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A Musical Life: Erick Riedell

Erick Riedell

Erick Riedell is a lifelong record collector and music enthusiast in addition to being co-host of the podcast Voodoo8ball with Aaron Cross. Riedell lives with his family in Wichita.

“I get up almost every day and say, ‘OK, I can go swing by this thrift shop on my way home from work. I can swing by this warehouse on the way to work. I can stop over here at this shop.’ I have an entire map of the city and surrounding areas that I can just pull up at any minute and go, ‘Oh, I’m only two minutes away from there. I can swing by and spend five minutes and dig’ and it works out really well.

One Friday my oldest son, Quinn, was sick and I had a bunch of doctors’ appointments. So we finished up at the doctor’s and I said, ‘Hey, we’re going to stop at the thrift shop. They never have anything. It’s usually just junk and it’s the same junk they’ve had for two years. We’ll be there five minutes.’

We roll in and everything is brand-new, in collectors’ sleeves. I said, ‘Go get a cart.’

He said, ‘So we’re not going to be here five minutes.’ I said, ‘No, this is really good stuff.’ There were 85 LPs-ish in there. A dollar a piece. The lady at the counter said, ‘You know what? Tomorrow there’ll be 50 cents.’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t even risk it. These are so good.’

I bought a whole cart full.

That’s the one you don’t tell your wife about.

‘Don’t tell mom.’

Your whole back seat is just piled up with vinyl and your kids are just, like, ‘Dad? What are you doing?’ and I’m, like, ‘Shhh, just be quiet.’”

Jedd Beaudoin is host/producer of the nationally syndicated program Strange Currency. He has also served as an arts reporter, a producer of A Musical Life and a founding member of the KMUW Movie Club. As a music journalist, his work has appeared in Pop Matters, Vox, No Depression and Keyboard Magazine.