High Tides Music Bringing The Beat Back to St. Stephen
ST. STEPHEN– What started out as an appointment-only record store in the back room of a house is now the go-to spot for all things music in the Town of St. Stephen.
High Tides Music, located at 49 King Street, specializes in old and new vinyl, CDs and cassettes, as well as musical accessories. It’s origins go back to The Vinyl Barn, an appointment-only record store that Greg Jackson started out of a back room of his house over three years ago.
“Essentially, I was buying too many records. I would look at a collection of records and I may want a dozen of them and I would just buy the entire collection. So I was just sitting on boxes and boxes of records,” says Jackson. “It got to the point where something had to give.”
After buying up the inventory from a local shop that was closing down, Jackson decided to renovate a backroom of his house and open his own shop. Though his house was 15 km outside of St. Stephen and the shop was by appointment only, The Vinyl Barn was busy, and brought record collectors from all over the province.
“People would not only travel from St. Stephen out there, but I also have a lot of customers from Moncton, Saint John, and Fredericton travelling once every few months to come check it out,” says Jackson.
“It seemed like the smart thing to do was to make it more centralized and get that foot traffic.”
When deciding to open High Tides, Jackson saw an opportunity to fill a gap in the town’s offerings.
“To move into town, we saw that we had to rebrand the Vinyl Barn. It was strictly records out there and to move into town I felt that having other music formats would be more successful,” says Jackson. “Also, we don’t have a music store in town for musical instruments or accessories. So I got a supplier for that too and I offer strings and picks, straps and all kinds of stuff like that also.”
Jackson says musicians in the area often had to travel to nearby cities to get music accessories. Since opening, he says he’s gotten customers from south of the border as well.
“Charlotte County has just a wonderful and broad range of musical talent. I just felt like it was time to be able to service them because driving to Saint John or Fredericton to get a pack of picks and strings is kind of ridiculous,” says Jackson.
“We’re also right on the border, so Calais, Maine is just across the bridge and they have been without a music store for a few years too, so I’ve also seen a little bit of American traffic coming in so that’s a plus.”
Jackson, who’s 30, says he is among a growing group of young people in St. Stephen who see a future in the town and are working to help it grow.
“St. Stephen has been growing a lot in the last few years. I’m 30, and it’s my generation of the people I went to school with that are either coming back from out west or have lived here for a while,” he says. “I think everybody is just tired of the same conception of ‘St. Stephen sucks’ and ‘There’s nothing to do here.’ That’s just how everybody has always been. So we’re really trying to turn that around.”
He cites things like the town’s new Garcelon Civic Centre, a number of new boutiques and shops as evidence that St. Stephen is a small town that’s growing, not shrinking.
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“We’ve got a lot of young entrepreneurs that have a vision for the town and I think St. Stephen is going to get a lot bigger within the next few years. There’s a lot of plans in place I think for things to happen here.”
Now with a music store in the town’s centre, Jackson hopes he’ll be able to sponsor music events and bring in more live shows to the town. He also wants to provide a hub for music lovers young and old.
“I really want to get the youth into music. I just think about my childhood and music was such a big part of my life . . . after school I would go down and hang out at the music store and watch people play guitar,” he says.
“Being in a music store is a part of my childhood. I feel like it’s something that the youth these days are missing. I probably got more customers right now that are teenagers or early 20’s than anybody else.”
High Tides Music will have its grand opening event on Aug 11.