It’s that time of year again in Kingsport.

Fun Fest!

Election season.

The humidity hangs in the air like a wet blanket; the cicadas start tuning up before dark, and every afternoon the forecast threatens thunderstorms that may or may not ever arrive. Whether they do is beside the point. Summer has settled in.

For me, another ritual has quietly become part of the season.

Big Lon's Vinyl Expo.

Now in its fifth year, the record show has become one of the unofficial kickoff events for Fun Fest, and somewhere along the way it became one of my favorite Sundays of the year.

People assume a record show is about vinyl.

It isn't.

It's about the people who still believe music deserves to take up space.

This year I realized I wasn't looking at the records first.

I was looking at the T-shirts.

Not designer labels. Musical labels.

Jethro Tull.

George Jones.

The Beatles.

Duran Duran.

Pink Floyd.

My own Verve Records shirt fit right in among a crowd that ranged from teenagers discovering vinyl for the first time to guys like me whose record collections have quietly followed us through most of our lives.

The first shirt that caught my eye belonged to a long-haired guy standing in line before the doors opened.

The Jethro Tull logo was enough.

I threw up the horns and laughed.

"Flute Rock!"

He laughed back.

Only then did I realize it was Hans Rottenberry, one of my favorite rock singers from Kingsport.

Within seconds we were swapping stories about the Civic Auditorium, the same stage Elvis once played, and the generations of musicians who've followed. That's the beauty of this show. People travel here from all over the region, but it never takes long before you're talking with someone who shares the same soundtrack. One T-shirt, one album, one forgotten band—that's usually all it takes to start a conversation.

Inside, dealers had come from Georgia, Knoxville, Sevierville, Wytheville, and just about everywhere in between.

Some collections were arranged with museum precision.

Others looked like they'd been rescued from someone's attic at four o'clock that morning.

Rock.

Country.

Jazz.

Bluegrass.

Metal.

Then I found my favorite category of the day.

A handwritten divider that simply read:

WTH?!?

Inside were Tammy Faye Baker albums, obscure instructional records, forgotten novelty LPs, and perhaps my favorite amusement for the day —a record called Trees Talk Too, featuring her ventriloquist wooden partner.

I laughed out loud.

Every record show needs a WTH section.

It reminds you that vinyl history isn't just made up of masterpieces. Sometimes it's wonderfully weird.

One of the first people I ran into was Lucy Fleming.

For years, Lucy was practically synonymous with Fun Fest itself, and once again she and her husband were volunteering while still finding time to wander the aisles before the crowds settled in.

That's another thing I love about this show.

Nobody is too important to stop digging through crates.

The man responsible for all of this, of course, is Big Lon.

Most people know him from Eastman.

Others know him from his radio work at the Birthplace of Country Music Museum or from the countless events where he's spinning records around the region.

But I think of Lon as something even more valuable.

He's an archivist.

Not just of vinyl, but of East Tennessee's musical memory.

He's preserving recordings, stories, forgotten bands, local labels, and pieces of history that disappear if someone doesn't care enough to save them.

I signed up for his upcoming book, Kingsport Records, before I left.

Something tells me it's going to be every bit as enjoyable as the record show itself.

By ten-thirty I'd already broken the promise every record collector makes on the drive over.

"I'm just looking."

Nobody believes it.

Not even us.

I always bring a limited amount of cash because experience has taught me that self-control disappears somewhere between the Jazz section and Progressive Rock.

Charlie Aesque was there, as always, hunting vintage treasures.

I caught up with Jim Larkin, one of my favorite progressive-rock encyclopedias, who was telling me about his radio program, Larkin's Van, where obscure keyboard players and forgotten prog records still get the attention they deserve.

These are my people.

The kind who can spend fifteen minutes debating whether one pressing sounds better than another and somehow make it seem perfectly normal.

This year's haul wasn't huge.

Just right.

Lyle Mays.

Oscar Peterson.

Bill Evans.

Elton John.

UK.

Horace Silver.

Keith Jarrett.

Miles Davis.

The record that surprised me most was Kurt Hagardorn's Analog Man in a Digital World.

Kurt may live in Oregon these days, but he's still part of East Tennessee's musical DNA, remembered for his work with Brian and the Nightmares, and there's something wonderfully fitting about buying a brand-new vinyl record from someone who's still making honest rock-and-roll in an increasingly digital world.

I can't wait to put that one on the turntable.

Of course, every record show is remembered as much for the albums you didn't buy as the ones you did.

I almost came home with a Bill Evans import.

Almost.

The vinyl showed just enough wear to make me hesitate.

So I put it back.

Then there was the copy of Sonny Rollins' The Bridge.

A guy proudly told me he'd paid four dollars for it.

Four dollars.

After Sonny's recent passing, that album feels even more meaningful. Recorded after his famous years of practicing alone on the Williamsburg Bridge, it represents one of jazz's great second acts.

I'd love to tell you it came home with me.

Instead, it's become one of this year's "ones that got away."

Every collector has those stories.

Sometimes they're better than the records themselves.

As I unpacked my records after getting home, I realized they'll eventually find their place beside hundreds of others that have followed me through the years.

Every one of them has a story.

Some remind me of a particular season of life. Others take me back to a record store that's long since disappeared, a road trip, a concert, or an afternoon exactly like this one.

The funny thing is, I'm finally old enough to see records I once owned floating back through the local scene. Every now and then I'll flip past an album and wonder, Did that used to belong to me?

Maybe it did.

Maybe it didn't.

Either way, I'm not quite ready to become the guy sitting behind the tables selling them.

I'm still the guy walking the aisles, convinced there's another great record I haven't heard yet.

Over the next few months these new additions will all get their turn on the record player. I'll lower the needle, settle into the chair, and somewhere between the first song and the second, I'll remember exactly where I found them, who I was talking to, and why I brought them home.

That's one of the things I love most about vinyl.

You're never just collecting music.

You're collecting moments.

And this year's Vinyl Expo gave me a few more worth keeping.