Vinyl records in hot demand ahead of Record Store Day

Vinyl records are in hot demand in Quebec and beyond.

At Drummondvinyl in Drummondville, Que., staff can’t keep up with the demand for vinyl records, according to the company’s co-founder, Jeff Beaulieu.

“I call it the digital detox,” he explained. ”It creates a moment, which I think the digital world cannot compete against because when you put a vinyl on, all of a sudden everything is aligned with this.”

Beaulieu and fellow musician Alex Henry Foster launched the company three years ago out of necessity for their own band, saying the waitlist for existing pressing plants was too long.

“For us, it wasn’t about market and demand,” said Beaulieu. ”It was because we realized we wanted to do our own vinyl and that we needed to wait a whole year to do it, which we couldn’t afford because you need to go on tour.”

Vinyl pressing plants have been opening across Canada to meet increasing demands, including the Precision Record in Burlington, Ont., Microforum in Toronto, Ont. and Clampdown Record Pressing in Vancouver, B.C.

Priya Panda, spokesperson for Canada’s annual Record Store Day, says the trend is consistent.

“I think it brings all age groups to the record stores,” she said. ”There are ten-year-olds. There are people who are 80-years-old in line. We’ve seen it all over the last 18 years.”

This year’s Record Store Day is set for April 18, and labels, big and small, have said they are planning to push rare, limited-edition reissues.

Some of the sought-after titles include Joni Mitchell’s For the Roses, Cemetery by 80s Montreal punk band Deja Voodoo, Quebec rockers Offenbach, and Honeymoon Suite’s long-out-of-print greatest hits package.

“I think people just got tired of streaming and listening to compressed MP3 files that don’t really sound that great. What can I say? I have. My son is 28 years old, and he’s totally into vinyl,” said Honeymoon Suite’s guitarist and founding member, Derry Grehan.

Yet, the most in-demand artist on vinyl this year isn’t actually involved with Record Store Day.

Saguenay, Que. avant-garde band Angine de Poitrine has taken both the province and the international music scene by storm in a matter of weeks.

“I don’t know how many they pressed,” said Jimmy Kwan of Beatnick Records. “We ordered 50 copies, and they sold out really fast.”

It’s a similar story in almost every record store in the province.

“We received one box of fifty records a couple of weeks ago, and they sold in 30 minutes,” said Xavier Paquette from Freeson Records on Mont-Royal Avenue in Montreal.

He says he doubts he’ll have any in stock for Record Store Day.

Drummondvinyl was the company tasked with fulfilling orders for the rock duo’s album.

“I’ve never seen anything like that from my own eyes with that kind of music happening here. So, for us to be, first, part of it was incredible. What a huge privilege to be involved in that, “ said Beaulieu.

For artists and fans, it’s the kind of excitement they say they haven’t seen since the days everyone assumed vinyl was dead.