
As a boy growing up in Atlanta, Jordan Jeffares would lie on his bed and listen to music on his headphones for hours. “I don’t know, I was just one of those people,” says Jordan, the musician and songwriter known by his band/moniker Snowden. “It blew me away, and I wanted to figure out how I could do that.”

One of the bands that we caught up with at this year’s SXSW was The Rocketboys. After reflecting on their career and discussing the new album they are currently working on, we thought we’d share some of our conversation with lead singer Brandon Kinder.

In our fast-paced, consumer-centric world, more and more people are looking for reasons to slow down – to actually experience something, instead of indiscriminant consumption. In the realm of music culture, nothing epitomizes that desire more than vinyl – appealing to those who take the time to listen, whether playing a record alone in the still of the evening or letting the turntable warmly exude its sounds over the communal clanking of forks and exuberant laughter.

Perusing a record store in Nashville is one of the most quintessential experiences – and city-specific pleasures – of living in Music City. With collections of used records supplied by decades of musicians and music-lovers who have come and gone, knowledgeable staffs and a large enough population of people in town who own and use record players to justify carrying the best new records as well, Nashville’s record stores are among the best in the world.

We vividly remember the first time we heard Wild Cub – the Nashville-based band formed in 2012 by Keegan DeWitt and Jeremy Bullock. We had just listened to Alabama Shakes bring down the house at Billy Reid’s annual Shindig, and what followed at the after party was supposed to be just the bonus part of the night. As guests sipped bourbon drinks in the small warehouse lit only with mason-jar candles, a kinetic burst of audible energy erupted from the stage and captured the attention and the esteem of the crowd.