Dead End Records

Dead End Records in Nashville carries CDs and merchandise from local and emerging bands. The shop offers pre-orders for home delivery or in-store pickup, allowing customers to get new releases before they hit the streets. Their merchandise selection includes patches, pins, stained glass items, and mugs, with curated gifts featuring exclusive designs. The store also features a blind date option where customers can discover music from local artists without knowing the band in advance.

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Interview with Dead End Records

Dead End Records has a very specific model — heavy on local and emerging bands' CDs and merch, blind date option, patches and pins and stained glass. That's not a typical used-record shop; it's a scene shop. In your own words, what does Dead End actually do, and what was the vision?

As I have been developing Dead End Records I am finding that we are not a typical record store. When I envisioned Dead End, I wanted a place that felt real, felt like I belonged. A place where my art, music, aesthetic could live and breathe. I was hopeful that a handful of people would also jive with it. Surprisingly a lot of people did! As I think about the store, we are so much more than a record store, we want to be a space where the community can express themselves. The store is exactly what I envisioned, it’s the record store I wanted to have in my hometown, where I can go buy weird art, a prosthetic eye, a killer metal album, and maybe a beetle riding a dinosaur, all under one roof.

Nashville's Clinton Street sits in a very specific part of town — near WeHo and the Nations, close to the local-music infrastructure. For someone visiting the shop, what else in the immediate area is worth their afternoon?

So many good options! We are located in Marathon Village, which is a historical building that is famous for manufacturing the Marathon Car in the 1910’s. The vibe is amazing, it’s a living museum, so you can go in and mess with all the old equipment from the factory. In the village, we have 3 distilleries, a winery, retail shops, a music venue, and so much more. It’s a hidden gem in Nashville for sure. Plus only like 8 minutes from broadway, but such a different vibe.

Nashville is famous globally for country music but has a huge underground of local emerging artists that most tourists never see. What role does Dead End play in that ecosystem, and what does the local-scene crowd that comes in actually look like?

Dead End wants to bring that underground to the forefront of the community, without losing our grungy appeal. Most of the time, our genre has to tone down or accommodate to the masses to be accepted by the community. We aren’t about that. We want us, the bands, the people to stay aesthetic and themselves, while getting the spotlight and admiration they deserve. The alternative music scene is huge here and Nashville is filled with talented musicians that play ALL genre’s. In our local section, we don’t just carry the heavy stuff, but most genre’s of local music. The important part to us is that it’s local. One event that Dead End host’s is the Dead End Market. This event is for the local bands in Nashville. It gives them an opportunity to sell their merch, meet fans, and network with other bands in the scene. Over 30 bands, hanging out, selling merch, talking shit, and just having fun.

The blind date box — buying local music sight-unseen — is a genuine community-building move. How did that come about, and what have you learned about who takes the chance and what they discover?

The blind date w/a local band was Jake’s idea. We have a dedicated section of the store for local band media, when we first opened, a lot of customers would pick something up, but not want to take a chance on it. Local band media isn’t always professionally plastic wrapped or have promo stickers like you see on top name albums, but the music is sick! Jake saw the idea from a bookstore and applied it to the local section. If people are to afraid to choose…let’s take the choice away. Remove the obstacle that keeps them from trying a local band. It’s slowly evolved over the years, us adding a heaviness meter. Not everyone wants the most brutal sounding band imaginable and people were nervous they would accidentally pick that option. Now we let them know, so they have a little bit of knowledge to help them pick from the blind date options.

Does Dead End serve coffee?

Haha, we don’t serve coffee. There’s a coffee shop in the building we are a part of.

Being heavy on new physical media from local bands means you're essentially a distribution channel as much as a retail shop. What have you learned about how emerging artists actually move CDs and cassettes in 2026, and what's the honest state of it?

Honestly, our local section is always running out. Especially with us applying the blind dates. We are constantly asking bands to bring in more merch so we can keep up. I learned that a lot of local bands, aren’t familiar with the retail aspect of music media. I have worked in retail for 14+ years, so it’s second nature at this point, but some artists don’t have that experience. They will come in and try to give us there CDs or media to sell for free, because they are stoked for us to bring them in. The first thing we do is figure out the financials with the band. The cost to us, the cost to the customer, and to communicate with them that we are just as honored to carry their media. We need to pay them for their hard work as much as anything else we buy for the store. Helping them find value in their media I think is my favorite part. Like let me buy it from you! And I’m going to try my hardest to sell it, because in the end I want all of us to win.

Pre-orders for home delivery or in-store pickup, patches and pins from indie artists — the shop is really a full ecosystem for the local band economy. What's the wildest thing (a moment, a record, a band show) that's happened around Dead End?

I think our wildest moment we’ve had was our first Record Store Day. We wanted our first to be a great one, so we hosted 4 local bands to play, vendors to sell stuff, and all sorts of goodies! At one point Titans of Siren were playing and the guitarists ran outside, around the building, in our store, petted dogs, all while playing. At one point they broke the DIY stage we had set up in the lobby. At the end his guitar ended up breaking so he threw it in the trash after the set. It was pretty chaotic, but in the best way possible.

For someone visiting Nashville and trying to actually connect with the local underground rather than the Broadway tourist version — beyond Dead End, where would you send them?

Support local! I shout it every time I can, that includes music venues. Nashville has historic local venues that are accessible. There’s shows going on almost every night for local bands. DRKMTTR, The 5Spot, Exit/In, The Basement, The Cobra, The Basement East, The End, the list goes on… go get a ticket and see a band you have never heard of.

Last updated: 2026-09-20

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