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LPs on the Database

Posted on by Frank The Drifter

When Dollar Country started I only collected 45s, it seemed easier and cleaner. Two songs per disc is nice. No picture sleeves, a nice big hole in the middle that helps you hold onto a stack while you flip through. Life was easy back then.

People used to mention how I didn’t collect LPs, I had to turn down so many, but at that point they just didn’t interest me. There’s probably a reason I told people but really I just wasn’t interested in them for whatever reason. At some point that changed because I realized there were a lot of great things on big records and the genres represented were different. In country you’ll always have more than enough 45s. Gospel and Bluegrass are much more LP centered. If you’re gonna spread the word of god you may as well do 30 minutes instead of 6.

So, anyway, things are different now. I’m still picky about country LPs because it’s not really worth collecting stuff unless it’s rare, you can find non-rare stuff in other people’s collections. But with Country Gospel you just have so many options on LP that never made it to a single.

Another thing 45s have going for them is that they’re easy to input to a database, LPs on the other hand have significantly more information. Not just more songs, but more songwriting credits, more publishing credits, more, more more. Personally I also have a check in system for my 45s. Clean them, sleeve them, stamp them with a date, ID number, and source number from where I got it, and now it’s in the collection. LPs take longer to listen to, take longer to log, and take up more space. Now multiply that by a few thousand.

Now that you’ve heard plenty about my feelings towards the different sizes, maybe you can understand why I haven’t put any LPs on the database yet. But I wanted to put them on there, I was just waiting to get my head right. To have the best entry point into it. I made sure the database was ready (there’s a lot of inside baseball for database and info stuff happening here), and I had all the right fields set. Yesterday I put the first full listing up with audio and everything.

This record isn’t special outside of it being the first one. I mean it’s special in the way that any bit of music is special, but I didn’t choose it just for this. I’ve also made the streaming audio into a basic video with the album covers so it’s more like youtube. People seem to like that style of video and something about just having streaming audio felt lacking to me, and maybe to others it did too.

The end goal is to have the website feel institutional in that it’s focused on the information but also not have it feel clunky in the way that many institutional websites feel. Useful in the way that the internet used to feel 10+ years ago and without the constant ads, unneeded widgets, and website features that seem to take away from the actual usefulness of the website. Has anyone else noticed this? It drives me crazy when I want the hours of a business and I have to go to a website that’s mostly scrolling pictures and I can’t just find out when they’re open.

Here it is, I hope you like it. The Byrd Sisters are as good a group as any to start it off. Three Sisters In Jesus, although in real life they’re two daughters and a mother.

Visit the entry here, and keep checking for more.

https://dollarcountry.org/items/show/27946

My First Dig Trip As A Parent

Posted on by Frank The Drifter
The look of a man who had 6 hours of sleep and then drove 8 hours

Well I finally did it, I left the house. When my wife and I found out we were having a baby I made plans to not make plans for all of 2024. Normally I go out digging for a week once every couple months, but with a newborn I knew I wouldn’t be able to do that, so I didn’t. And then I felt like I couldn’t even after we got the hang of everything around the house. The problem was inside myself and didn’t have to do with my wife or kid, I just felt weird about leaving, I put a lot of pressure on myself. So last friday I dipped my toes in to see what happened.

I had been speaking with Steve Foehner about buying some records and since it’s within a half days drive it was the perfect test trip. The night before I got the feeling I always get, the same feeling I used to get as a kid on christmas eve, excitement in my belly about what’s coming. I woke up early and headed south to West Virginia, stopping at Waffled House for breakfast and a couple goodwills along the way.

It turned out to be a nice day, the weather hit the high 50s and the sky was clear. I ended up at Steve’s around midday and had a great time. He had some boxes picked for me to look through and I ended up buying all of them, as usual. He’s always looking to move things along and I’m always looking to get more, so it’s a good pairing. Visiting other collectors and dealers is one of my favorite things about collecting because we all have different things we like and something to say. Steve is a real music lover, he listens to every record he prices and can recall the song if you ask him about it. I can’t even recall some of the songs I’ve played on my show.

The real prize of the day was the most well known rare country record. Steve had a copy of Psycho by Eddie Noack he had mentioned to me online and I wasn’t really looking for it. I have some bootlegs and the price it usually goes for is enough for me to buy a few boxes of unknown country singles. However when he offered it for what I thought was a very reasonable price I decided to go for it, I wanted to have a copy someday anyway, so now I do.

Another exciting thing I got there was a box of instantaneous discs Steve had been holding onto for quite a while. Like many collectors out there, he had them because they were unique and thought someone should save them eventually, which is my exact plan with my acetate project coming up soon. So now I have another 75 or so discs for that.

After buying 5 boxes of records there I hit the road for Huntington. Steve told me about a record store there that would have more country gospel LPs than I could shake a stick at. Unfortunately when I got to town I found the store being cleared out by a number of people with trucks. The owner had sold the contents via auction and I just showed up on pick up day. So I went down the road to the Peddlers Mall, an antique mall I’d gone to in 2023.

It was the regular stalls of stuff until I got near the end and I found a few boxes of records on the floor. From there I ended up with a dozen or two country things from the area and a couple 45s. Nothing amazing, but for a dollar each they were well worth it. After being gone for over 12 hours I decided it was time to head back.

I hit a goodwill on the Ohio side of the river and found a really great bunch of bluegrass and gospel LPs for a dollar each before heading out of Huntington for Cleveland. Waffle House was my stop for dinner and at about 11pm I landed home with some cool records and a nice day under my belt.

It felt great to be out again although it’s different now because even though it was only one day I missed my family a lot, and I doubt it will get easier, but I also love digging so I’m going to have to do it.

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

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