Stylists and styluses

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/06/2020 (2184 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Rock ’n’ roll never forgets.

Steve Ward, born and raised in Selkirk, has fond, teenage memories of shopping at Blaine’s Records and Tapes, a music store formerly situated in Selkirk’s downtown shopping mall, the Selkirk Town Plaza. Almost every Friday after school he spent a few hours poring through the shop’s album and cassette bins searching for audio treasures to bring home while chatting with staff, which at one point included fellow Selkirk resident Ellen Reid, later of the Crash Test Dummies.

Ward, 49, says there was a period in the mid-1980s when he was in a metal band and “probably” listening to too much Judas Priest. Hoping to broaden his horizons somewhat he began asking Blaine McVety, the store’s owner, and Richard Smolinski, a highly knowledgeable fellow who worked there, for recommendations.

“They were always more than happy to comply and before I got a job there myself in the early ’90s, they’d already taught me about jazz, college rock, British stuff like the Clash…,” he continues, recalling Rush’s A Farewell to Kings as the first record he ever purchased, simply because at age 8 he was drawn to the cover art.

“I always credit my older brothers for giving me my basic music education by introducing me to stuff like Zeppelin and the Stones. But it was Blaine and Rich, who I believe is now an art professor somewhere in Ontario, who filled in a lot of the blanks. Learning about different genres and bands from the two of them was the musical equivalent of going to university.”

Well, how’s this for coming full circle?

In August, Ward will celebrate the first anniversary of Selkirk’s Hi Tone Records, located at 226 Manitoba Ave., just two streets over from where Blaine’s Records and Tapes operated for 32 years. The same way he once peppered McVety and Smolinski over what titles to buy next, teenagers who pop into his establishment, a stone’s throw away from the popular Selkirk Waterfront, currently seek his advice while trying to decide between, say, one Pink Floyd album and another.

“It is a bit amusing how I used to be ‘that’ kid asking Blaine and Rich what Elvis Costello record to get and now I’m the one offering an opinion,” he says, seated next to a flank of alphabetically arranged bins populated by everything from the Beatles to Billie Eilish, from the Lemonheads to Lizzo. “But what I especially love about working here is seeing all these younger people, guys and gals, buying records versus listening to music on their phone. It gives me hope for the future. I sit back and think, ‘Yeah, these kids get it.’”

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Like we mentioned, Ward began working at Blaine’s Records and Tapes when he was in his early 20s. Back then there was a hair salon a few doors down from the store and over time he got to know Angela Bercier, one of the stylists working there. Eventually they began dating and after moving to Winnipeg together about 20 years ago, she got a job teaching hair design while he pursued a variety of projects, including independent filmmaking. In 2011 he wrote and directed his first documentary, Happily Dysfunctional: The Story of Transistor 66 Records, which cast an eye on local music label Transistor 66’s first decade in business. He followed that up two years later with Mai-Tais, Toques & Tikis, described online as “a rum-soaked journey into the exotic world of Canadian tiki culture,” tiki collecting being one of his many hobbies.

In June 2014, McVety, Ward’s former boss, relocated Blaine’s Records & Tapes — by then the store name was simply Blaine’s — from Selkirk to Winnipeg’s McIvor Mall at 1795 Henderson Hwy. Soon thereafter Ward started working at Blaine’s on a part-time basis. He was still employed there last spring when McVety announced he was calling it a career and closing the store when his lease was up a few months later. Almost immediately, the shop’s longtime customers, many of whom lived in Selkirk and happily made the 25-minute drive to “the city” to shop for records, began asking Ward where they were going to get their vinyl fix now that their preferred store was shutting down.

Here’s where the story takes an interesting turn. In 2017, Steve and Angela, “parents” of a couple of dogs, agreed she would leave her instructor’s job to establish a full-service men’s barbershop in downtown Selkirk. Her new enterprise, Midtown Barbershop, was located in a cosy, 250-square-foot space, part of a subdivided building at 226 Manitoba Ave., directly across the street from the Garry Theatre. Business was so good that after 12 months she moved one door over to a spot almost four times as large. There was one problem: because of its L-shaped layout, the new premises, a former photography studio, offered ample room in the rear for a barbershop. Except she was stumped what to do with the remaining space, a 200-square-foot area too long to be a waiting room but too narrow to house more barber chairs.

Last May, by which time they had bought a home in Selkirk to be closer to her place of work, Steve and Angela were discussing the news of Blaine’s pending closure over dinner. For a while they’d been trying to come up with ideas how to best utilize the barbershop’s “dead space” — Steve had jokingly proposed lining 20 pinball machines up against the wall and opening a ’70s-style arcade — when they looked at one another and, practically at the same time, announced, “Hey, what about a record store?”

Hi Tone Records, a tag Ward chose for no other reason than it “sounded cool,” opened for business last August. As the lone locale in the Catfish Capital of the World that stocks vinyl, it didn’t take long for audiophiles, young and old, to pop by for a look-see. It has actually worked both ways, he says, when asked whether there’s been any spin-off business from people on their way in for a shave or a trim who suddenly realize they can pick up a record or three on their way back out.

“My wife is an absolutely amazing barber so mostly it’s been people coming to see her who’ve gone, ‘Records, great!’ But there have been a few people who’ve come in solely to shop for albums who, after realizing there’s a barbershop in the back, made an appointment with her, too,” he says. (Initially Ward sold new vinyl only. Though after watching a YouTube series called What’s in My Bag? where celebs paying a visit to Los Angeles’s Amoeba Records show off purchases from that outlet’s used section, he decided there was probably a local demand for used vinyl and began stocking it, as well.)

Like practically every other person who runs a business, Ward had a decision to make in March when the new coronavirus became the dominant headline around the world. He knew something was definitely up when he attended Rockin’ Richard’s Record & CD Sale on March 15 and the Sunday afternoon crowd was a fraction of what it normally is. (Richard Sturtz, of Rockin’ Richard’s fame, died in April.) Back at the store three days later, a person who’d booked an appointment for a haircut showed up with a cough and runny nose. The second Angela finished taking care of him she told Steve that was it, she was no longer comfortable coming to work and would be heading home until the powers-that-be announced it was safe to return. Wait, he said, he was going, too.

Ward, who reopened May 19 with social distancing protocols in place (the barbershop has also reopened), used his down time effectively. He had purchased a few private collections at the beginning of March so for a few weeks he kept busy grading and pricing hundreds of used titles, some of which he sold via curbside pickup. Also, because he belongs to Discogs, an online vinyl marketplace, he continued to fill orders for customers from every corner of the globe, shipping albums such as Mötley Crüe’s Too Fast for Love to Germany, Depeche Mode’s Construction Time Again to Norway and — calling occupants! — Klaatu’s 3:47 EST to a prog rock nut in Virginia.

As for future plans Ward hopes to expand a bit, as he probably has room for double the number of record bins and racks he currently has on site. He’s also looking forward to Record Store Day, a worldwide event originally scheduled for mid-April that has already been postponed twice owing to COVID-19 but is now set to occur on three separate dates, Aug. 29, Sept. 26 and Oct. 24.

“Lots of people in town as well as others from Winnipeg who’ve regularly been making the drive out are looking forward to that,” he says in regards to the annual sale that sees music companies issue a variety of rare and special releases tied specifically to Record Store Day. “More than anything else, though, I think people are just happy things are getting back to normal a bit and that they can do something they enjoy, like record shopping. I’m with them. It feels good to be back.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca