March 1, 2011 - 10:11pm
Encore Recordings owner shares hope for the future
BY CASSIE BALFOUR
Tucked away on Liberty, Encore Recordings of Ann Arbor hosts an unimaginable collection of vinyl records, CDs and music paraphernalia. But the world-renowned store may be closing its doors in August unless the dedicated employees can scrape together the cash to buy the institution themselves.
The owner, Pete Dale, is retiring. And unless someone purchases the store Rolling Stone Magazine ranked as one of the top 25 record stores in the United States, he’ll start liquidating the shop in July. If that happens, Ann Arbor will lose one of the top destination stores for music aficionados in the country.
“I think the record community will continue," Dale said. "The thing that I provide that no one else provides is the breadth of the collection. I mean today we had a guy who brought eighty dollars worth of big band and easy listening. Nobody else, not just in Ann Arbor but in all of Michigan has any of that.”
Despite the record store being among the best since the '60s, Encore has never catered to a student body (save for a handful of School of Music students looking for obscure sheet music) weaned on MP3s and music sharing websites.
“Most of my customers are from out of town. They have real jobs, and they have real money,” Dale said. “I have a lot of international customers that come from all over the world, and they come every year.”
But the Ann Arbor bastion of records and CDs is no stranger to musicians dropping in to peruse the meticulously organized and winding stacks.
“We have lots of stuff and we don’t charge an arm and a leg. Yesterday Eric Bib was in here, he played at the Ark and came in here and bought stuff,” he said. “He bought one of his own CDs that was out of print. Happens all the time, we get musicians, and they always say it’s a great store.”
No matter what happens, Ann Arbor will be losing Dale, who has owned Encore for about fifteen years and is himself a living encyclopedia of Ann Arbor music history. He remembers when Iggy and the Iguanas played Michigan frat parties and when Ann Arbor had almost no venues for artists to showcase their talents.
“I’m turning 62, I’ve been doing this for most of my life. I grew up in Ann Arbor, and my first job was in this store,” Dale said. “This is a business based on knowledge.”
But Dale now feels he’s needed elsewhere, specifically, about forty-five minutes due east.
“I just feel that Detroit is where the need is, I feel like I’d like to do something, help people,” he said. “I’m not out to change the world but there’s lots of opportunities out there. Whatever feels natural and useful, I’ll do that.”
