A 2007 newspaper article hangs on the coffee-colored walls of Audiographic Masterworks, heralding the company’s move from a small office on Summer Avenue to its 11,000-square-foot Bartlett location. In retrospect, the details are ominous. Published less than a year before the Great Recession, the headline itself is a sign of the times: “Local Musicians Building CD/DVD Business.”
Over the next eight years, stocks fell, real estate slid, music streamed — and Audiographic Masterworks (AGMW) and its founders, Brandon Seavers and Mark Yoshida, pressed on. Last year, they made that phrase a reality.
For decades, vinyl records were the way Americans listened to music. When CD sales surpassed record sales in the 1980s, the expensive and time-consuming process of pressing vinyl records essentially became a lost art. Production slowed and even stopped at many of the vinyl presses in the U.S. over the next several years, as did production of the heavy, expensive machinery used in the pressing plants.
Today, only around 20 vinyl record pressing plants exist in the country. One of those now calls Memphis home.
Memphis Record Pressing, the newest branch of AGMW was created in partnership with Oxford, Mississippi-based Fat Possum Records after the purchase of several vinyl presses from a closed New York plant in June 2014.
“When we bought this equipment, vinyl was really hot, so we saw the demand for it, and it hadn’t really made the headlines yet,” says Seavers. By the end of 2014, the industry was bursting at the seams. The new company is already aiming to produce 1.5 million records a year. “It’s a really tight-knit industry; everybody knows everybody. And because there’s so much demand, there’s really not a lot of competition. Most of the other guys are so glad [we’re starting up] and relieving some of the pressure in the industry.”
Behind the smooth neutrals and album covers of AGMW’s halls, massive metal machines tower just below a maze of silver pipes, part of the extensive steam system that drives power to the presses. Black vinyl beads come together from a deposit in the corner of a machine to become what looks for an instant like a round black tire, immediately pressed on both sides by metal plates with a negative design of the record’s grooves. The finished album is stamped with a label and dropped smoothly into a stack of identical copies.
After that, the machinery stops. White-gloved hands carefully go over each record searching for scratches or imperfections. Across the room, someone actually puts the album on and listens to every note, front and back. Because of the steam power system, the smallest change in temperature or humidity can create errors on vinyl. If the set is approved, it reaches an assembly room where the final products are also put together by hand, one record at a time.
The plant is currently operating six presses and has two more waiting to be installed. AGMW has hired around 15 employees along with a significant number of temporary workers since adding the new equipment last year, raising the question: How do you find someone who knows how to operate a machine that hasn’t been made for 30 years?
“We were looking for people who had either operated machinery in the past, could work on their own car, a couple of guys were auto mechanics,” Seavers says. “One of our best press operators had never done anything like this; he’s just very attentive to detail and he’s got a mechanical mind.”
Memphis Record Pressing employees spend 17 hours each day at the presses, and Seavers is hoping to get to 20 hours by summer 2015.
“The reason we got into this is because demand over the last three years has grown tremendously,” he says, noting a 40 to 50 percent increase in vinyl sales just in the first quarter of 2015. “Most of the plants in the world have a three- to six-month lead time right now to get a project done; most plants aren’t even taking orders right now. We have people calling every day. We had people calling before we even had one machine operating.”
Orders filled at the studio come from a variety of sources, including artists featured on the Fat Possum label like The Black Keys and Modest Mouse. Sony executives toured the plant recently for a potential addition to their vendor list. Memphis Record Pressing is also manufacturing all of the Hi Records catalog, known for historic Memphis artists like Al Green. Carrying on this legacy is something that Seavers is proud to bring back to the area.
“Early in the 1950s, ‘60s, a lot of the records in the country were made in the Mid-South,” Seavers says. “I think it’s really cool that we’re bringing a vital part of Memphis back to such a rich musical heritage.”
Today, artists from Justin Timberlake to Black Sabbath have albums on vinyl in stores across the country, marketed to millennials alongside colorful record players, trendy headphones, and throwback siblings like Polaroid cameras. The newfound interest in vinyl is a flashback to the days when the slow spin of a record made listening an experience.
“You have to actually sit down, put the record on, and you have to invest some time in it,” Seavers says. “That’s what’s so cool about the resurgence, the people that are actually listening to it, they’re invested in that music, and that’s why they’re willing to pay more.”
Maybe it’s the novelty of an old record or the desperate search for anything that offers a chance to slow down our instant world. Whatever the cause, vinyl is thriving. With a coveted seat at the height of demand and an undeniable cool factor, the presses are rolling in the Bluff City, and Memphis Record Pressing is just getting started.
Katherine Barnett is a freelance writer and former intern for Contemporary Media Inc. who now works full-time at Chi Omega Executive Headquarters in Memphis.
