ARSC 2024 Re-Cap and Thanks

I just got home from another great Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) conference and I highly recommend this gathering to all of my music-loving friends. If you've never been, it's an annual summit of recorded sound collectors, institutional archivists, and audio preservation engineers and it's a musical geek-out fest in the very best way.

On Friday I gave a presentation about the Cuca Records collection at Mills Music Library and as it turned out, I wasn't the only one at ARSC who talked about Cuca (shout out to the Baylor University's Black Gospel Archive). I also thoroughly enjoyed the presentations from Justice Brokenrope on Wathéča Records, Seth Winner's Playback of 1930s non-commerical private recordings, the Möllendorff Cylinders chronicles, Ted Olson's Steve Young retrospective, and the always enlightening and entertaining copyright panel, to name just a few.

It was great fun spending a night out on the town with my pal Deke Dickerson which culminated in hanging out with Dave Hartman and Southern Culture on the Skids before their show and Deke joining them on stage for a tune. Loved having lunch and talking baseball and vintage music with Gail and Cary Ginnell and Mark Cantor (amazing video presentation, btw Mark) on Friday. And I had the most wonderful evening on the lake Saturday evening playing Finnish old-time tunes (and even some rockabilly) with my dear friends Ralph and Jaana Tuttila and their group Lauluaika. Thank you again for the invitation and amazing party! On the way home I even got to do some record digging with my Uncle Mark up in Balsam Lake and meet his precious pup, Precious.

Overall, it was a really great conference. I got to check out some amazing '40s and '50s clothes at The Cat and the Cobra with fellow fashionable archivist Chris Walker. And of course I checked out a few my favorite Minneapolis record shops: Vintage Music Company, Hymie's Records, and Cheapo Records. I got to catch up with many friends doing some really amazing audio preservation projects: Lance and April Ledbetter of Dust-to-Digital, Steve Ramm, Filip Šír, Meagan Hennessey and Richard Martin at Archeophone Records, Michael Biel, Martin Fisher, Jay Bruder, and many, many more. Y'all are inspiring! And I owe a huge thanks to my buddy Patrick Feaster for sharing a room with me, chairing the ARSC program committee, and making such a fun conference possible. Hope to see you all again next year!