Salad Days Records

Salad Days Records in Langley, Washington, is a record shop and hi-fi venture that hosts listening sessions and community events on Whidbey Island. In this interview, the owner discusses label-led curation, physical-media ownership, and building a year-round third space.

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Interview with Salad Days Records

Salad Days — there's a Minor Threat ring to the name. Where did the shop and the name come from?

'Salad Days' actually stems from the parent company Salad Design - which is our hifi company where we build turntables, speakers, etc. That name was chosen just because we thought hifi was always taken way too seriously and wanted something fun for when we attend trade shows like Axpona, etc. We often get asked if it's from the Mac Demarco song as well - but it’s just derivative our Salad Design. Folks around town just call us "Salad" so we didn't want to confuse things as we continue to do weekly events and host concerts with a different name.

You're in Langley, out on Whidbey Island. What role does the shop play in that small-island community, and who's coming through?

We are working closely with our neighbor in the building who runs The Machine Shop to reopen the big building we are in specifically to be a third space as there is a real need for such spaces. Very few indoor third spaces exist. So the record store along with the Machine Shop and our Golden Hour cafe will be catering to the community here by being open 7 days a week and during the slow season when many other businesses cut days or close seasonally.

You run listening sessions and events around music and gear. What are those like, and what do they bring to the shop?

I've been doing the listening sessions for just over a year now. We do them from Nov-May each year specifically during the non-tourist season. Again, most places are closed or have very cut hours or days of operation and we wanted to counter that by giving locals something fun and free to do. We try to vary the monthly albums by genre so we have as wide of a variety of music each month getting featured. We generally don't do sales at the events so folks don't feel obligated to buy things, we just want the event to be a community-building-focused thing.

What are you deepest in — the genres and formats people come to you for?

I don't do genres as much as I do labels. Because this is a smaller space I wanted to have labels be the main source of curation. I have a huge number of Mississippi Records, Numero Group, Sundazed, Mello Exotica, Warp, Light in the Attic, Southern Lord, and Stones Throw records. I'll expand based on what people want, but I think finding labels that are internally very well curated are a great way to discover new music. It's the main way I discover new artists and hope to get other people into the same mindset.

Does the gear side — turntables and setups — pull people in alongside the records?

Yeah, we get a lot of inquiries about our gear along with other gear we stock. We work closely with Apos Audio to keep a selection of new turntables, CD players, DACs, amps, and headphones in stock as well. We also have listening stations for people to test a lot of the gear at.

Do people bring records in to sell or trade here, and how does that work?

We do all of the normal stuff for buying sessions. We buy lots and estates, do cash or store credit of CDs, vinyl, cassettes, reel-to-reel tapes, and retro games. Depending on the size of the lot it may take a few days to process - again mostly standard stuff here though.

What do sellers most often overvalue — the record they're certain is a payday that isn't?

I almost never end up buying records when folks bring in just a handful of records and think I will give them eBay prices. Beatles, Zeppelin, Clapton, etc often get way overvalued by older folks I've noticed. I love those bands, but they also sold millions of copies of their albums. For anyone trying to sell just a few records I often will just tell them that eBay/Discogs will be their best option because shipping a few records is fairly manageable for most folks. On the island we have thrift stores trying to hawk trashed records at $10+ for any "recognizable" band, so I'm often underpricing those stores and offering better stuff. I try to pay as well as I can, but I also price fairly aggressively because I'm serving the local population, not the global online population and want to provide as many good deals as I can.

Whidbey Island stays damp with the sea air. What condition problems do you see most, and what would you tell someone to do differently?

Surprisingly the dampness isn't that big of a problem here, even compared to places like Seattle that are quite close. We get a lot of winds around the island and that keeps it both warmer here than the mainland and slightly less damp. You have to store stuff inside here though, things in garages won't last long at all if they aren't insulated well. That's more of a regional thing though than an island specific thing.

What's the wildest thing a seller has walked in with, not knowing what they had?

For me this has to be someone that had a handful of Revox reel-to-reel machines they brought over from Europe. They didn't think they would be worth anything, but they had some really clean B77 MK II players that are highly revered and sought after. I pointed them to a few places in the region that specialize in selling hifi gear and gave them a price of what to expect as a seller to get. They walked in offering to just give them to me and left knowing they should get at least $1.5K+ easily for each of the 4 machines they had. It was a dream player of mine as well, but I couldn't afford to pay what they were worth at the time and wasn't about to take working players like those for free.

For someone just starting to build a collection, what's your best piece of advice?

This is an interesting question. I can tell my answer is going to be totally different now than it would have been 10 years ago when I had my last record store. In the past I probably would have regurgitated some fairly standard talking points about why vinyl/analog sounds better or how vinyl makes me listen to albums in full but these days with all of the technological and societal changes in the last decade my answer is very different. These days with all of the streaming services, and how abysmal most are (recurring subscription fees, pricing constantly raising, media you paid for being removed, companies pushing for fully digital libraries where you can't resell items, etc) I view things as physically owned vs. digitally rented, not analog vs digital, or vinyl vs CDs, etc. Those were definitely the talking points a decade ago. These days I think of it as owning vs. renting - and all physical media vs digital media.

I think physical media of all types are important and that we should preserve as much as we can. Music, games, movies, books. I don't think of it as "collecting" any longer as much as I think of it as preservation and even freedom in many ways. Freedom from big tech fees and subscriptions, but also freedom from censorship. Don't worry about the size of your collection, the rarity of what you have, or if you have the best gear - I think that kind of collecting can often be harmful and really not much fun. That kind of collecting is often just consumerism. I find comfort in just owning the things I love knowing they can't be taken from me these days. I also really like the limitations and inconveniences of physical collections as well - it helps me slow down and enjoy what I have instead of just constantly doom scrolling or sitting around being indecisive about what I want to watch or listen to.

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Last updated: 2026-10-13

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