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Keeping the albums spinning: Couple takes over Lefty's Records

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Lefty's Records, 11.23

Elizabeth Snuttjer, one of the new owners of Lefty's Records, worked this week to prepare for Black Friday Record Store Day.

Elizabeth Snuttjer had been a regular customer of Lefty’s Records since the shop opened 11 years ago, often picking up an album or two when she stopped at the veterinary clinic next door to buy food for her aging rabbit.

Now Snuttjer is at the store near 27th and South streets five days a week, selling rather than buying records. Her husband, Brook Taylor, is there on Sundays, running the business they purchased from Les Greer in September.

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Chatting with actors on the yellow brick carpet during the legendary singer's farewell tour.

“We saw the announcement that Les was going to retire and close the business,” Taylor said. “We thought that was sad. We thought we’d give it a shot.”

Lefty’s was closed for 10 days after the couple took over from Greer, who trained them in how he operated the store. The new owners are still sorting “stuff” and figuring out what needs to be acquired to fill the bins.

“We had to rebuild the inventory,” Snuttjer said. “The demand for vinyl is so high you have to order stuff like two months out. I’ve got pre-orders for March now on a few items.”

Taylor, now a visual artist who played in punk bands in the ’80s, is buying punk rock for the store, and a friend is serving as a reggae adviser. New vendors also will allow the store to have a wider variety and more timely delivery of albums.

But there are no plans for Lefty’s to try to compete with the giant national retailers that have, over the last handful of years, begun to stock more and more albums.

“If Walmart and Target carry it, we just can't always carry all that,” Snuttjer said. “We want to have stuff that you’re not going to find there. We’ve got lots of jazz. That’s a big one in this store. Soundtracks are huge, and rock, of course. We’ve got new wave in and some punk sections now.”

Old-school record buyers are likely to experience sticker shock when they take a look at the prices for albums, which are often $25 or more for a single LP.

“Definitely the price has gone up,” Snuttjer said. “At some point, I think it'll level out, but that's just its demand. It’s demand-based like everything, housing and eggs.”

A staple of local record shops, more affordable used records are right in the wheelhouse of Snuttjer, who has been a record hunter for years. She once found used records in a warehouse that was being remodeled and brought them to record shows to sell. At Lefty’s, she's purchasing used records that are brought into the store.

Used prices have gone up with the new vinyl boom, which last year saw sales of new records double from 2020 to more than 42 million. That growth likely won’t be matched in 2022. But, in August, vinyl sales were up by 27% over the previous year. And that was well before Taylor Swift moved more than a half-million copies of “Midnights.”

That vinyl boom, which really took off during the pandemic, is being driven by Generation Z music lovers who have been responsible for sales of artists like Swift. That’s often seen at Lefty’s and other Lincoln record stores.

“I’ve been here when young people come in and say they just got a turntable and they’re buying their first record,” Taylor said. “That’s kind of exciting.”

This week, Lefty’s will almost certainly have its biggest day in the new owners' short tenure.

Black Friday will bring in dozens of young newcomers and old collectors eager to purchase the special releases sold only at brick-and-mortar stores, like Lefty’s, whose Record Store Day order was already secured behind the counter a week before items could go on sale.

“I ordered what people told me to order," Snuttjer said. "That's what Les told me to do.

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"We ordered what we ordered, and we’re only hunting down one item. Otherwise, it's all here in the store.”

Like all retailers, Lefty’s was also getting ready for Christmas, with multiple versions of the soundtrack for “A Charlie Brown Christmas” flying off the shelves, a Billy Idol holiday album waiting to be purchased and Snuttjer creating inexpensive, pre-wrapped “White Elephant” gifts from the old inventory that neither the giver nor receiver will know what is inside.

Lefty’s will close for a couple of weeks in January for cleaning, rearranging, adding new inventory — like books — and some redecorating of the store, where Taylor has already hung dozens of his photographs from “back in the punk rock days” at the Drumstick and The Brickyard.

Those photos are both a nod to Lincoln’s music history but also part of an effort to try to turn Lefty’s into an old-school record store, like Dirt Cheap, Pickles and Twisters.

“That’s the cool thing about this place, it brings people together,” Taylor said. “Record stores were always the place you could go to find out what was happening, where people were playing and to talk about music.

"We want to be the place where you go to find out the cool things going on in Lincoln.”

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Reach the writer at 402-473-7244 or kwolgamott@journalstar.com. On Twitter @KentWolgamott  

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Entertainment reporter/columnist

L. Kent Wolgamott, the recipient of the 2018 Mayor’s Arts Award, has written about arts and entertainment for Lincoln newspapers since 1985, reviewing thousands of movies and concerts and hundreds of art exhibitions.

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