Last Saturday, Bethany from Reware Vintage and I participated in WHFR‘s first ever record show in Dearborn, at Henry Ford Community College. The stations Program Director Mike “Mike D” Dereniewski (famous for his “Record Reverser” and his fantastic Patty Duke tribute compilation) was kind enough to encourage us to apply and take a chance selling our Crafty Rock N Roll wears to a different audience.

We arrived around 8:30am and easily found our tables in a well lit and laid out room. Mike noticed immediately that I switched spots with Beth (to reach a power outlet) and proudly shared that he’d picked my corner table to ‘have the skylight capture my glass work mid-day for maximum glass-glistening opportunity!’ And the personal touches didn’t stop there — the WHFR crew of volunteers and employees bought the vendors pizza and pop, made cupcakes, gave us tons of swag and concert tickets and would check in every hour to see how we were doing and if we needed anything! Fantastic, to say the least.

The other vendors seemed to be long-time record collectors/traders/sellers. EVERYONE had 1,000s of records in super sturdy record boxes to flip through, well marked in decades and genres. We’d been kindly “warned” by a seller early in the day we “probably wouldn’t do very well …” as the crowd expected were only looking for rare LPs. Beth in particular was concerned the hard-core collectors may not appreciate her repurposing of vinyl LPs, but as it turned out people selling and shopping were curious and complimentary, commenting on the creativity and craftsmanship, and some even bought things!

We mingled with our table neighbor Windy from Stormy Records, got record shopping advice from my former bandmate Larry Ray of Outageous Cherry and had fun “busting” some pals on their purchases not expecting to see us!

In closing, I had a total blast. It was fun setting up outside of the craft circuit, reaching new people (which always forces new ideas) and you may be seeing me at another record show in October in Ann Arbor!