Tito’s Handmade Vodka Partners with Record Store Day

After five years of partnership, Tito’s Handmade Vodka partnered with Record Store Day to create a documentary.

With vinyl album sales at a 12 year high and Record Store Day on April 21st, 2018, the documentary about music history, the technical craft of making vinyl records and the very human experience of listening to music on a record couldn’t come at a better time. After all, music and spirits go hand-in-hand.

Record Store Day was conceived in 2007 at a gathering of independent record store owners and employees as a way to celebrate and spread the word about the unique culture surrounding the nearly 1,400 independently owned record stores in the US, and thousands of similar stores internationally. The first Record Store Day took place on April 19, 2008. Today there are Record Store Day participating stores on every continent except Antarctica.

This is a day for the people who make up the world of the record store—the staff, the customers and the artists—to come together and celebrate the unique culture of a record store and the special role these independently-owned stores play in their communities. Special vinyl and CD releases and various promotional products are made exclusively for the day. Festivities include performances, cook-outs, body painting, meet & greets with artists, parades, DJs spinning records, and much more.

Record Store Day

In 2008 a small list of titles was released on Record Store Day and that list has grown to include artists and labels both large and small, in every genre and price point. For several years, 60% or more of the Record Store Day Official Release List came from independent labels and distributors. The list continues to include a wide range of artists, covering the diverse taste of record stores and their customers

How did this documentary come about?

Music is a big part of culture at Tito’s, and for the past five years they have collaborated with Record Store Day to create an annual, limited edition vinyl release—a compilation featuring tracks from the Sun Records catalog selected by the deeply passionate folks who work in record stores.

Once they started, they realized that it wasn’t only about Record Store Day, Sun Records, and this compilation, there was a bigger story to tell.

This year they created two tracks, the annual collaboration with Sun Records, and a compilation with Malaco Records which will support the BMI Foundation, in addition to the documentary to tell the story.

You can check out the 20 minute documentary below.