Featured Essay: The Story of Hoodwax: A Monthly Vinyl Meetup

by Brett Cromwell

They say because we’re humans, we crave human connection. From social gatherings around the holidays to taking in a movie or concert with friends, our shared sense of joy is nourishment for the soul. As a capital “E” extrovert, I live this sentiment every day. 

When my wife became pregnant with our son 10 years ago, we decided to sell our loft condo in Lowell, Mass., a former mill town located 30 minutes north of Boston, and move a little closer to my job. Sadly, I made the decision without thinking through the social implications of leaving a city where we had laid strong cultural roots over the course of our 8 years there.

It was leaving those roots, more than anything else, that drove me to ask my wife four years later to return to Lowell and start anew, this time on the outskirts with our 4-year old in tow. And even before we had landed in our single-family house on a dead end street, I was plotting how I could rekindle the Lowell relationships I’d left behind while also forging some new ones.

My brain wandered into different corners of possible social outings. I eventually landed in the realm of a monthly Book Club, ultimately questioning what a “dude-ish” version of that might look like. From there, it was obvious - a monthly vinyl night meetup. It was the perfect opportunity for like-minded friends to come together regularly, share their mutual appreciation for music and the medium, and of course, drink a beer or four. And so, Hoodwax - the Monthly Lowell Vinyl Night Meetup - was born.

Like any new venture, it took some planning and a few gatherings to lock in the logistics. I made sure to incorporate feedback from attendees along the way and tweak as needed, and eventually, things fell into place. The basics are pretty simple:

• Except for holidays or unforeseen scheduling conflicts, we meet on the last Sunday of the month, from 6:00-9:00 pm, and I’m the default host (with others welcome to take the reins on any given month)
• Each attendee brings a record or two from their collection to the meetup, and we each play one side of an album we brought, in order of arrival; on the rare occasion that we make it through the rotation with time left, we start the cycle over
• I capture each record we play with a photo and share a written recap with the full member group, including who brought what
• “Membership” is logged via a private Facebook group, where event details and the monthly recaps are shared; interim check-ins and other music-related fun are shared via a Facebook Messenger thread with the same members as the Facebook group
• Beginning in 2024, each month’s meetup now features a theme - think debut albums, “gateway” albums, i.e., the first album you bought by an artist or band that ultimately became an obsession, “spooky” albums (October theme), etc.  

I’m proud to share that 2024 is the sixth year of Hoodwax, with the only break being several months lost to Covid during the pandemic. Various members have come and gone during our history, and I try to keep things in order by reviewing the member list at the end of each year and purging non-attendees for that year unless they specifically request to stay active.

Our full membership number generally sits between 20-30 people, with each meetup consisting of around 6-10 attendees. We’ve found that the perfect number of participants to fully cycle through one rotation in our 3-hour window is around 8 or 9.

One mystery I’ve yet to solve, and it’s not by design — these meetups are total “sausage fests.” While there have been plenty of women on the distribution list over the years, it’s truly a rare milestone when a woman appears in person at a meetup. Our only regular in recent memory was the girlfriend of a member who only made it when he did. Try as I might, I can’t get to the bottom of this irregularity, let alone rectify it - and the ratio of men to women continues to work against it.

With members’ ages spanning from early 30s to late 50s, our musical tastes are equally varied. I personally try to be as unpredictable as possible - my 2024 selections have included:

• Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet (for November’s theme of “political” albums)
• Chicago V (theme = “albums with a number in the title)
• Failure’s Fantastic Planet(theme = “gateway” albums)
• Adolescent Sex by Japan (theme = “dazzling debuts”), and
• Hidden Waters: Strange and Sublime Sounds of Rio de Janeiro (theme = “compilations”)

While some members are fairly loyal to their favorite genre, including some serious punk and metal fans, there are always pleasant surprises, like Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets Departments randomly appearing under the guise of “political” album in November (and getting hands-down the most conversational airtime of the night), or Herbie Hancock and Foday Musa Sosu’s 1985 collaboration, Village Life, showing up the month our theme was “solo projects, side projects, and super groups.”

One annual tradition that quickly became a member favorite is our December Yankee Swap meetup. It’s the perfect blend of a Yankee Swap and our usual monthly meetup, in that everyone brings an album, but in December, it’s a wrapped one they intend to part with. 

Like a Yankee Swap, everyone draws a number. The person who drew #1 opens a record and plays the side of their choice, then the person who drew #2 opens a record, plays a side, and decides whether they want to keep that record or swap with the record played by the person who drew #1. We continue down the order of numbers, with each person playing a new record, then making the “swap” decision. In the end, we all get to listen to various albums over the course of the night, like usual, and at the end, everyone goes home with an album they love (hopefully!). This is definitely the top meetup of the year, complete with festive decor and seasonal libations.

Looking back, this little monthly meetup I put together on a whim six years ago has brought more joy and happiness than I ever expected, and has definitely helped me and others through some difficult times. I’ve received heart-felt messages from many Hoodwax members stating that, similar to me, joining the group has been one of their favorite things about relocating or returning to Lowell, or that it’s the one night a month they look forward to more than any other. This is exactly the sentiment I dreamed of during my solo brainstorm many moons ago.

With many of us enjoying six continuous years of being members, we’ve truly become a family. In fact, several of us have kids of a similar age and have literally watched them grow up together. But above all, it’s our shared love of music — more specifically, of vinyl records — that serves as the connective tissue, bringing us and keeping us together. And there’s no sign of it letting up anytime soon. Long live vinyl!

Brett Cromwell is a lifelong music fanatic, vinyl collector, and occasional dabbler in music-related hobbies, currently residing in Lowell, Mass., with his wife and son. He has written music articles for various Boston culture and music rags, the Lowell Sun newspaper, and Merrimack Valley Magazine. He once founded COVERsmART, a short-lived album cover-themed music trivia website. His latest side hustle, as a vinyl DJ under the name BCreativ, began as a pandemic mental health remedy via live streaming sets, but has since become fairly sustainable, with live sessions each month in Lowell and the surrounding area. Brett’s Mixcloud account includes nearly 250 streamable sets, all ripped live from vinyl. In the 10 or so years he’s been collecting vinyl, he has managed to accumulate more than 5,000 albums, across every decade and every genre. When he’s not obsessively talking about music with friends, or anyone else who will listen, Brett is a communications director for a large healthcare company.