Charles Hale of Driver 8 Records
For a town with a big focus on local music, Fort Collins has a small amount of new/used music stores for people to buy their favorite albums: Bizarre Bazaar, All Sales Vinyl, and Songbyrd Records just to name a few. While walking the streets of old town with my family earlier this summer, my sister told my dad and I about a new store that had just opened up on Pine Street called Driver 8 Records. Hearing about a new music store in the area got me excited, so we had to check it out.
The inside of Driver 8 is small, but four to five racks, filled with records, lined the walls. The man running the place, Charles Hale, greeted us as we walked in. As we dug through the stacks of records, I noticed there were a lot of records I hadn’t seen at the other music stores in town. On top of a big selection of new records, a small pile of used records had started along the back wall, too.
After digging some more, I found a copy of the new Danger Mouse and Black Thought album, which I had to get. We all talked with Charles some more about the store and left shortly thereafter. This was a store I definitely had to keep supporting on top of the others in town.
Over the course of the coming months, I went into Driver 8 four more times. Getting to know Charles, his story, and getting more vinyl to add to my collection. After a while, I asked Charles if he’d be interested in doing an interview with me, after telling him about Scrapped and what we do. It was an immediate yes.
I came back a week later to talk, on a cool morning in September, right as the store was opening up for the day. The sounds of bustling Jefferson Street filled in the calm silence that held the room in Driver 8 as I walked in. Charles’ smile welcomed me as we began to talk.
After doing some digging, I found you hosted a show on KRFC and on the website you say you have some experience from the South. So to start, where are you from?
So I'm, I'm originally from Athens, Georgia. Which is quite the music hotbed. That's where the name of the store comes from. “Driver 8” being an early REM song. So the idea for the name of the store came to me. And it was sort of twofold. One, anybody that knows the REM song will think it's cool. And it's a nod to my hometown, and my musical roots. My hope was that even if people didn't recognize the name as coming from an REM song, it would at least sound cool.
So far, that's been the feedback. Some people think it's Driver Records just because they don't see the eight in the logo. I tell them the eight is the important part.
I grew up in Athens until I graduated high school. Then a couple years of college in North Carolina, and then a couple more years of college in Fort Collins.
Nice! So as a kid, what drew you toward music?
I think what I remember being drawn to was the radio first. I think that the radio and music on the radio gave me my own little personal space and personal world to live in. I have a brother and a sister, but I feel like my radio listening and my music listening was done by myself. So it just sort of created a world for me to live in.
So adding onto that, what was an album that shaped you when you were younger?
Anybody that knows me knows that this is probably going to be my answer. It was when I was fifteen or sixteen years old. So I'd already listened to a lot of music. I had my first car and it had a tape deck in it. For about a year straight, I listened to August and Everything After from the Counting Crows when it came out. Over and over and over again.
Cassettes in a car would just play one side and then automatically flip over and play the other side so you never have to eject it. It would be like a 15 minute drive. Anywhere I went. So it was just two or three songs at a time over and over again. I still love that album now. It's almost cliche, people that are my age love that album, but it's brilliant. It's a brilliant album. Everybody should listen to it.
It’s funny because my dad tells me a similar story of how he had the first Foo Fighters album in his car and he listened to it all the time in that same way. Now I know to check out that Counting Crows album since I haven’t yet.
It's a different world. When we didn't have access to everything, right? The buying of a tape or CD when I was younger, was like a big commitment. It was the only way you could really hear anything other than the radio, so it's a big decision of what you're going to buy.
It really was like unwrapping a present because you didn't know what the song sounded like, rather than the one or two or maybe three that you had heard. So a totally different sort of listening experience then versus now, where we can hear everything we want, essentially.
After some more research, I found you worked multiple jobs in the past, including a window cleaning business you owned before this. What compelled you to start Driver 8?
So I worked as a residential window cleaner for most of the last fifteen years. Some of that was working for a guy in Mississippi, then I owned my own business out here, over two different stretches. That got to where I was not enjoying that. It wasn't sustainable. It wasn't sustainable for the physical wear and tear on my body, and financially.
I felt like I was driving to Denver and Boulder to buy records that I wanted. Primarily new release records that I wanted. I felt like there were probably other people in town that had this same type of experience, but they couldn't find the records they wanted locally.
So as much as it comes as a “passion project” of mine, it starts and ends with, I felt like it could be a good business that the records I stock, generally speaking, aren't available anywhere else in Fort Collins. My hope is that there's enough people that want these records that I can grow a business out of it.
It worked well because my first time here, I saw that new Danger Mouse and Black Thought album and bought it immediately.
I finally got that back in stock last week and sold a copy yesterday. Cheat Codes is a good one.
You're in the same area as All Sales Vinyl right down the street and Bizarre Bazaar kind of down the road. How has competing with the other second hand or brand new music stores in town been?
Oh, I don't even I don't even look at it as competing. Partly because I'm stocking such different choices than the other places. Most of my inventory is new records, not used records. There are far fewer options for new records in town than there are used records. So I look at my competition as the internet. I just want to break people's habit of ordering records online and instead trusting that we'll have them here in the store.
That just takes time. So I'm friendly with a couple of the other record store people in town. So far, everything has just been cooperation. Pats on the back, good luck and all that. So I don't I don't see anything as competition.
But just overall community support?
Yeah. I think Fort Collins and the surrounding area has enough people. More than one place can sell records and be fine.
So touching on the community again, how has the community welcomed you and your store so far?
So far, it's been great. I've lived here, I went to college here, moved away, and then moved back twelve years ago. So I know a bunch of people in town. One of the things that's been most encouraging for me is that most of my customers are not people that I know. The early feedback I've gotten, in the first two months that I've been open, is that people are happy that the store’s here and are happy with the stuff that they're finding here.
I think that's the starting point for any kind of community talk. We don't have meetings or anything like that. But I do see some of the same faces multiple times in the two months that I've been open, so I feel like that will just grow in time.
What’s been the biggest challenge of running this place so far?
The biggest worry when I started was I invested a lot of money, and a lot of records. As much as that sort of expertise is knowing music, my expertise is not in retail. I mean, I've worked in retail, but my expertise that I brought to this is in music. I bought all these records, and what if I bought all the wrong ones? I'm not saying that I'm not worried about that, but I'm less worried about that now than I was. The challenge, I think, will always be trying to reach people to let them know that the store exists, and then try to have what they want, before they walk in here.
I've definitely had people walk in and ask for a specific record and I don't have it, because I can't have everything. [I try], to the best of my ability, to have what people want, before they know they want it or before they know the store even exists.
That's just an ongoing challenge. That also gets into talking about community and community building. The best way to learn what people want is by talking to them. While they're in the store, learning people's tastes and preferences.
Early on in the store, I asked a guy that was buying a handful of records, I asked him, “Well, what did you not see that she wanted to see?”. He gave me some feedback, and I listened to that. He's been back a couple of times since then. I think he's seen that I listened to his suggestion. He didn't tell me specific records, but just the kinds of records.
What’s your view on an ultimate goal for you, or the store, as a whole?
An ultimate goal is just to have a sustainable business that people enjoy. That people are finding the records that they want over time. So the more concrete short term goals is that I hope, within a year from now or a year from when the store opens, that I'll be able to double the inventory in this space. With it still feeling like a small, well curated shop that's not overcrowded and not overwhelming. Goals wise, trying to double the inventory, while keeping it sort of all killer no filler still.
What's a piece of advice that you have for those that are either wanting to start something similar or start a business? What pieces of advice do you have for those that are going to be reading this?
I will say this is the third business that I've started. The biggest challenges are always in the beginning of just doing it instead of thinking about doing it. I also feel like everybody has an idea for something. Ideas are like a dime a dozen. The real skill in my mind is being able to take an idea and execute it. The only way to execute an idea is to focus on the unfun part.
Everybody can walk in a record store and see records and see that it's fun, but there's lots of unfun parts to it. If you ignore the unfun parts, you're never going to be successful, right? So concentrate on the unfun parts. Then when it's time to concentrate on the fun parts, you'll be good to go.
We end our conversation there and off the record, I ask him if he’s heard of David Hale. An artist also from Athens that shares the last name of Charles. He says no, laughs, and says there’s a lot of Hales in the Athens area. He even met someone that came into his store that had Hale as a last name. After showing him some of David Hale’s work, I shake his hand and we part ways for the day.
Thanks to Charles for taking the time to talk to me about you and your store. You can find Driver 8 in Old Town Fort Collins on 246 Pine Street, close to the corner with the Rodizio Grill on Jefferson. You can also find Driver 8 on Instagram as @driver8recs, and on their website driver8records.com.
-M
