Latest / The Discussion Podcast / The Lunch Discussion - Lewis Kirk 'Owl Town' - The Caravan That's Bringing Altrincham 'Back to Life'

Transcript

The Lunch Discussion - Lewis Kirk 'Owl Town' - The Caravan That's Bringing Altrincham 'Back to Life' · The Discussion Podcast

0:00
This is The Late Late Lunch Show with Rod Maxwell.
0:03
So today on The Late Late Lunch Show, the lunch discussion is yet another musical
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one, and we're going to be talking to somebody who has set up a coffee,
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vinyl and craft beer business in Altrincham.
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His name's Lewis Kirk, and you'll probably see it as the caravan is down at the Stamford Quarter.
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Lewis, lovely to speak to you, and great to have the caravan back in in stanford
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quarter and and doing what you're doing,
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yeah i know i mean it's amazing to have taken it on exactly the caravan is actually
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in new market square which is on central way it was previously in the stanford
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quarter but yeah i've moved it's not moved far though.
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It's up the road but yeah so it's brilliant to be to be in amongst the market
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community and be doing something that i i really enjoy so yeah i've only been
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there a week so far so it's all new to me at the moment,
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i can well imagine but it was an iconic thing when ryan had it and it,
1:03
people will probably recognize it and know that it's a place that represents
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music and a bit of a chat and somewhere you can get a good coffee,
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yeah absolutely so many people have been you know really excited to see it back
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and remember it fondly because ryan used to run live music events in the square
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there and you know it's doing the same with selling records,
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really good coffee and and craft beers and it kind of happened over the covid
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period when he initially did it and there were limited places where you could
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be inside so the fact that it was outside was brilliant and it really became
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you know a focal point and made that part of altering them which is you know
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could be thought of as a little bit drab,
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became like a destination at the weekends for people to go and hang out yeah
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and as you said so many people have come up to me and said it's brilliant that
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it's back we loved it you know we missed it so much So yeah, it's a, it's great.
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It's, it's, it's funny, isn't it? People have.
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Caught a new connection with vinyl for example and with physical music and,
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people just love finding you know even if it's old stuff and and playing it
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again it's almost like the digital musical age has allowed people to
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explore the universe of music and therefore younger people are going way back
2:13
in time and and finding artists that possibly they would never know about,
2:18
yeah absolutely and you're right i think there's a definitely a renewed interest
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in just collecting anything physical i mean people like
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i guess young young people like collecting things like pokemon cards or anything
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like that whereas at least now with music you can you can collect it it's a
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physical thing it's got the artwork and you know and it's got a smell to it
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when you pull a record out you know there's something,
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physical about it and yeah there's there's been a lot of sort of younger people
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coming and buying records and getting really excited about,
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looking through them like you said i've got like a few bins that are just a
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pound each you know they're kind of
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the kind of thing that you might find in a charity shop or something but they
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just love looking through and just going oh look at this the music of india
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or you know cliff richard's greatest hits we'll just buy it's a pound it'll
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be fun to listen to and see what it's like you know it's it's it's great.
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Yeah and i i do think that that experience of putting in the needle on the record
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you know it's something very different to the way we've got used to and listening
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to our music well today we're going to talk about Isle Town,
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we're going to talk to Lewis Kirk it's the,
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caravan where are you in position now Lewis?
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It's in Newmarket Square so it's like the lower half of Altrincham Market it's
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directly opposite where the Everyman Cinema and Rudy's Pizza is so people might
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have seen it it's been there for about a week now so yeah it's,
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I've got the big hatch at the front, and we've got speakers,
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so we're playing music. So we're hoping to bring a bit of atmosphere down there
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because it's a great part of the market.
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There's so many great traders down there.
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It's where Winnie, the lady who's been selling bags and suitcases,
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she's been trading at the market for 45 years.
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And then there's the cheesemongers and the sort of vegetarian and health food
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shop and lovingly artisan.
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And then we've got Yes Burger, who make – I've been eating too many of them
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– most amazing burgers. and then Bounce Back Food, which is like a community
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kitchen where they grow and use their own produce to make really great food.
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And then I'm right next to Tartelette by Wendy, who is a lady who makes these
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absolutely immaculate little tiny French patisserie tarts. So I'm spoiled for
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choice when it comes to lunchtime.
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I mean, it's a lovely part of the market and people maybe don't discover it
4:31
enough, but there's a lovely eclectic range of people there and I need to do
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an interview with the lady who
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does the bags because as you say she's been there a very long time and has
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got a lot of experience so we'll talk more about Isletown,
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with Lewis Kirk and we'll be back with him in a couple of minutes time it's
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Rod Maxwell on Radio Alty and speaking today to Lewis Kirk from Isletown,
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it's the coffee vinyl craft beer outlet caravan in Altrigam market Lewis,
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can I ask you, how did this idea of setting this up come about?
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Well, basically, I've got a background in music. I used to buy a lot of records.
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When I was about 12 or 13, I had a paper round, and I used to save up my paper
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round money and then go into the town at the weekend and spend it all on records.
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So, you know, it was a passion of mine that I had when I was younger.
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And I think like a lot of people, I started buying CDs instead and then just
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listened to Spotify. And just over the last sort of three or four years,
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I've got back into listening to the vinyl and rediscovered it.
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And, you know, just the joy of
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being able to sit down, put a record on and actually pay attention to it.
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Because I find that with Spotify and sort of streaming services,
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you tend to put it on in the background and not really give it your full attention.
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Whereas when I put a record on now, instead of watching a TV show,
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I'll sit down, put a record on and actually listen to it and enjoy it.
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So that was something that I just kind of really got back into myself.
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And unfortunately, I worked in the television industry for a long time in television post production.
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And there's a bit of a crisis going on in that industry where there's less and
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less work around. And a lot of people I know and have worked with in the past
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have been struggling to find freelance work or struggling to,
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you know, being made redundant and struggling to get back into it.
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And I was in, you know, I found myself in that position and I was just looking
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around for something that I could do that I felt I had something to offer basically,
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because, you know, I've been doing television for so long.
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I was thinking, what else can I do? You know, there's no other industry that
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I really know about that I can, I can do something worthwhile.
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And I just thought I'll just set up my own business then. And I,
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at least I know about records and I've, I'd have drank a few beers in my time
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so I have a good knowledge of the craft beer industry particularly in the Manchester
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area where there's so many amazing breweries,
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and I just remembered I used to frequent the caravan when Ryan had it down in Stamford Square.
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And I remembered he'd advertised it for sale a couple years ago and I happened
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to just bump into him and I asked him have you still got it because you know
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I'm kind of looking for something to do.
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And he did. It had just been sitting in a field in Lim for about 18 months,
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falling into disrepair.
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And I think Ryan had always hoped he would start it up again.
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But because of his new cafe that he runs, he was just a bit too busy and hadn't found the time.
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And we both got a similar background in music. He's a bass player and a musician himself.
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And when we kind of talked about what I was planning to do with it,
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I think he felt like I was maybe a bit of a kindred spirit.
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We had a similar background, similar interests, and he could see that I was
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excited about bringing it back to life basically.
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So he sold it to me with his blessing and he's been really helpful all the way along.
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So every time I've got a question about suppliers or how to make good coffee
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or anything like that, he's been there to help me. So it's been a great collaboration.
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And he's just a top guy, isn't he? He's a top bloke. Yeah, absolutely, yeah.
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In terms of your experience in TV, because I often find that people who have
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worked in TV, and we've got a number of guys who've worked in TV doing radio now, that.
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The creative side of what they do lends itself into lots of other things in
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terms of branding, in terms of presentation, et cetera.
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So has that helped you in terms of shaping the way you want Isle Town to be?
8:22
Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I mean, a lot of the television work I did recently
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was in advertising and mostly social media.
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So I'm really used to seeing how big brands present themselves to the public on social media.
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So it's kind of helped me. When I started this, the first thing I wanted to
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do was get a really great logo to go with the name.
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And I used Zach Crompton, who works for Altering and Market.
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He's a graphic designer and he does all of the logos for the the companies that
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are based in the market as well as numerous others but,
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i've approached him and just i gave him some you know reference material i told
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him the sort of ideas i had and he created the logo for me and almost immediately
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it was exactly what i had imagined in my head and i could just see it,
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out there you know i thought this is memorable it's a bit different it's kind
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of a bit rock and roll but not not too edgy that it's going to put people off
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you know it had everything that i'd imagined And it's been great so far.
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I've got, you know, somebody's made me a branded hoodie to wear when I'm in
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the caravan and I've got it on bags and I've got a sandwich board and I've got
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my little stickers that I put on the records, the logos everywhere.
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And, you know, I think that's something that.
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Just having that knowledge of where to start from to give it that professional,
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look to people who've not heard of me before was definitely something that I'd
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learned from my time working in television post-production.
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And also just everything has to be presented
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with a certain level of professionalism, which I'm used to doing.
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You know, obviously in television, that was what we were finishing the program.
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So we would take them, edit them, do the sound, add the graphics,
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color them, and then finish them off to be delivered to the channel.
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So I'm just kind of used to presenting things at that level,
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I think. And it's definitely helped me doing this. And also spinning a million
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different plates at once and coping with the stress. That's something that I've
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just been used to doing over the years.
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I guess because you're the person who does the merchandising and getting stock.
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You're the person who does the publicity, the PR, the social media,
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and you're there selling, etc., etc.
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Yeah, it's a full-on job, really. Yeah, I didn't really appreciate how much
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work was going to be involved, you know, because I'd gone, for the last year,
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I'd done bits and pieces of freelance work, but I must admit I had become a bit of a man of leisure.
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I'd got really into running and walking the dog and, you know, and...
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Getting back into this, it's been about six weeks since I officially took the caravan on from Ryan.
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And I've been doing, you know, seven days a week, 12 hours a day,
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every single day, whether it was, you know, setting up the wholesale deals with
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the coffee beans. So I get my coffee beans from Kickback Coffee.
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I get all my craft beers from Weekend Project, who are based in Moberly.
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So it's Moberly Brewhouse Weekend Project, the same sort of brewery.
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I also get some beers from Blackjack Brewery, which are, they run the bar in
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the market, but they also have a big brewery in the city center and yeah,
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they make some great beers.
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I've been getting my pastries from Most Bakery, which is in Altrincham as well.
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But just going through the process of sourcing all of this, setting up the wholesale deals.
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I've set up wholesale deals with vinyl, new vinyl suppliers and just buying
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in milk and sugar sachets and, you know, just everything.
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Because it was basically an empty caravan and I hadn't really thought about
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how much stuff I would actually need to have in there to be able to run a successful business.
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So yeah, it's been a pretty, pretty full on, but I think, I feel I'm getting
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to a stage now where I've kind of almost got everything I need and now it's
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just a case of keeping on top of it rather than, you know, building it from scratch.
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So hopefully at some stage I'll be able to have a day off every now and again.
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But, you know, I think a lot of people have said, you know, when,
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when you're doing something you enjoy, if that's your job, then you don't have
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to work a day in your life, do you?
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It is so true. We'll come back and we're talking today to Lewis Kirk.
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He's the man behind Oil Sound.
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It's the latest member of the Ultrigan Market community, selling coffee,
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vinyl and craft beer. We'll back with Lewis next.
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Can I ask you, the craft beer side, I mean, I take it you have a passion for music.
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Yeah. I have, I'm assuming you had a bit of a passion or a pension for,
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for craft beer. Tell me about that side of things.
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Well, I think craft beer is something that I really got into.
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I moved up to Altrincham in 2012. My wife works at the BBC and we'd lived in London for years.
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And just as we arrived here, I kind of felt like that was the beginning of the craft beer revolution.
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I think maybe Brewdog had sort of been going for a couple of years and people
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were getting interested in more, you know, beers that weren't just lager,
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basically, or, you know, handful of cascales or something sort of in between the two.
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And when I'd moved into Altrincham and the pub was called Pie at the time now
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it's the Beacon yes yes that was one of my the first places where I experienced
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it and I think I'd heard somewhere that Manchester has more breweries per square
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mile than any other city in the UK,
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so Manchester seems to be like the hub of the craft beer revolution so every
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pub you go into here there's a you know selection of of amazing beers and I
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kind of uh let's just say I really took to it like a duck to water or beer.
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So yeah no actually something I really enjoy and I'm glad that I can get beers
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in from local breweries and serve them in the caravan so what are you serving
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at the moment and do you have like a guest or a rotation one for example yeah.
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Well, I've got two house beers that the Weekend Project have rebranded for me.
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So I've got my own little keg badges with my Alltown logo on.
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So it's Alltown Pale Ale, which is a 4.2% hazy pale.
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It's kind of like a fruity, quite hoppy, hop forward, they call it, pale ale.
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But it's really easy to drink, not too strong. And then I've got a house lager
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as well, which is also from Weekend Project, which is a sort of German-style lager, I'd call it.
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And then yeah i've got i was going to rotate the others i might even get a prosecco
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on tap my wife sort of telling me you can get sec you can get prosecco in kegs
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and she was like you have to get some prosecco in so,
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yeah but at the moment i've got a shindig of black it's called it's like a their
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version of maybe like a guinness but not quite as dense i'd say it's like halfway
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between a black ipa and a and a stout,
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so that's really nice and then i've got a beer in from blackjack which is,
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it's just a collaboration they've just brought out with women in beer.
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So it's like they've collaborated with a brewery that's run only by women and
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they've chosen all of these New Zealand hops and it's a cold pale ale.
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So I think that the way they ferment it is at a lower temperature.
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So it comes out quite clear rather than being a hazy one. So it's really,
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you know, really nice, interesting beers. I just have to stop myself from sitting
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there and drinking it all myself.
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There's something there is i think there's a nice connection between craft beers,
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and and vinyl music in in a way in terms of you you go out you explore and you
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go down little avenues and and you know
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it's it's something that you it's not as just as easily consumable as buying
15:36
something off the charts or whatever you know you have to do a little bit of
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research get into it but once you get into it,
15:44
it opens up a different world does that make sense?
15:47
Yeah, no, I agree with you. I think, you know, a lot of people maybe have their
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favorite beer that when they go to the pub, they expect to see it at the bar
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and they just order it all the time.
15:55
Whereas with craft beers, especially around Altrincham, every pub you go into
15:59
will have a different selection of beer.
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So you're kind of forced into choosing something different and going out on
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a limb a little bit. And, you know, sometimes it might not be successful,
16:08
but most of the time you'll be pleasantly surprised and try something different.
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And also, all of these breweries tend to be quite small, independently owned.
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So you're supporting people who are working for themselves and trying to do
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something interesting and bring something interesting to the beer market.
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And it's nice to, you almost get invested in their story a little bit and people do like that story.
16:32
If they're buying an album, they like to say, I bought it from Old Town.
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He's in a caravan and he sells, you know, they, they, they want that wider experience. I think, Lewis.
16:42
Well yeah i mean i've had a lot of people because i can i can order in new records
16:45
i can't really order in the used ones because i kind of whatever i get,
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brought to me is what i have but i do have a really great selection of used
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records which i've taken quite a lot of time to go through,
16:56
and clean and grade and price and and quite often listen to them myself you know when i'm at home,
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i've been putting them on while i've been cleaning the records and it's been
17:05
great fun but with the new records quite a lot of people have come up to me
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and said can you order this in for me i'd rather buy it off you than buy it
17:11
off amazon or whatever you know they they want to try and support a smaller business
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even though they could probably get it a bit cheaper if they bought it online
17:18
they would rather have that personal interaction because they can come to me and i'll,
17:22
more than happily chat to people about music and their interests and recommend
17:26
something if they're not entirely sure what they're looking for,
17:29
so i had somebody the other day who was like my husband's birthday he really
17:33
loved like 90s indie but i'm not sure what to get him,
17:36
And I recommended a teenage fan club, Bandwagon S, because like,
17:39
well, if you like 90s indie, this has got to be like, you know,
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right up there with the best.
17:44
So I happen to have a brand new copy of it. So just things like that,
17:47
which I guess you wouldn't get if you were just shopping online.
17:51
It's a great album. It's a great album. We're talking to Lewis Kirk.
17:55
He is the man behind Owl Town.
17:57
It is a coffee vinyl craft beer caravan in the market of adulty.
18:02
And the caravan you will recognize from its time previously in Ultrigan.
18:06
So, Lewis, I mean, where do you go about getting vinyl?
18:12
I mean, you mentioned you order in new stuff, but you must be going out and
18:17
searching for stuff that's secondhand. And there is a fair amount of it about,
18:22
but it must still be getting hard to get good quality used vinyl.
18:28
Well, yeah, I think it's getting harder because more and more people are interested
18:31
in it now. You know, I guess a few years ago, lots of people had big collections
18:34
of records and they just thought no one's ever going to want these again.
18:37
So you can have them, you know, for nothing, basically.
18:40
Whereas nowadays, everyone's had a, you know, renewed interest in it and they're
18:45
going to their grandparents and saying, oh, can I have your records?
18:48
I'd love to be able to listen to them. You know, so I guess those collections
18:50
are getting harder to come by. But a lot of the records that I have currently,
18:54
I inherited from Ryan. So when he shut the shop down, he had a shipping container
18:59
just full of stuff that he'd never even got around to looking at.
19:02
So I got a lot from there. As you said, I bought collections off people on,
19:05
I spend all my time on Facebook now looking at it.
19:09
And that's all I seem to see is, you know, adverts for record collections.
19:13
And some of them have come from my own collection. And then,
19:16
you know, as I said, a lot of the new stock I've bought in as well.
19:19
So, I mean, it's not, it's obviously it's the front of a caravan.
19:22
It's not a massive record shop.
19:23
So our selection is never going to be as big as going to HMB or something.
19:27
But, you know, I try to curate it so that it represents my sort of interest
19:32
in music. But also, there's some stuff in there for everyone.
19:36
You know, I've got my mate's daughter. She's 15.
19:39
And she was like, you have to get Adela in. So not Adele, Adela.
19:42
And I was like, I've never heard of her. But apparently, she's really cool. So I ordered that in.
19:46
And I got Gracie Abrams and Sabrina Carpenter and stuff, which,
19:50
you know, I probably wouldn't have chosen myself.
19:52
But it's really popular. And a lot of these new artists are releasing all the
19:57
records on vinyl again now.
19:58
And, you know, the teenagers and younger people are buying them,
20:02
which is great. Because I noticed I got the new Fontaine's DC album in,
20:06
which came out last Friday. And they brought it out on vinyl, CD and cassette. Wow.
20:15
There is a whole new nostalgia scene around music. I mean, I was back in Belfast
20:20
at the weekend and saw Duran Duran, first band I ever saw live back in 1986.
20:27
And in a couple of weeks' time, I'm going to see Ash, who unbelievably is 30
20:32
years since the first album 1977 was released.
20:35
And you go to these and you're seeing people from right across the generations going.
20:41
And I think that interest in music in a wider way and also listening back to
20:48
vinyl has been sparked by a generation like ourselves who now have a bit more time, have a.
20:55
Bit more money than our 20-year-old selves, and therefore we want to get back into it.
21:01
Yeah no i think you're right and as you said earlier the the fact that there's
21:05
so much music online that people can without having to spend money they can
21:09
sort of go back and listen to music from the 50s 60s 70s wherever,
21:14
and a lot of these bands on they're doing the sort of nostalgia tours are benefiting
21:17
from that because people are discovering stuff that they might not have been
21:20
able to listen to previously and then these bands are going out and i know that
21:24
obviously a lot of bands nowadays don't make money from the actual music sales anymore because of,
21:29
because of streaming which has kind of robbed them of all of their income that
21:33
they would have got from selling records and cds and stuff and now they rely purely on touring
21:37
and merchandising and licensing their songs to commercials or you know being
21:42
used in tv shows or movies or something like that,
21:45
that's where they make their money from so a lot of these bands are now touring again.
21:48
But it's great for us because we get to go and, you know, they might never have
21:51
done a gig again. And now they're out there doing tours every other year.
21:54
And, you know, it's brilliant.
21:57
It is. It is. There's almost a saturation of music.
22:00
And for the first time, you've got people who are still playing after 40,
22:04
30, 40, 50 years gigging, competing with the guys who are doing brand new stuff.
22:12
It's a very congested market in some ways.
22:15
Yeah, I think so. But I think it is great that there is a renewed interest in
22:18
people going to see live music because it did go through.
22:21
I mean, I know that a lot of the smaller venues have really suffered over the
22:24
last few years, particularly in Manchester as well, with a lot of them closing
22:27
down. Just sort of grassroots music scene is struggling because people weren't
22:32
going out to see bands they hadn't heard of.
22:35
Whereas, you know, they will pay top dollar to go and see somebody that they
22:40
really like. And some of the prices of tickets now are just absurd, I think.
22:44
Totally. Totally. I mean, it is, it is, and it's, there are still cheap gigs out there.
22:50
If you're prepared to take a risk and go out and see them, I'll take a break.
22:53
And we're back with Lewis Kirk from Owl at Owl Town, the coffee vinyl craft
22:59
beer caravan at Alti market. We'll be back with him in a couple of minutes time.
23:03
So Lewis, I've got to ask you, do you have a list of albums that you.
23:10
You're, are sought laughter by you that you want to find or you want to be able
23:14
to sell or is there is there sort of little group of albums you think oh if
23:19
i can get my hands on that that would be brilliant,
23:22
Yeah, well, I mean, I kind of, I grew up listening to the majority of my music
23:27
and being influenced by music when it was the 90s.
23:30
So, and I was quite into heavier music when I was younger. So I loved Metallica
23:34
and Megadeth and Slayer, things like that.
23:38
But then I also loved like Nirvana and Soundgarden was one of my all time favorite
23:42
bands. And so anything from that period of time in the 90s was just on the,
23:46
where CDs were taking over. So they were, they weren't really pressing that
23:50
many records. Everything was on CD.
23:52
And so when you do find a copy of a, like I've got Pearl Jam 10,
23:57
their first album that I bought myself with my paper and money,
24:01
I've still got the exact same record, you know, that in a good condition is
24:04
worth 100, 120 pounds or something like that, because there's just not many of them out there.
24:09
You know, you can obviously buy reissues. They're still pressing them today,
24:12
but to find one of those, you know, original pressings, which in my opinion.
24:17
They sound better just because they get remastered and repressed and pressed
24:21
in a different, you know, factory and they're never quite the same.
24:24
So the other thing I like about it is I feel like it's like a time capsule where
24:29
you're hearing the music exactly as people did when it first was released.
24:34
So if I've got a first pressing of a Led Zeppelin album, I know that the person
24:38
who bought it on the day it was released and put it on the record player i'm
24:41
hearing the exact same version of it and it's like you know i'm getting to get
24:45
a little glimpse into the past so,
24:48
i really love that about records because with streaming it's you know it's,
24:52
it's all a bit sanitized i guess it's you know it's perfect there's no imperfections
24:56
but you don't really get the character of,
24:59
what the record sounded like in you know in their original state so yeah if if i were to sort of
25:05
find a box of 90s albums by Soundgarden, Nirvana, Pearl Jam,
25:10
any of those bands, the original pressings, that would be like my holy grail of records to find.
25:15
So if anyone's out there who's got those, come and see me.
25:19
Did you ever see Nivala? No. You know, I had tickets to go and see them on the
25:24
In Utero tour at the Glasgow SEC when I was, I think, I must have been 15, 14 or 15.
25:30
And he unfortunately passed away about a month before the gig.
25:34
And I had the tickets and I posted them back to get a refund.
25:39
It was £15. Oh, well, it was a lot of money, but a pound. They sent my money
25:44
back to me. But nowadays, I was just thinking, God, I wish I just kept that
25:47
ticket. You know, it would have been amazing to just have it.
25:49
In a frame or something but at the time i was like that's a lot of money,
25:53
i need my money back if i'm not going to get to see it was a lot of money and
25:57
now it's probably 150 or more um quite i i got to see them i think it was about
26:02
1991 in edinburgh and it was one of their first uk tours and i i wasn't,
26:09
a complete fan but i mean i.
26:12
I i became more of a fan after that but it was quite a different experience i gotta say
26:18
it was probably like seeing the sex pistols but they could play back in the
26:22
70s you know you know what i mean yeah that's amazing yeah one of my favorite
26:26
gigs that i ever went to was the smashing pumpkins at the astoria in,
26:30
1993 it was the tour for siamese dream so,
26:33
they were only just you know getting popular in the uk and the astoria i don't
26:37
know if you ever went there on tottenham court road it was on the corner of
26:40
tottenham court road and Oxford Street. Yeah, I know it is.
26:43
And it's been demolished now and turned into luxury flats or something.
26:46
But it was only about a 2,000, maybe 3,000 capacity venue.
26:51
And it was absolutely rammed and it was just, you know, amazing.
26:54
I still think of that as one of the best gigs I ever went to just because I
26:58
really loved that album at the time anyway.
27:00
And yeah, that would be, that's another one of my main influences.
27:04
I also went to see Radiohead on the tour for the Benz, which was one of my favorite
27:08
albums of theirs as well at the Barrowlands in Glasgow, which is a brilliant,
27:11
brilliant venue that's still going to this day.
27:14
It still goes, yeah. I've been to the Barrowlands. I was a student up in Edinburgh
27:18
and I went across to the Barrowlands. I can't remember who it was I went to see.
27:21
I saw Radiohead actually, I think it was in Milton Keynes Bowl.
27:25
And I mean, a tremendous band here is still going.
27:28
I mean, they're just still innovating as well, I think, which is the most amazing
27:33
thing that they've kind of keep changing and it's still interesting.
27:36
You know, it's never, never gets boring with them. I don't think,
27:39
you know, it definitely, definitely does not.
27:41
I'm talking to Lewis Kirk. He's from Alltown. It's the new coffee vinyl craft
27:46
beer caravan at Ultrigan market. Whereabouts?
27:51
Just remind me the actual name of that part of the market. What is it, Lewis?
27:56
Uh well they call it new market square although it's not exactly a square it's
28:00
more of a rectangle i would say but yeah it's that whole little row
28:03
of traders most of them are in sort of little wooden huts along underneath it's
28:07
all it's all under shelter actually which is good for us because there's big
28:10
big roof above and i've got a little outdoor seating area,
28:14
i've just got in a load of nice blankets so when it's cold you can cover your
28:17
cover your legs up so i try and,
28:20
try and encourage people to sit outside for a little bit longer but yeah it's
28:23
uh it's down there new market square is what the market call it,
28:27
and do you play some tracks as you're during the day,
28:31
yeah but play records all day long so i've got turntables in the caravan and
28:35
a little sort of pa system on the front of it,
28:38
and i just sit there put records on it's great fun because i just flick through
28:41
and pick stuff that i might not never listen to normally and i've had so many
28:45
like yesterday morning i picked a gordon lightfoot album which i'd never,
28:48
really heard before and it was perfect for a sunday morning it just absolutely suited.
28:54
The the tone just right and it was it was brilliant it's rod maxwell on radio
28:57
alty and today we're talking records we're talking coffee we're talking craft
29:01
beer um because i'm talking to lewis kirk who set up all time a brand new,
29:07
record record and craft beer and coffee shop at umarket square in uh i altering
29:14
a market just by the everyman isn't it,
29:17
yeah directly opposite the everyman and rudy's pizza so if you've just come
29:21
out of the cinema and you want to sit down and have a coffee or a beer just
29:26
walk straight across the road and you'll find us there.
29:29
And that part of town has really transformed with the market coming and extending
29:34
into it and also rudy's taking over that building and doing a fantastic job on it actually,
29:40
Yeah, no, it's amazing. I really liked it actually because it was called One
29:42
Central a couple of years ago.
29:44
And Rudy's have actually sort of built a wall on it, I guess,
29:48
but it used to be kind of underneath.
29:49
You could go underneath it and they did a sort of outdoor sort of market thing
29:55
there where they had a bar and a burger place and a couple of other places.
29:57
And they used to put little wooden huts in the winter so you could sit inside.
30:02
It was great. It was almost like a Christmas market-y kind of vibe to it.
30:06
But, but yeah, no, Rudy's pizza is, is I am a big fan of pizza and,
30:11
uh, they're, they're, you know, they're really smashing it.
30:14
I think they've just, I think it's one of the guys who used to run honest crust
30:17
in the market who set it up initially and now it's become a big franchise and
30:22
there's, there's restaurants all over, all over the UK now. So it's,
30:25
yeah, it's a big success story, but that's because the pizza is great.
30:29
The pizza is great. And actually, you know, you can get pizza and then there's
30:33
really good pizza and they do really good pizza. So can I ask you,
30:36
so you came up from London into Alty.
30:41
What did you know about the musical history of Altyom before then,
30:45
or did you have any knowledge of it?
30:46
Well, I kind of, obviously I knew a bit about the Manchester music scene,
30:50
not Altyom in particular, but I found that once I moved here that,
30:54
you know, we've got, I think Johnny Marr lives somewhere around here.
30:58
And obviously John Squire and Ian Brown went to Alty Boys Grammar School.
31:02
And so actually all these bands
31:04
that you'd think were Manchester bands are actually Altrincham bands.
31:07
So yeah, I mean, Manchester as a city, I really liked it when we first moved here.
31:13
It kind of reminded me of Glasgow a little bit, which I spent a lot of,
31:16
I'm from Southwest Scotland.
31:17
So I'd spent a lot of time in Glasgow and Edinburgh over the years.
31:21
And it's got that same kind of industrial vibe, but really cool and a great
31:26
music scene. And, you know, it's a brilliant place. and I've been here since
31:31
2012 now and I call it home. So, yeah.
31:35
I think there are a lot of parallels between,
31:37
Glasgow, Manchester and Belfast as port cities, even though Manchester are obviously well in land.
31:43
And that musical scene is not so dissimilar, really. And working class roots of the music.
31:51
Yeah, I think it definitely gives people that impetus to go out there and do
31:55
something and work hard at it and, you know, forge their own path, I guess.
31:59
And that's why manchester is known for creating you know musical genres that
32:03
have gone on to influence numerous bands and are still still going today so,
32:08
so can i ask you about vinyl again because the the,
32:13
value of vinyl has shot up massively because people want more of it and we're whereas in the past
32:20
people thought well actually we're now on to cds or we're now on to digital
32:24
and they were letting it go
32:26
often to charity shops and i used to work in a charity shop in altrium and or
32:31
i should say volunteer and we used to have so much vinyl it was
32:36
incredible but people are starting to realize the value of it and and there
32:40
are some rare stuff out there that go for big prices i can imagine.
32:45
Yeah well that's the thing i mean not not all vinyl is valuable that's the i
32:48
think the the myth that people now think all records are valuable but as you
32:52
said definitely there's stuff out there that is people could be sitting on a
32:56
gold mine it really depends first of all on what the record is,
33:00
it depends on when it was pressed so if it's like an original pressing or a
33:03
later pressing depends on the condition it depends on who the artist is you
33:07
know some records and artists are more desirable than others but i just use i think a lot of other
33:13
record shops use the same thing there's an online database where you can in
33:17
the center of the record there's a little code sort of stamped or scratched
33:20
into it and if you You look the code up, you'll find what that's like the unique
33:24
identifier of that record.
33:25
So sometimes you might have a record that, you know, somebody said to me,
33:28
oh, I've got this Beatles record. I saw it online for £4,000.
33:32
And I was like, well, let me have a look at it. It was more like £25 because
33:36
it wasn't the original pressing.
33:38
The sleeve was a bit tatty, you know, that sort of thing. So it was still a valuable record.
33:41
It's still a great record to have. But there's a big difference between an absolutely
33:45
mint condition first pressing and particularly with bands like the Beatles or
33:49
the Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin,
33:51
where they were at the time pressing millions and millions of them.
33:54
You know, there's still a lot of them floating around. So if you find something
33:58
that wasn't quite as popular and is still in good condition,
34:02
then it can be can be remarkably valuable but there's still a lot i think i've
34:05
noticed in charity shops they've started hiking the prices up so you'll go in,
34:09
and find a cliff richard record or something or mantovani or something like
34:13
that and previously it would have been 50p and now they've got it at 9.99 it's like
34:17
that's not how it works not all records are valuable now just because people
34:20
are more interested it still has to be a good record before someone's willing to pay money for it but,
34:26
And in a good condition as well, of course. Yeah, absolutely.
34:29
So, yeah, I mean, I've got quite a few records which would normally be,
34:32
much more valuable, but I put them in the five-pound bin because the sleeves
34:36
are, a lot of them had kind of got stuck together and you've got damp and you
34:39
pull them apart, the sleeves get damaged or, you know, they're just a bit scuffed,
34:43
but they still play okay, but they might be a bit crackly.
34:46
So you kind of, the value really varies wildly depending on those sort of elements to it.
34:54
I agree. I mean, I'm thinking, I've not used the Christmas word yet,
34:58
but coming out of the Christmas, I often find if you go and buy somebody a vinyl,
35:03
you go out and you seek it out,
35:05
it means more because you've taken more time to do it and you've thought about
35:09
the person and it might be actually reacquainting them with an album or an artist
35:14
that they had 40 odd years ago and they've lost touch, if you like.
35:19
There's a guy came up to me the other day and it was his brother's 40th birthday
35:22
and he said, my brother, he was born in 1986. and he absolutely loves Paul Simon
35:26
Graceland. You don't have a first pressing of Graceland from 1986,
35:30
do you? I was like, you're not going to believe this, but here it is.
35:34
So it's nice, like you said, it's a bit more of some thoughts gone into it.
35:39
But I used to love buying mainly CDs in the 90s and early 2000s,
35:45
but that was my way of like, I'd buy something that I really loved and give
35:49
it to a friend as a present for their birthday or Christmas, whatever.
35:52
You know this is an album I love and I think you'll probably like it as well
35:56
and it might be something they wouldn't have chosen themselves but then they
35:58
would get into it because I'd sort
36:00
of directed them in you know in that direction so yeah it's definitely
36:04
a great way of sharing your interests with people and giving them something
36:07
that they can keep and hold on to and.
36:10
Is there a temptation that being a bit of a collector yourself,
36:13
you come across something and think, I just can't sell this. I want this for myself.
36:17
Or is that a bit of a nightmare that you have to manage?
36:20
Yeah yeah absolutely there's been quite a lot of records that i've found when
36:24
i've been going through all this stuff i was like there was a couple of duplicates
36:27
so i kept a couple like one of the records i kept was,
36:29
tears for fear songs from the big chair which is an absolute classic album and
36:33
i didn't have a copy of it on vinyl and it's kind of it's kind of famous for being
36:37
an audiophile record you know the the production and the mastering on the the
36:41
original pressings is just sounds amazing so i found two copies of that i was
36:44
like i'm keeping one for myself i'll put the other one in the shop but yeah
36:48
my wife has said that to me he was like you can't get high on your own supply you've got to,
36:53
put them in the shop and sell them you can't just keep them all.
36:56
I i do a podcast called guardians of the vinyl vault and in in the past we used
37:02
to take a year and come up with our top four albums from the year
37:06
um we were going through from the 82 when we first all met and now we do one
37:11
where we take an artist and we
37:14
basically it's a podcast now we take an artist and we talk about the artists
37:18
and decide whether they go into the vault at the platinum level at the club
37:23
lounge level or would be bound them for life.
37:25
And the guys are doing it with now, we've been searching out the vinyl of some
37:30
of those artists as well. So it's become a collector, a collector's thing as
37:34
well. And, uh, I guess it becomes a hobby as much as anything.
37:39
Yeah, I mean, I've got a friend of mine who's a massive Kiss fan, and he wants to,
37:45
have every Kiss album on vinyl, and I think he's got most of them already,
37:48
but there's a couple that, you know, wherever he goes, he's like looking through,
37:52
just in case it's hiding in there somewhere, you know, and it's like finding
37:56
a Pokemon card that you desperately want or something, you know,
37:58
when you're trading with your mates or something.
38:00
So, yeah, it's definitely a big collector's thing, isn't it?
38:04
And it is the album art as well, isn't it, Lewis? You get that.
38:07
You don't get that with digital. you get it less with cd but when you've got
38:11
a a 33 or a 12 inch and you've got that album art it's a thing of beauty isn't,
38:17
it yeah absolutely i mean that's the problem on spotify because a lot of these
38:21
artists were still making you know going to the trouble of having album artwork for their records,
38:26
but then you'd see it as a tiny thumbnail and you can if you're on your phone
38:29
or something you can't really see it properly so when you you've got a record
38:32
you sit down put the record on and actually study the artwork and read the line
38:37
of notes, find out who played on all the songs.
38:39
I mean, because I play drums, I'm always interested in who's playing drums and.
38:44
What equipment they use they often quite you know they'll tell you he plays
38:47
dw drums and diligent symbols or whatever you know when i was younger that was
38:51
like i'll go buy those as well because i want to be this i want to be the same,
38:54
that sort of thing but you just don't get any of that when you're just listening
38:57
to it on streaming you know you can really get much more into.
39:01
The production of the album and the work that's gone into it i think as well with albums,
39:07
bands spend a long time choosing the running order of the track so it kind of
39:10
tells a story it goes from you know this track to that track and you get used
39:13
to hearing the tracks you know segueing from one into the other whereas,
39:18
when people are listening to streaming services they tend to just pick one song
39:22
they like and never really,
39:23
learn any more about a particular artist which is a real shame so when you're buying a record,
39:28
you listen to the whole record and you you know you get to hear it as as it
39:31
was meant to be heard as they wanted it to be heard i i totally agree well look
39:35
it's been pleasure speaking to you i i can tell you're just you're you're you've got such a love for
39:42
records and you probably find your perfect job your perfect business as well
39:47
if people want to follow you online and take you across all the socials as oil town,
39:52
it's owl town uk and uh i've just got an instagram at the moment but i am i've
39:57
got a list of things that i haven't got around to doing yet when setting this
40:00
business up so yeah i'll be i'll be setting up a facebook page as well and like
40:05
a Google business site and all that sort of stuff.
40:07
But at the moment, it's just at OwltownUK on Instagram.
40:11
So yeah, if anyone wants to message me, if anyone's got records they want to
40:14
bring along for me to have a look at, then please just message me on there and I'd love to see them.
40:20
Well, it's been wonderful speaking to you. It's great to have that business in the town as well.
40:24
I often think Galti's a town of music and having that in the market is a great
40:29
addition. It's great to have the caravans back as well.
40:32
And Lewis Kirk I'll sign thanks for joining me thanks so much Rod this is the
40:39
Late Late Lunch Show with Rod Maxwell.