Josey Records is expanding. Less than a year after opening up the 16,000 square foot vinyl mecca, the Dallas-based record store (co-owned by dance music DJ and producer J.T. Donaldson) is opening a new store in Kansas City, Missouri.
The Kansas City Star reports that Donaldson and his partners Waric Cameron and Luke Sardello will be throwing the grand opening of Josey Records at 1814 Oak St. in Kansas City on this Saturday, June 20 from 11am to 9pm.
“When we were younger, the record store was the place where we’d meet up before the weekend started,” [Donaldson] said. “We really didn’t have that in Dallas.”
They opened the first Josey Records in October. A couple of months later, they started talking about opening a second store out of town, deciding pretty quickly on Kansas City. They secured the building at 1814 Oak St. in early April.
“We got lucky,” Sardello said. “It was an event space, the Promise. But they needed a bigger space, so we snapped it up.” Its locale in the burgeoning East Crossroads district was an attraction.
Focusing mostly on new and used vinyl (though some CDs and cassettes will surely be in the mix), the 6,500 square foot Kansas City shop is being managed by a fixture in the KC music scene, Christian LaBeau. There is also a large enough space for live performance.
“Kansas City for sure is a big live-music town,” Cameron told the Star. “We are going to embrace that.”
