Celebrated Summer Records Has Been Ready for People to Go Analog for 20 Years

It’s a few minutes before Tony Pence’s record store opens on a Friday morning in Hampden, and before the clock strikes noon, a few young men are already milling outside, waiting to get in.

“It’s wild to see,” says the 53-year-old owner of Celebrated Summer Records.

For the last two decades, he’s been told that the future of music would be online, with the final blow drawn by Gen Z. Yet those 14-to-29 year-olds are now driving a rapidly growing “analog economy,” turning vinyl records like those stacked all around this Falls Road shop—Fugazi, Geese, Miles Davis, Rosalía, Talking Heads, Turnstile—into a billion-dollar industry.

Pence started to noticing this during COVID-19. “And it’s growing every year.”

In many ways, the Perry Hall native has been waiting for this moment most of his life. His love of music began in the early 1980s, when middle-school friends would bike to the White Marsh Mall—“Stranger Things-style”—to purchase the latest hip-hop and heavy-metal tapes. On the school bus, they’d trade mixes with other kids, broadening his taste.

“This was a big crossover era—we’d go Public Enemy playing with Anthrax—and it opened a lot of minds musically,” says Pence, who became a sonic omnivore. Thanks to his dad, he got into Motown. At Skateland Putty Hill, he liked the Top 40 hits. And on Towson University’s FM station, he fell hard for local punk bands.

Back then, Pence also started collecting his first records. Cheaper than cassettes and eventually CDs, he could find them at flea markets for a mere 50 cents. After his dad died, he found himself at Reptilian Records in Fells Point almost daily, finding relief from the grief digging through those DIY crates. In fact, he became such a regular that owner Chris Neu eventually offered him a job.

“There have been a handful of people in my life who have looked at me and said, ‘Oh, maybe I see something in this dorky loser kid,’” says Pence. “Chris was one of them, and without him, Celebrated Summer would not exist.”

And so that’s where you’d find Pence for the next decade, as well as shopping at Normals in Waverly and working the Ottobar door in Remington. Then in 2006, he decided to open his own store, against all odds. It didn’t matter that this was five years after the introduction of the iPod, at the all-time low for record sales.

“It was the only thing I was ever good at,” says Pence.

Named after a feel-good 1985 song by Minnesota punk band Hüsker Dü, Celebrated Summer began in the backroom of Legends Games & Comics in Towson. In 2010, it moved to Hampden, first into what is now the back bar of Atomic Books, then just next door, into the current location, with Pence slowly filling the space with old Bad Brains fliers, Globe Poster signs, and a wide-ranging inventory.

“It’s a little bit of everything,” he says, from punk, hardcore, and pop to hip-hop, jazz, and soul, including local drops like trumpeter Brandon Woody’s For the Love of It All and the store’s own limited edition of indie darling Snail Mail’s Ricochet.

In its 20th year, Celebrated Summer feels particularly ready for this moment. Unlike the algorithmic nature of the internet, the space is imbued with Pence’s personal touch. There’s the red floor he painted the color of Beach House’s Depression Cherry. And the beloved vending machine he rigged to sell cassettes. And the cartoon cat mascot for his appreciation of Americana kitsch.

His affinity for vinyl, though, is anything but nostalgic. “Music is music, and any way you get it is cool,” says Pence. “There’s just a different feeling, though—buying a record, placing it on the turntable, turning it over, looking at the art.”

Not to mention listening to that uniquely warm sound no digital download can ever quite replicate. And for the anniversary, he’s leaning even more into the IRL, throwing concerts at Ottobar and dreaming up an art show for later this year.

“I’m really grateful the community has supported the store for as long as it has,” says Pence. “I love doing it. I’ll do it until I can’t.”