Ear X-tacy owner calls for customer support of local businesses.

Ear X-tacy is not closing, at least not yet. John Timmons, owner of Louisville's Ear X-tacy record store, stood behind a bouquet of microphones at the Ear X-Tacy press conference he called for with red, glossy eyes and two boxes of tissues in his hand. He threw one out to the audience and kept the other for himself. No one seemed to know what he was going to say but it couldn't be good.

Timmons repeated several times throughout the conference to a crowd of cameras, reporters, employees, and long-time customers gathered in the open area of the store where concerts are often held. The economy has hurt Ear X-tacy's sales so much that closing is something that Timmons has seriously had to contemplate. He professed that the store has lost money the last three years and the previous year has hit them especially hard, so much so, that they can no longer afford to pay the rent to stay open. "The easiest thing to do would be to close the doors and walk away," Timmons lamented.

 

Timmons recognized, though, that the store is no longer his, but "the people who built it and support it", namely its employees and customers, and said he will do anything he can to keep it open as long as we want it. He is trying to renegotiate his lease in order to stay in the same location. He recognizes that he might have to relocate but does not want to move the store from Bardstown Road, despite offers for reduced and free rent at other locations. He is also taking into consideration any constructive ideas to improve business.

When you think of the blues you might picture
a sweaty, tin-roof bar off a dusty road, petite girls slowly swinging their hips in faded sundresses to the sultry, suffering sound of a harmonica played by an old black man in a worn snakeskin hat, a lifetime of woes written in the wrinkles on his face. You probably would not think of Adam Riggle, a smiley twenty-nine year old with blonde dreadlocks and a red beard, sipping water in the smoke-free barroom of the Hideaway in Louisville. He dresses the part, with a ragged flannel shirt, blue jeans, and plain brown shoes, but is somewhat soft-spoken with a mellow demeanor, not the vision of the blues anyone would expect. Once he takes the stage, though, you will be surprised. Adam screams out the lyrics with the graveled voice of a street-corner preacher, eyes squeezed tight and his face contorting to the different pains that inspire his music; you get the feeling, though, that he prefers to let his guitar do the preaching.  He is intimate with the instrument like with a long time lover who knows you well enough to finish your sentences.  His fingers hit the strings, release each note on his brown Les Paul to bellow the pains that have been passed down through the ages, beautifully succinct, but somehow free.  The contortions of his face change as if with new memories of scorned lovers and tragic losses.  His face is red.  Sweat drips from the wrinkles of his forehead, down his cheeks to rest in his beard or on the floor of the stage.  But, as he swings his head from side to side with each chord change, his dreads dance around, paradoxically happy and sad, and you know that he is having a good time, that this is what he lives for. His drummer plays enthusiastically, ecstatically.  He hits the skins with his whole body. Like a happy marionette, both of his legs bounce up and down synced to the swing of his arms, hitting his Tama set to keep the backbeat.  James Warfield, Adam's right hand man, finishes out the Mississippi Adam Riggle Band as bass player, keeping rhythm with a gentle sway and under-exaggerated stage presence.

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