Month: February 2025

About Month: February 2025

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Pedal Steel Sticker

Posted on by Frank The Drifter

Click Here To Go to The Online Store

Like the “I Like Music That Sounds Like Shit” stickers, I designed these based on an actual thought I said to someone. Who doesn’t like more pedal steel?

You can now get these at the online store in the stickers section. If you made a preorder then I’ll be sending those out starting on Monday. Also if you ordered a big sticker pack I’ll send those out with the new stickers.

There’s also another free sticker that will go out with any order until I run out. It’s a graphic I made for the newsletter and I just think it sums up what Dollar Country is well enough to stick to a wall.

Cheers
Franklin

The Elephant In The Room (or The Importance Of Private Archives)

Posted on by Frank The Drifter

The Elephant In The Room (or The Importance Of Private Archives)

Well I’m sure many of you have been paying attention to politics in America recently, it’s been fairly difficult to get away from even if you wanted to. Normally I try to have DC be a supportive place without talking specifically about political issues, but this issue I think is very important to what I do and what you’re here for. The next few years we really have no idea how safe our public archives are.

I know a few people who work for public institutions and the general feeling is that we just don’t know what’s going to happen, but the status quo will most likely not remain. If we were to guess based on the massive layoffs and other sweeping financial decisions happening then it’s possible that nearly all federal funding for arts, archives, and other services will be gone.

This means that private archives like Dollar Country are going to be very important. The problem with a private archive is that archiving takes a ton of work and a ton of time, which is why so many archives are based on public institutions. Archives are for the public good, it’s important to preserve and provide access to our history, which is why so many are funded by public institutions or through federal funds.

In 2024 Dollar Country applied for and was granted 501(3)(c) non-profit status by the government in hopes that it would be able to attain grant money from private and public places. Not having the option of federal arts and archive grants in the future is a bummer, but thankfully the DC archive isn’t at risk of losing all funding because it is funded by 100+ individuals who choose to donate.

I consider myself very lucky to have that support for DC, most people don’t have that, and that’s because I’ve spent a ton of time putting in work and grinding it out to get here. So I’m writing this to say a big giant thank you to the folks who have donated and those who continue to do so, and that I know that we may be seeing some wacky things in the next few years that might include job losses and other types of financial trouble. DC has no intention of stopping, and the records I have archived are not even half of what I envision for the future. DC has been amassing records for years knowing that they would go up in price and become harder to get, so there are thousands of records yet to be filed, digitized, and shared! Without funding I’m not sure what will happen to all of these records, but I’ll worry about that if we get there.

I hope those of you that already donate are able to continue to support Dollar Country in the coming years because you all understand that it’s important to be archiving this culture. That being said, I understand if things get tight and you lose income, too.

If anyone out there would like to donate you can join the patreon or donate one time via paypal, cashapp, or venmo (info at the bottom). If you want to donate bigger amounts or know anyone who might want to donate more then please pass along my information or let them know where to find me. All donations are now tax deductible being that DC is a non-profit organization.

As always, the best way to help Dollar Country (besides donating) is to tell someone else about Dollar Country.

Thanks,
Franklin

Donation Information:
Venmo: @dollarcountry
Cashapp: $dollarcountry

Paypal: you can send a donation to host@dollarcountry.org

or use this donation page: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=LULUWNS7G4FD6

Browse By State or Year

Posted on by Frank The Drifter

Go here to browse: https://dollarcountry.org/browse-by

I’ve just added a page to the database where you can easily search records by their release year or state. It’s still basic, but it’s a step in making the database easier to use!

A lot of people got a hold of me when I posted the map asking what records I had from different places and so I thought this would be helpful. I just finished North Carolina last night and am going to be working on North Dakota to West Virgnia this week. After that basic data entry is done I think I’ll be able to do some really cool stuff.

Things still to do:

  • Finish adding state/location data to records
  • tie location data to artist
  • tie location data to label
  • try to have different lists for label, artist, and record location (if possible)

So basically I have a lot of data entry still to do, but I like data entry and I think that the difference between a normal database and a helpful database is users being able to easily browse and view information.

Leave a comment if there’s some sort of data you’d like to see in a map, or an improvement to the database. Also let me know if you hit a broken link.

Interactive Location Map

Posted on by Frank The Drifter

This is something I’ve been working towards for a long time, having a map like this is a big goal for me. What you have here is an interactive map on google of all the locations I have 45s from, that I know of anyway. I started keeping location data back in 2020 when I did a big project to post one record from each US state on instagram. It might not look like it, but this map is the culmination of at least 100 hours of work. I went through each record in the collection and found out where the label and/or artist was from and logged it on lists. I still have a *big* list of unknown location records that I want to figure out someday, but for now this is what I got.

This map is made up of data from the DC Archives 45 rpm collection. So there are no locations from LPs here. Also this is just one point for each location. So if I have 20 records from Cleveland and 1 record from Kenosha the map will show them equally. This is a beginning, a rough draft. Eventually I want to have a map like this on the database where you can not only see the points like this but also the amount of records from each location with data about amount of records from each state, region, etc.

The other major point for this data is that I’ve left of all major labels and most big labels. For instance, Starday isn’t included here because it’s a big country label. The big names like Decca, RCA, and Capitol are not included either. My goal is to have a map like this that shows where normal people were making and releasing records, and if we include the majors then the map will become heavily skewed to a handful of big cities.

You can browse the map here: RECORD LOCATIONS MAP

Cheers
Franklin

PS. if you see spots where I don’t have records from and have any you’d like to donate then please reach out, I’d be happy to add them to the database!

Hoot Roberts – Stop The World And Let Me Off

Posted on by Frank The Drifter

Database Link: https://dollarcountry.org/items/show/8712

I have no recollection of where I got this one although it was pre-pandemic. I love that it’s Hoot Roberts on Owl records, it’s nice to have a theme. Stop The World is a great tune, Dearer Than Life is alright but I’d play the top side 9/10 times. According to slipcue.com, Hoot Roberts was originally from Alabama but moved to Wausau Wisconsin and had his country career there. “Big Sound From The North Woods”

One thing of note is that side A is partially credited to W.S. Stevenson, the owner of 4 Star Records. Like many other slippery record men from way back then, he put his name on many songs that he had no hand in writing, but since he owned the music and was the man in charge he got to do all that kind of stuff without anyone coming after him.

Cheers
Franklin

DB Update: State of Origin Lists

Posted on by Frank The Drifter

Back in 2021 I went through every record in the collection to make lists on discogs of what state they were from. Sometimes it’s the label, sometimes it’s the artist, and sometimes I couldn’t figure it out at all. Well those lists remained on discogs and I updated them whenever I put a new record into the collection over there. I’m working on a new project where I want to share records by State so I’m translating the discogs lists to my database. So far I’ve gotten Alabama through Illinois moved over, I’m working alphabetically.

Once I’m done I’m gonna have a page where you can browse by state to see records from each state. I’m pumped to get this information moved over.

Here’s a few if you wanna browse:
Alabama
Arkansas
California

Let me know if you want the state list and I can link you to it!

Cheers
Franklin

Welcome to the DC Blog

Posted on by Frank The Drifter

Howdy Folks, Frank the Drifter here. Who starts a blog in 2025? I guess I do. I’ve spent the last 8 years hustling on instagram, facebook, and twitter to try and get people to listen to my show and sometimes it feels like those platforms make new rules to just to make it harder for people to see my posts. I’m happy that so many people heard about me from instagram, but the hustling stresses me out and a lot of folks dig what I’m doing no matter where it’s posted, so I thought it was time to slow down and do my own thing. I also didn’t like that you had to use any particular app to hear from me about what I’m doing, so here we are.

I plan on posting my “social media” style posts here to the blog as well as my newsletter so you can just check here for it. You can “follow” what I’m posting with RSS (if you don’t have an rss app they are easy to find and very simple) by putting this in your reader: https://blog.dollarcountry.org/feed/

In other words, this is where I’ll update you about anything related to DC. I know it will reach fewer people than instagram but I just don’t feel good about being on instagram anymore, as I like to own my own data.

Cheers
Franklin