Vinyl Scars on Vinyl
An Album That Required Physical Media
Vinyl Resurgence
Did you see the Forbes headline from a few weeks ago? Vinyl Sales Surpassed $1 Billion In 2025. “For the first time this century, vinyl music sales eclipsed $1 billion in a calendar year.” And the report does not include sales of pre-owned vinyl.
Rewind a few years… Christmas 2017. Danni gave me a 1959 Grundig Majestic stereo/turntable console and a few Led Zeppelin albums to start my collection.
That’s where my vinyl journey began and it intersected with a career inflection point that required a cross-country record store road trip full of family, friends and record store visits along the way. Two years, another road trip, and more than 40 records stores later, I started making my own music.
Vinyl From the Start
When I finished Covers in 2021, I knew the next album had to be original music. I also knew it had to be pressed on vinyl. Not as an afterthought. Not as a bonus for superfans. The concept demanded it.
An album about damage that accumulates over a lifetime. About the scars that don’t ruin a record, they define it. If you need a refresher on where that album concept came from, Skip, Pop, Repeat has the full origin story.
What It Actually Took
In late 2021 I started working with Brian Whitman to write and create demos for each song. Danni and I started recording vocals at The Vault Studio in July 2022. Mixing through September. Master completed late September, uploaded to Tunecore, released on all streaming platforms October 31, 2022.
Then the physical production started.
Tunecore pressed 100 CDs. They arrived at the end of October, right around the digital release. I listed them on Discogs. Sold none. That’s fine. The CDs were never really the point.
The vinyl took longer. I contracted with a company called Qrates for 100 pressed records. All the artwork and music files turned over in late October. The records arrived at the end of February 2023. Hand-numbered, 1 through 100.
I began preparing shipments for record stores I had visited on my road trips in 2018 and 2019. Each copy shipped with an insert.
I wrote and recorded Vinyl Scars for vinyl. Please enjoy, sell or give it to someone that enjoys listening on vinyl.
I meant it. I just didn’t know yet what that would look like in practice.
You Have to Sign Your Work
March 2023. I was in San Francisco for a few days and stopped into Vinyl Solution Records. I brought two vinyl and two CDs to drop off.
I was nervous giving my records away. That probably sounds strange. I’d spent a year making them and now I was handing them to a stranger.
The owner, Robert Allen, took a CD out of the stack, opened it, and slipped it into the CD player. Then he picked up both vinyl, pulled out a small pocket knife, and slit the upper left corner of the wrapper on each one. He handed me a Sharpie.
I must have looked confused.
“You have to sign your work,” he said.
He’d done this before. I hadn’t.
While the CD played, I browsed and we talked on and off. Robert told me he started the Jim Croce fan club before Jim was killed in 1973. After the crash he had a special run of commemorative coins made. The Croce estate told him to cease and desist on distribution. He said he still had some.
I would love to have held and studied one of those coins.
I left with a copy of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Live at the Fillmore 1997 and a new understanding of what the insert actually meant. Before I got back to my hotel I’d decided the Record Store Day shipment needed to be signed.
The Big Day Arrives
April 22, 2023. Record Store Day.
Going to a record store on Record Store Day is like going to church on Easter Sunday.
Prior to RSD, I hand delivered signed copies to Attic Record Store in Millvale, two miles from my house. Fred, the owner, recognized me. When I offered the copies as a gift he gave me store credit.
The Wall Street Journal profiled Attic Records. Fred gave me shelf space with my own hand-written divider tab. MATT GEISER, right before Geisha Girls, Bob Geldof and Gene Loves Jezebel. How cool is that?
Twenty signed copies shipped to stores across the country that day. Coastal Empire Records in Savannah is one of my regular stops when I visit my friend Rich. I’ve gotten to know Ken and Shirlene and one of their RSD contest prizes included a signed copy of Vinyl Scars.
Hamburg
May 2023. Danni and I were in Hamburg.
The store is called Zardoz Records. Named, as best I can tell, after the 1974 Sean Connery film in which a giant stone head flies around dispensing rifles to post-apocalyptic horsemen. It’s a cool name for a record store.
I dropped off a signed copy and we bought some records.
That’s Really Cool
March 2026… My Instagram and Facebook were tagged in someone’s post. thevinylers posted a photo on Instagram and tagged me directly. Edition 87 of 100. He’d found it at Zardoz Records. He lives in the Netherlands.
I told Danni.
She said, “That’s really cool.”
She’s right. The woman who started this adventure with a Grundig console and some Led Zeppelin records in 2017 was standing next to me when we left that copy in Hamburg. Two years later it found someone in the Netherlands who cared enough to tag the artist.
Please enjoy, sell or give it to someone that enjoys listening on vinyl.
Turns out that’s exactly what happened.