That’s a Wrap!

Smokler on July 25, 2019

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Friends, 

On behalf of Chris Boone and I and our entire crew, we're happy to let you know that, as of this past weekend, we have has completed principal photography on our documentary "Vinyl Nation: A Deep Dig into the Crates of the Record Renaissance:" The photo above includes our cinematographer Sherri Kauk and our production assistant Cariwyl in Detroit the evening of our last day.

15 cities, nearly 45 subjects over eight weeks, we spoke to musicians, DJs, record store owners, pressing plants, labels and ordinary people who have always loved records and those whose love is brand new. Our cameras were present at Record Store Day and The Austin Record Convention, the nation's largest record show. Poetically, our last day took place at Third Man Record Pressing in Detroit, the company widely seen as the public face of vinyl's return and increased cultural profile.

We have a long way to go. Post-Production has begun and will continue throughout the summer. But if all goes as it has so far (we have been blessed with an incredible team that makes the long hours and days not just bearable but a pleasure), our documentary will be finished by mid October, in time for film festival submissions.

This journey through our first gate has been an unforgettable creative experience for us all that would not have been possible without your belief in Chris and I and our story. Thank you so much for your faith, your support, your wisdom and your love. We feel so much gratitude for the opportunity to have worked to honor it as hard as we did.

Look out for our documentary film "Vinyl Nation: A Deep Dig Into the Crates of the Record Renaissance" coming your way next year.

In 33 and 45,

Kevin

The Poem I Begin Every New Year With…

Smokler on January 7, 2019 

In Memoriam [Ring out, Wild Bells] (185) 

by Alfred Lord Tennyson 

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
   The flying cloud, the frosty light:
   The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
   Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
   The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind
   For those that here we see no more;
   Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
   And ancient forms of party strife;
   Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
   The faithless coldness of the times;
   Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
   The civic slander and the spite;
   Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
   Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
   Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
   The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
   Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the year that is to be.

I Smoke a Pipe. And Wrote a Little Thing About how Young People are Coming to the Hobby

Smokler on December 10, 2018

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Photo via Walters Photography

Unlike napkins, diamonds, and golfing—traditions that Millennials have supposedly “killed”—pipe smoking is very much alive. In 2014, ABC News postulated that younger smokers and collectors were bringing pipe smoking, a hobby reminiscent of great-uncles and blazered villains of ’80s teen comedies, back into fashion. Nearly five years later, it’s largely agreed that pipe smoking’s youthquake hasn’t saved the industry or the hobby, either, but it has changed how pipe smoking appears in our minds: It’s unlikely that the image of an American smoking a pipe will be only associated with the dark-wooded dens of men in retirement ever again.

A thing I wrote for Collector's Weekly magazine. 

 

 

 

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