Featured Conversation: Talking About "Vinyl Nation" With Christopher Boone and Kevin Smokler

Published on Feb 25, 2025

Today at IHTOV: Christopher Boone and Kevin Smokler, the producers of the documentary Vinyl Nation, sit down with us to talk about the vinyl resurgence, Record Store Day, stereo equipment and the aesthetics of vinyl.

IHTOV: Tell me a little about your record collections.

CB: I’d say my wife and I are about 11 years in, but we don’t go out and buy a ton. So it’s like 120 records or so. Kevin’s is considerably larger than mine, but it’s not massive by means. So I mean, how many records do you have, Kevin?

KS: 700 or 800 I had a good few years head start on Chris. I think I probably started in with records five or six years before Chris did. My wife and I, when looking for records, look for things that overlap with both of our musical tastes, things that are kind of in the middle of those two circles. So because we live in San Francisco, at San Francisco real estate prices, we don’t do a lot of indiscriminate buying. There’s no garage or attic or backyard shed to throw this stuff in. So we’re in kind of a, we’re in kind of a one in one out place right now with our record collection.

IHTOV: Yeah, I had to cap at 500 because I ran out of room.

KS: When they become clutter instead of music,that’s crossing the line. I think Chris and I both kind of feel that way.

CB: My record collection being as small as it is, it’s still really nice on display, but it’s at the limit of nice on display. And anytime I bring in a new record, my wife is like, Wait, what are we gonna do with this? Like, it’ll fit. Don’t worry, it’ll fit. But yes, that’s kept it from exploding. Also, I don’t have unlimited amounts of money to spend, right? So it’s like, just keep it nice and simple and yes, but also, we have a more spare decorating style, I think. And so you just can’t fill that up with tons of records.

IHTOV: Let’s talk about Vinyl Nation. You started filming right before Covid broke out.

KS: It feels like a long time ago, because we filmed it in the spring of 2019 and then finished post production in February of 2020 which, as you can imagine, was terrible timing. And then the first year of it being done was about how to get anyone to see it while the world was locked down in a pandemic. So it was quite an adventure.

IHTOV: I can imagine, the timing was not good.

KS: It was pretty bad. But we had a lot of things happen with the movie that probably wouldn’t have had it been conventional times and we had to sort of do it the old fashioned way. So I will never know what would have happened had there not been a pandemic. But I think we’re pretty grateful that we got the opportunities we did on a first movie.

IHTOV: One thing I love about the film is how human it is, and you view records less as a commodity and more as an extension of someone’s personality. Was this the intent?

CB: Yeah, it definitely was. We were we went into it with, again, Kevin’s idea of, let’s figure out why there’s such a thing is a vinyl record renaissance going on now, but very quickly we realized, and our editors also realized as we gave them footage, you’ve gone and set out to make a movie and documentary about the renaissance about records. And really, what we ended up doing was making a movie about human connection, and the only way to really do that is to understand who these people are and why they’re connected to records. And another observation our editors made, too, was we had, I think, 45 distinct interviews. That doesn’t count any of the on the fly interviews we did like the Austin record convention or Record Store Day at Mills Record Company in Kansas City, places like that. And our editors realized that if you put any of those 45 people in a room and they’d never met each other, they would be fast friends. And even though they came from totally different places in life, different backgrounds, different beliefs; their passion for records, and even if the genres are different, would just connect them immediately. And they would just start talking records and why it’s so special to them and it really is, like you said, an extension of people’s personality. And because one of the things we tried to do visually, which may or may not come across upon first watching, but we really, as best we could, tried to put people in their environments as it related to their records, and tried to show them, at least in the wide shots, in such a way that the frame itself would tell the story in terms of their relationship with records. But yeah, you can learn a lot from somebody’s record collection to the point where one of our interview subjects, who said she doesn’t actually like when people come over and look through her record collection because she thought it was a little too personal. But I think it is a nice way to get to know people, and also a way to share parts of yourself that help other people about you, and maybe indirectly.

IHTOV: Do you want to add anything, Kevin?

KS: We really hoped that looking at someone’s record collection and hearing their passion for it was a bit like flipping through the photos and their family albums or really something that showed us who they were. And the reason we chose the people we chose is not because we knew what we wanted to say about record collecting and the renaissance of records, but I think we had a feeling, even if we couldn’t have described it at the beginning of making the movie, that records were about more than hoarding things or assembling things or or a sort of egotistical you know, I have more of this and less of that, and that makes me a better person than you. That wasn’t sort of the kind of record person we were looking for. We had in mind that everybody we talked to said records were an expression of their deep commitment to music and human creativity and the role it played in their lives. So that’s why, that’s why we chose the people we chose.

IHTOV: On that note, I noticed that you really went out of your way to show that record collectors weren’t just young white men. You really highlighted a lot of different walks of life. You even had kids, which was great. So a great aspect of the movie is that with the different types of people you interviewed, you really got a good feel for what’s out there.

As far as the kids go. Do you find that vinyl is reaching younger generations through their parents?

KS: Elliot, our young record collector in our movie, who was 11 at the time we had made the movie, his parents had records that they had inherited from their parents, so he grew up seeing records in the house, and then going to record shops became a thing that he and his dad in particular together. And so I’m sure he enjoys listening to music on records, but the physical thing that is the record is a lot more than just a way to listen to music. It’s a family heirloom, in a way. It’s a thing he shares with his father. So it means a lot more than just a medium by which music is transmitted. I think the reasons that young people get into records are as varied as the reasons people our age get into records. Some just think they look neat. Some see it as a way to express fandom. You know, if Taylor Swift or Sabrina Carpenter is your thing, $45 new vinyl of an album of theirs says more about you as a fan than a 99 cent mp3 download or a or a Spotify subscription. And some think it’s cool because it’s retro. And there’s, there’s lots of reasons, but the reasons for young people buying vinyl are as many and just as genuine as they are for people our age. I think we both think it’s it was important in this movie not to make it look like some flighty passing fad that young people were into.

CB: I just real quick add to that personally, my daughter is now 20, and i think she got her first record player when she was 14, and she was definitely of the Instagram aesthetic. It’d be cool to have a Crosley turntable in my room with my twinkly lights and my succulents. But she doesn’t have a huge collection. When an artist means a lot to her, she definitely seeks out their music so that she has something more than just the Spotify playlist. I was excited when she decided to get into records just because I couldn’t give her music as a gift prior. I’m sorry, but an iTunes gift card just doesn’t really say I love you, or Spotify playlist doesn’t really say I love you the same way. Like, here’s an album. I think you’ll really enjoy it and I think you’ll connect with this artist, even though you may not know who they are, or even know who your favorite artist is. I saw your Spotify playlist. I’m gonna go find that record you didn’t expect to actually have in your collection. And I will admit there have been a few records that have disappeared from my collection into my daughter’s collection. As a result, I forgive her for taking Billie Eilish Live at Third Man Records. That’s fine. She can have it, but I at least know where it is being well cared for.

IHTOV: How do you think young kids being interested in records will bode well for the record industry?

KS: That’s a good question. I mean, we don’t know. We don’t work in the music industry ; we don’t have much of an understanding of its ebbs and flows. Most of the people who we talked to for this movie, said the near future, so far as we see it, is streaming and vinyl. like that’s what the music industry, in terms of sales of music, will consist of. Sales of music to the customer, not B2B sales or anything and that kind of makes sense to us. There’s a bit of a cassette tape renaissance here and there amongst some particular music groups. Maybe people will think 8-tracks are cool. I always thought 8-track players were cool. They look like toasters. Toasters with a Nintendo cartridge that you put in them. And who knows? Records are really aesthetically pleasing, and we think that’s perfectly legit. When people say things like, records are just pretty Yes, they are.

IHTOV: I’d rather have a record than a CD. Sometimes I think a CD sounds a little better depending on what I’m listening to, but I would rather have the record.

KS: Yeah,that happens very rarely. The only time when I prefer to play CDs rather than records, is when it’s been a long day and I don’t feel like getting off the couch four or five times to change the needle or CDs. \But you know, that doesn’t happen very often, most of the time, most of the time, I’m more than happy to flip the record over.

CB: Yeah, honestly, vinyl sales have continued to grow since we made the documentary, and they were on an increase when we made the film. And as Kevin and I said, we realize there are people who are collecting records all along from from the apex in the early 80s and then the decline. There have been people who never got rid of records, and they always collected them. But to explain like, why would you pick it up again? That means you have new fans collecting records. And again, a lot of those new fans are young people, and Kevin and I also get caught up in that wave, like we have records from childhood, we are also part of that wave. So new customers is what’s going to support that.

Now we’re not anywhere near where we were. But there is something to be said about owning a record, a 12x12 piece of artwork with the record inside of it. There are other physical formats, they just don’t have it, CDs and cassettes. They’re just much smaller than records, you’re not going to put those on display. You’re going to keep that CD somewhere, but your records, you will put those out on display. They are totems. Wwe thought it was apocryphal when we were doing research, until we actually met people that we interviewed who were young and said, no, I did buy records before I had a record player. Before I had a turntable. Yeah. I bought records because I was a big fan of this artist, and I’d go to their show and go to their merch table, and they were selling the record. And I want to own that, because it’s a poster, essentially. But also I’m so much a fan, I have the record and I don’t even have a way to play it. So we hear stories about people like, oh, you actually did do that. They eventually had enough records, so it was like, maybe I should get a turntable so I can listen to these things. And honestly, it’s more fun to flip through records just because of that.

Obviously, we were big fans of independent record stores, but for young people, a lot of people, they’re in Target, it’s going to catch their attention if you have records on display, as opposed to CDs. I know there’s some people that are getting back into CDs, but it’s just not quite the same. So I don’t think it’ll ever get back to the way it was. But like Kevin’s saying, we’re now in the streaming and vinyl world, as it relates to music, which is a really interesting place to be. We’ve circled, quite literally, all the way back again to this format, and it’s just something that is special. And to your point, Kevin, about when you’re tired. You don’t want to have to get up and flip the record and drop a needle again. But that ritual is also something that is like magic when you drop a needle on a record. Even when you forget to turn on your receiver. If you listen closely, it’s physical. It’s the needle going over a groove, and out comes music. And that’s in this day and age where we just trust everything comes out of our phones, no questions asked, to see something like this. This old technology worked.

IHTOV: There was a whole part in your film about the Crosley record players. And I appreciated that you did that, because a lot of people have Crosley record players, especially young people, and they catch a lot of flack for it, but you can really get the reasoning here. They’re experiencing joy with their records, with something they can afford. And you really did a nice job showing these young people with their record players and everything they do with them . You can see the joy in it.

KS: Yeah, we, we, we were lucky. We didn’t get anybody throwing up their hands and huffing about Crosley turntables. We also wouldn’t recommend playing, you know, your grandfather’s super valuable record that you want to keep in mint condition on a Crosley record player either.

We sort of think like you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say, everybody should listen to vinyl. It is the ideal way to listen to music. And by the way, there’s a $1,500 tax on listening to vinyl if you want to have the proper tools to do so. That doesn’t make it an everyone proposition anymore. That makes it a rich person’s hobby. I don’t think that’s what anybody means when they say vinyl is a great way to listen to music, it’s not. Vinyl is a great way to listen to music if you have the money to do so. It’s fun, and it introduces you to other vinyl people, and it prompts you to go to record stores, which are wonderful places, and you meet other people who are into it. And you know, it’s relatively easy to explore new frontiers of music for yourself. Those are the reasons to get into vinyl. Some people say the sound is better. Chris and I are not sophisticated enough to know If sound is better. But, yeah, if you want a hobby that anybody can get into, it has to be relatively affordable. And Crosley is really the first company that has come up with the relatively affordable solution to owning a turntable.

CB: And they give you great ways to express yourself, too. I mean, those suitcase turntables are super fun. They come in so many different varieties. I know my daughter’s first one was a peanuts themed Crosley suitcase style turntable, and it was super fun. And then when she really was getting more serious about listening to her records, it made for a great extension gift. So why don’t we actually get some better speakers to plug in to the turntable? Now it’s like, oh, wow, my records sound better, yeah, absolutely still using a Crosley, just different speakers. And then it was like, she got a little bit more serious. Why don’t we just get you a better turntable? You know, the Crosley was great, but you’re actually older, a little bit more mature, and you really want to spend a little bit more time with your records, so we’ll get you a nicer turntable. We already have the nicer speakers. There’s a migration pattern. But like Kevin said, Without Crosley or other turntables of that nature, and at that price point as a way in, you’re just leaving out large swaths of new customers. Anyone who kind of rains on Crosley’s parade just is kind of missing how young people tend to come into this process and it’s like, we like the idea that this is a big tent, and everybody is welcome. That’s vinyl nation. Everybody come on in. We’re all a little bit different, but we have something in common. And however you come into the tent is the right way to come into the tent. You know, that’s all that matters.

IHTOV: That’s a great attitude. I want to talk for a minute about Record Store Day. So what do you think that’s done for the record industry?

KS: I don’t have the spreadsheet in front of me. I couldn’t say financially what it’s done, but I think it came along at just the right time for independent record stores because it’s exclusively a thing that happens at participating independent record stores. I think it’s great that it’s been around as long as it has been. I think, because it’s fun to do. I don’t know if you have a bit of collectors mania about you, if you’ll be the crazy person who gets up at 5am and has to queue up, but then you’ll get to know your community of independent record stores wherever you live. Chris and I, both as college students in Baltimore, shopped at Sound Garden, which we did not know until much later, was the birthplace of Record Store Day. So that was cool to find that out, and you see that in the movie.

I think the chief complaint people have about Record Store Day is that it is a giant cash grab for the record industry who releases all quality of product, great and not so great on Record Store Day, in hopes that we will all be led like suckers to the record store at 5am to purchase it. And I think I speak for both of us when I say, one, you don’t have to do that if you don’t want to like, it’s not it’s not mandated like. And two, it is just as legitimate an experience on Record Store Day to go just to visit your favorite record stores and spend time there and thank the people who work there. If you want Record Store Day to be about the great thing that is record stores, then don’t participate in what you perceive as a cash grab. Just go to the record store and shop as you would normally, and and enjoy the good vibes because, and thank the people working there, it’s a ten hour shift, or however long it is, and they’re all working twice as hard as they would be, normally. Chris, that’s sort of my approach to Record Store Day.

CB: I agree with that. And there’s a big reason why we opened the film with Record Store Day at Judy Mills’ store, Mills Record Company in Kansas City. And it’s because in doing our research prior to shooting, we both realized that we feel like Judy does it right in terms of just running a record store, period. And the way she interacts with her customers, in Kansas City, and in all surrounding areas. She just has a love of introducing people to new music, but also has a staff that does an excellent job of curating a really nice used collection. And so her Record Store Day is, for me, the ideal. Judy goes all out. She buys everything on the list. And she doesn’t just get one copy. She tries to get as much as she can that she believes she’s gonna sell. So any of the real popular items, she tries to get as much as she can, and there are limits and stuff like that, but Judy does it right and does it well, and spends her own money to get those records in. She gets rewarded and gets those copies into her store. So those people want to line up in the morning. They know if they get there early, they’re going to have a great experience. They’re going to get whatever they want, because she buys so much and you can show up in the middle of the day and flip through the racks like we did at 2:30 in the afternoon and still pull out the gems that you might have wanted. I have Green Day Live at Woodstock in 1994 from that Record Store Day at Mills. And that is a special record to me, not just because of the day I got it. I was at that concert in the front row getting pelted by mud the entire time. Having the memory of it and hearing it back on vinyl, remembering it happening is fantastic. And I wouldn’t have that, I wouldn’t be able to get it if I hadn’t been at Mills Record Company on that particular day. So that’s special to me, but it’s not just the new stuff. She does used record drops throughout the day. So again, you’re not into the new stuff. Come at 10:00. They’re going to unveil racks of used records that haven’t been in the store. They’ve been curating for weeks just for Record Store Day. And then it’s another digging process. And then they have live music throughout the day from great local bands and food and donuts, it’s really cool.

Like Kevin said, just come to the record store just say thank you. Spend time with all these other people who love records like you do, and flip through the records, have conversations, share what you found. And that, for me, I think it’s less about the list and what was on it, and more about the experience. And Judy understands that so well. And she’s not the only one, trust me, there are plenty of fantastic record stores that really get it and do it right. And so it doesn’t matter who you are, she’s got something for you. There are things she’s done in the past to take care of the Swifties. She’s done a Swift drop at a certain time in the day, because they need to collect all the different items. And so she has scoured the racks all over the country to find the right items, and they come in at a specific time just for the Swiftie drop. That means to me that you understand your customers.

IHTOV: I have never been to a Record Store Day. This made me want to go. And there is something I want this year, there’s an MJ Lenderman album I want. So I’m thinking I’m going to go this year, because watching your movie, it just looks like so much fun.

KS: It’s such a great time. We had a very early call time on the day, we filmed at Mills, and by noon, one o’clock, we were all really tired, so when our filming day was done in the mid afternoon, we bought all our crew records from from Mills as a thank you, and we were able to do that and not break the budget of the film or the budget for our record store day shoot, because Mills was unveiling 800 used records every hour or so throughout the course of Record Store Day. And as Chris said, which meant you could walk into the store at any time it was open the entire Record Store Day, and find something that was only available for the first time on that day.

IHTOV: Where can my readers watch Vinyl Nation?

KS: It’s on most streaming platforms. And for purchase at all the normal places - iTunes, Amazon Prime. Chris and I had a great time working together. We shot a short documentary in Portland, Oregon last fall that’ll probably be out sometime this year. Sherry, our cinematographer, continues to work with us. She worked on the short doc and we don’t know if we’re gonna be making music documentaries for the rest of our lives, but, but we have a lot of, a lot of ideas. A few of them are music related and, and they’re all on the burners as we speak.

Kevin Smokler is a writer, documentary filmmaker and event host focused on our relationship as human beings with pop culture. His most recent book BREAK THE FRAME: CONVERSATIONS WITH WOMEN FILMMAKERS  contains 24 career-retrospective conversations with directors behind box office phenomenon like Captain Marvel, Oscar winners like Free Solo and the filmmakers who launched actors such as America Ferrera, Paul Rudd, Ryan Gosling and Jennifer Lawrence. and will be published on May 22, 2025. His previous books, BRAT PACK AMERICA is a love letter to teen movies of the 1980s. His 2013 essay collection PRACTICAL CLASSICS is a 50 book attempt to reread one’s high school reading list as an adult.

Christopher Boone is a writer and a filmmaker based in Albuquerque. He co-directed the feature documentary Vinyl Nation about the resurgence of vinyl records with Kevin Smokler, and directed the narrative feature Cents from his Academy Nicholl semifinalist script. Christopher has also moderated several screenwriting panels for the Austin Film Festival and its On Story PBS series and podcast. His next film is Middle Grounds, a short documentary co-directed with Smokler about coffee, community, and conversations.

[ed note: if you have Kanopy - which you can get with a library card - the film is streaming there for free. Trailer is here.]

I Have That on Vinyl is a reader supported publication. If you enjoy what’s going on here please consider donating to the site’s writer fund: venmo // paypal