Day Twenty-Nine: Wednesday, September 3rd, 2025 – Autumn Records (Winooski, VT) with Vega, How Strange It Is, Babytooth
For this series of articles, our writer Ty Maxwell will be documenting his tour of the Northeast, spanning from August 6th to September 8th. Maxwell will be writing reflections and insights into the process of booking and executing a DIY tour as an independent artist, the relationships that enable the whole enterprise, and the general day-to-day experience: the minutiae, difficulties and triumphs involved in touring as a solo musician.
We’re lucky, as I often have been for the past 29 days, to experience pretty near-perfect summer weather today, and there’s a distinct renewal of mental clarity that arrives on cue as we cross into Vermont, possibly related to the total absence of billboards and the picturesque white clouds hanging Bob-Ross-style over the highways, where cell service is scant and you don’t mind it a bit. We are also lucky to set up shop tonight at Autumn Records, a great record store founded in 2017, owned and operated by the electronic musician and producer Greg Davis.
Right in downtown Winooski, just northeast of Burlington, Davis’ shop is totally up my alley for so many reasons. For starters, they prize left field artists, labels and records; they're abundantly well-stocked with an excellent collection of new and used experimental, avant-garde, electronic, ambient, jazz and new music, and they prominently display that stuff front and center. Even just casually glancing around, you’re spotting deep records that you don’t find just anywhere. (When we arrived for load-in, Sean, the very friendly and knowledgeable dude running the shop throughout our show, was spinning the great Pat Metheny album Bright Size Life; I spied Jim O’Rourke’s classic Insignificance, from 2001, on the rack and asked if we could spin that next, which he happily obliged, and led to us playing O’Rourke’s Drag City output all night between sets.) I can only attribute the fact that I left with no records to a bit of self-control (and the need to keep my credit card debt in check); it was tempting to throw down serious cash.
Furthermore, this place has surprisingly great acoustics! I don’t know if it’s something about the brick walls, or the shape of the space, or the way thousands of records and racks absorb or reflect sound, but even while singing and playing without amplification there was a natural reverb and dimension to the sound in the room. When the room sounds good, you’re already winning; from there, performing for a small group of attentive listeners, surrounded on all sides by inspiring album artwork, you can’t help but feel your life choices validated, your decision to drive here vindicated. I’d been following the Autumn Records Instagram page, where they frequently post enticing videos of the shows they host after-hours in the shop, so I’d anticipated a warm, inviting atmosphere and tacit encouragement to do whatever we wanted; there’s something extra fun about playing in a space that doesn’t bat an eye at outsider or weirdo music and art. It gives you license to improvise, to try some new things. Reunited with the tote bag I thought I’d lost in Brooklyn after the Sultan Room show – turned out I’d left it where I crashed that night – meant I’d regained the opportunity to utilize my Ebow (a battery-powered device that creates an electro-magnetic field, which can cause a single steel string, such as on a guitar or a banjo, to vibrate infinitely). I put my banjo flat on the floor and wrapped the strings lightly in a heavy strip of paper, then set the Ebow in motion, making a droning and rattling sound which accompanied me as I sang and played acoustic guitar. Nothing terribly inventive, but fun to know this was the ideal space to try that sort of thing, excitedly unsure if it would even work well with my songs. This show was a blast; I sincerely hope I’m lucky enough to play here again.
