and post news about the record scene as much as I would like to.  So I am putting a blogger call out to those interested in helping report on the record scene here in Austin.  The hours aren’t long, but the passion for records and music is a must.  I am looking for writers, photographers and videographers and if you can do all 3 the better!  CTXgrooves.com is a site I do out of my passion and appriciation for records and the record scene here in central Texas.  So yeah, if you think got the passion, please drop me a line at:

contact at ctxgrooves.com

April 18th is national record store day.  I just wanted to let everyone know to make sure you get out there and buy some records, I know I will be hitting up some shops

I have recently been able to set aside time to actually get to listen to my hi-fi, it has been great! I will post some pictures soon.

I hope you all are doing well.  I have been super busy working on random projects and trying to get my PhD. at UT in Radio, Television and Film.  I hope you all didn’t think I had stopped buying records….   Well I had kind of…  But alas I am back, I am going to be doing updates to everyones pages over the next few months and hope to shot short videos of each shop with their owners giving us the DL on their warez and specialties.  So stay tuned and enjoy the ride…

Speaking of rides, I recently started a new website called ctxracing.com, this is a website for car fanatics who are interested in finding out what performance shops, race tracks and car clubs are in central Texas.  The site is slowly growing, I look forward to recieving feedback about that site as well.

Here are the old posts I made back before I installed wordpress:

3/18/2008- So I had spring break last weekend and I went and hung out in San Antonio, I was looking through the Current and saw a shop I hadn’t noticed (I haven’t read the Current in a while) named Music Town, so I headed on down there and checked it out.

1/23/2008- Welcome to the new year! I hope everyone is doing well. From what I can tell everyone is holding up pretty well in town. For a second I thought Backspin Records was down and out, however I they had just moved, their new location is:

4631 Airport BLVD
Suite 110-A, Austin, TX 78751

Here are some pics of the new place:

11/13/2007- So the LP’s have just been pouring in from people I know, so I have not made it by other shops except to say hi, everyone seems to be doing well, though I have not been able to visit everyone. A while back I went to the DJ Dojo’s party, it was hot, here are some pics from that:

I have also been working on other small related projects, I had a floor jack go through my sub in my car and decided to build a new custom 15″ subwoofer, to say the least it “thumps”. Good times!

8/13/2007- Sometimes when the chips are down and you have no money for new records you think all is lost. This happened to me this summer. I have bought one new record this summer, the new Megadeth, however that is all. But sometimes the kindness of strangers is more then you will ever need.

A week ago I went to San Antonio to visit my family, everything was great and everyone was well. When I was packing up to leave my older brother came up to me and said “some guy at work just moved here and said he wife wanted him to throw his records, I told him I would take them, figuring you might find something you like”.

It is times like this that make having no money, but people looking out for ya totally memorable. Not only did he have a few records I was interesting in listening to, but he had about 60! I haven’t even been able to listen to them all, but needless to say, they are a great escape from reality! Every time someone just gives me their records I wonder if they know how great they sound and what they are missing out on, however everytime I tell them this they give me blank stares and say “but there are all those pops and cracks!”. I wish they could all just come over and hear the records on a good system.

Anyway, that is my rambling for the month, hope you all are having a great record shopping time! Good luck:)

1/30/2007- So I made my way down to San Francisco this past week on a business trip so of course I made my way over to the Amoeba to check out their warz. I actually didn’t find anything I couldn’t buy here in Austin, which was a nice surprise in a weird way. While I came home empty handed it was good to know that Austin reps the records! Here are some pics:

Note: I saw this record store Recycled Records, but didn’t get to go in and after conversations with my friends that live in S.F. they said there were many other shops I needed to hit up, alas I did not have enough time. Next time! I also missed out on the hi-fi shop I was trying to find on Pine St., gotta love those S.F. hills!

1/4/2007- Happy new year everyone! I hope you all are having a good one, I have been chilling out during the break, hitting up record shops here and there. I have also been listening a lot and even had to buy more shelving for the LP’s, check it out! I got it at IKEA for like 80 dollars or something. I also borrowed some Tannoy Glenair’s from a friend to check out, talk about some serious loudspeakers, they have 15″ dual-concentric drivers!

8/2/2006- I made my way over to Music Mania the other week, make sure you drop by there if you are looking for some bargain buys as all their LP’s cost less then $5 dollars! Also for those who do not know, I have a myspace account, friend me if you want!

7/12/2006- I finally made my way over to Sundance Records, so make sure you check out their page as I have added some pictures. Also I have been making the rounds to a lot of the shops around central Texas and everyone seems in great spirits and to say the least the LPs are a flowing! Anyway, Just for kicks I thought I would post a picture of the system I listen to my LP’s. Here they are:

6/23/2006- I made my way by Friends of Sound the record shop that took Shattered Music’s space. Here is a link to the page I created for them (I will add them to the links later this week). They are just getting started so be patient as they get their collection organized. I also stopped by End of an Ear, they seem to be doing great, as well as Backspin. I think I will go listen to my new records, later!

6/22/2006- So I haven’t posted in a while, sorry for those who have sent me emails and I have not replied, please send them again, I got wayy behind on the email after releasing the website. The good news is that I finished my masters (yah!) and am going to be starting UT’s Ph D. program in the fall. Anyway, I will be making some rounds to all the shops and seeing what is up, updating photo’s and checking out stores that contact me. Also please let it be known that I am no longer going to hifi shops and am purely interested in visiting record stores. I guess that is it for now, oh yeah, for those who don’t know, Shattered Music has closed, check out their link for more information.

4/18/2006- So I have posted the pics from the Austin Record Convention, it was a great time, lots of records to buy and nice people to boot!

3/26/2006- So people have told me I should put a donation button on the site to help cover my costs of running the site, I figure why not, so here it is click here to donate (I will also add one to the side bar). Back to the reason you all are here, I have added Encore records after many people’s request, as well as Backspin Records, I need to hit up both of these shops, which will hopefully happen in the next week.

3/18/2006- Aite, so spring break has come and gone and I was able to hit up more shops and post more pictures for some shops I had mentioned but not made my way to. I have to say Debi at Dirt Cheap Distro in SA rocks, her shop is really cool and people should make their way down there if they are looking for some good punk music. I still have more places to hit up, as more shops recommend others, I went by Function^2, but they were closed. I still need to get picture for shattered music and turntable records, all in time I guess, I will let the SXSW dust settle. Also do not forget that the Austin Record Convention is coming really soon!

3/5/2006- So I have been sick all weekend and didn’t make it to the shops to take photo’s, I will get there this next week though… Anyway, I really appreciate all the emails people have sent, again, if you all have any more recommendations just let me know.

2/23/2006- As of right now I have consent from all but 180gram and Audio Systems (still need to go see these guys) to have them listed on this site. Yeah I know I can list whoever I want, but that is not the point, I made this site so that not only consumers know about the shops, but shops know about each other. Having talked to almost everyone listed, I get the feeling that a site like this was long over due. I have to say thank you to everyone who let me go into their shop and annoy them with my camera! I will post more on each shop as I get more information.

2/21/2006- As of right now I am going to use a lot of the shops website’s and myspace accounts to have information, however over time I will try and get original content. (Shops: if for any reason you find this site annoying and would not like me to list you, just let me know and like magic it will be like you were never listed here.)

2/20/2006- Sup… So this website was created after much frustration with trying to figure out where all the cool records shops are in the Austin/San Antonio area. Being a Central Texas dweller my whole life, I thought there must be more people out there who are also looking for a resource that has information about all the cool independent record shops in our area. Below is a list of places I have found, each with varying degrees of information as I learn more about each one. I am going to try and get all original content from each shop, including photos, how they came to be and much more, being handy with the DV cam, maybe I can get some interviews as well. Feel free to email me about them at contact@ctxgrooves.com. You probably notice I have included a couple hifi shops. Yeah I know, now a days hi-fi is thought of as some stuffy bunch of twits with too much time and money, but the places listed here are bring it back to the music, make sure you check them out!