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Late January 2026: Behind the scenes organizing and mail. So much mail. Sale List!

Posted on by Frank The Drifter

Dollar Country studios is slowly getting cleaned up. This week I opened mail. A couple years ago I had the bright idea to assign a Source Number to every discogs or ebay user that I bought something from so I could have that history with the disc itself in the archive. That made opening mail a longer process than it used to be and so I often put it off until there’s a critical mass of boxes that I need to take of. So that’s what the picture up top is. At least I’ll never run out of 45 mailers!

LP Logging
Back in the newborn times of early 2024 I had a lot of time in the middle of the night when I had to be up with the newborn but he mostly slept. So I went through every box of 45s I had and logged them all on a private discogs account. This filled my time but it was also practical. I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve bought a record online that I had already bought without remembering. So now I can check and see if I already have something.

Approximate amount of 45s left to add to the archive: 9803

Well I logged (most of) the 45s in 2024 but the LPs I had were still a mess. I had logged some of them but it was sporadic and not uniform in any way. Starting last week I got to work and started logging the LP shelves. I’ve logged about 1600, which seems tiny in comparison to the 45s, but that’s a lot of records!

Approximate amount of LPs left to add to the archive: 1625

Despite only having only about 15% the amount of LPs compared to 45s the LPs take up a huge amount of space. They’re just a bulky medium in comparison, but there’s so much stuff on LP that isn’t on 45 (and vice versa). The LP collection is much more focused on Country Gospel and private pressed records, whereas I have a ton of major label 45s that have made it into the collection. In doing this I’ve also found two full boxes of LPs I plan on selling that I have more than a couple copies of or don’t fit the criteria for me to keep. I keep at least 2 copies of any LP if I want them in the archive, so if I have more than that that are the same pressing those go into the sale box.

One last thing, the numbers above are just the records that are on discogs. I still have a large amount of things that have never been submitted, I might estimate about 10% of what I have, although that number is shrinking every day.

Sale List!
So I’ll be updating the sale list in the next few weeks to send out once again, and this time there will be 45s AND albums. I might even get fancy and grade everything even though that adds a lot of time.

If you’d like to be on the sale list email then drop me a line at host (at) dollar country (dot) org and I’ll send it your way once it’s ready.

Cheers
Franklin

LP Arrivals, NTS Xmas Show, State Of The Archive 2025

Posted on by Frank The Drifter

State Of The Archive 2025
2025 was a year of adaptation for Dollar Country. After having our baby in late 2023 I scrambled with what to do in 2024. DC started a newsletter, tried to still release a ton of episodes, and generally tried to do too much. For 2025 my goal was to slow down and get an idea of not what could be done but what should be done. So here’s the rundown:

  1. First Full Year As A Non Profit
    2025 was the first full year that Dollar Country was a non-profit organization. It was also the first year where DC received any sort of grant money, which was part of the reasoning in going for non-profit status. With help from my friend, non-profit guru, and supporter Max Paley, we were able to apply for a few grants, eventually receiving one from the Ohio Arts Council to help with our project to digitize many old, odd, and unloved discs that are in the collection. (See the Dollar Country Acetate Project)
  2. The Newsletter
    When it started I had intended on the newsletter to be every month, that quickly proved to be unsustainable. Now I think of it more as a bucket that slowly fills with ideas to write about, once the bucket is full the newsletter gets written and sent out. I’ve also stopped posting it online except to patrons. That wasn’t intentional at first. I kept hearing bad things about substack and so I wanted to switch platforms, but I just didn’t have time to think about it. I’d still like to post it online somewhere but I also kind of enjoy the community of just sending out the physical version. I’m not making any promises with how this will work in 2026, but I haven’t lost my interest in writing and designing the newsletter.
  3. Goals For 2026
    Next October is the 10 year anniversary of Dollar Country. I have a short list of goals for October that include having every 45 pictured, adding more audio, and having every show page updated with links to the records. Tentatively I have a big show planned for the 10 year anniversary, but, once again, I won’t be making any promises until I know I can keep them.
  4. How To Support Dollar Country
    • The best way is to join the patreon
    • Send a one time donation via
      • paypal – host@dollarcountry.org
      • venmo – @dollarcountry
      • cashapp – $dollarcountry
    • Tell a friend! Let someone know about what I do!

LP New Arrivals
Below are the records I’ve listened to and logged since last time.

NTS Xmas
My bi-monthly episode on NTS radio was right before Christmas this year so why not do a Christmas show? You can hear it here: https://www.nts.live/shows/dollar-country/episodes/dollar-country-20th-december-2025

Thanks For Reading
If you need to contact me for anything, feel free to drop me a line in the comments or email me at host at dollarcountry dot org

Cheers
Franklin

Dec 2025 Updates: A Bummer Country Mix and Full Time Daycare

Posted on by Frank The Drifter

A Bummer Christmas Mix

Every December I think that I should make an Xmas mix and I usually don’t. I assume that if you want to hear holiday music then there are hundreds of other places to do that, so my addition would just be another link on your feed. Nonetheless people ask me to make them and I realize that it’s not about the amount of mixes, but that people respect my taste and want to hear specifically what Dollar Country can make out of it. This year I did something that I thought would stand out, all bummer Xmas songs.

Country music has a great tradition of sharing human emotions, often about things that people might not feel comfortable talking about with each other. For many, Christmas can be a difficult time of year. It reminds folks of who’s not there, who has been lost, and point out how happy other people seem, which can create difficult comparisons to your own situation. In the 60s and 70s a lot of families were affected by the war in Vietnam, and there is no lack of country songs about Christmas in Vietnam, Christmas without someone who’s in Vietnam, and the loss of a family member from the war.

My assumption was that people didn’t want to hear sad Xmas songs about loss, broken families, and death, but I had all of these singles about that stuff and I really wanted to share them. So the Bummer Xmas Mix was born. People loved it, give it a listen and tell me what you think.

*See tracklist below

Full Time Daycare

Years ago I studied abroad with someone who’s family had a child care business and at one point she told me that her mom would say “we don’t watch days, we watch children.” Whenever I say Daycare I always think about that because it’s true, it’s child care. Well we’re having our child watched now. It has opened up my week to be able to actually do DC again. I was hobbling along for the last two years but really I only had the time and energy to do whatever task was the highest priority on a given day, and sometimes not even that.

This affects you, dear listener, in a big way. I have had time in the last two weeks to put together the above Xmas mix, get a show ready to record, and do a bunch of other work that I had been neglecting. I’m hoping to be able to share more and more things with this new time I have. It has been on the front of my mind for the last two years that I want to be able to make more shows to share stuff, but the time I had to do it in wasn’t enough, and the product never felt completely up to snuff. Such is life with a newborn/baby/toddler. If I did manage to make an episode of DC it took up all of my available free time that week to put it together. Now I’m hoping to get back to somewhat regular releases, although I won’t set any schedule in stone.

That’s all the updates for today, I hope you have a holiday that’s slightly better than some of these folks:

Tommy Hestler – Daddy’s Drinking Up Our Christmas
Eleanor Wells – Christmas In Vietnam
Sullivan Family – Merry Christmas From Vietnam
Arlie Brady & The Cavaliers – Christmas Plea
Starla Parrish & The Parrish Bros – Is There A Santa Claus In Vietnam
Dallas McComb – Blind Christmas
Jack Cardwell – Christmas In Vietnam
Lena Hix – I Want My Daddy For Christmas
Bobby Myers – I Want A Mommy For Christmas
Brent Pace – I Won’t Be Home For Christmas
Bob Smith – Lonely At Christmas
Clyde Murphy – There’s A Christmas Tree In Heaven
Billy Egr – What Would Santa Claus Think
Mike Tuttle – Can Johnny Come Over For Christmas
Joyce Brown – Christmas In Viet Nam
Susan Wheeler – A Christmas Prayer
Royel Clark – Christmas Time Draws Near
Jim Eanes – It Won’t Seem Like Christmas
Commander Cody – Daddy’s Drinking Up Our Christmas