American Highway allows KNLS listeners to travel America's back roads, highways, and byways.  You'll find some of this nation's most interesting people, places and events in these stories.

NASHVILLE LANDMARK STILL PRESSING VINYL RECORDS

Travel into the heart of Nashville, Tennessee, America’s country music capital and you can visit a factory where vinyl records are still being pressed and are even enjoying something of a renaissance.

At United Record Pressing in Nashville, the entire building vibrates in time to the thump and hiss of giant presses, you have to shout to be heard and the smell of burning plastic permeates everything.

Company President Chris Ashworth takes us on a tour of the plant floor. "On your left, we’ve got 6 twelve-inch presses, and on the right, we’ve got 3 seven-inch presses and 3 twelve-inch presses. As we look around the room, all of the gentlemen that are gray-headed (and there are a few of them hanging around here), have been making records for at least thirty years."

All that experience is essential because producing a quality vinyl record is a complex, exacting task. Mr. Ashworth explains, saying "The first thing that happens is the extruder’s got to go ahead and heat up the vinyl, and it comes out of the extruder and looks like a hockey-puck of vinyl. Then it’s put on a spindle, with a label on the top and a label on the bottom; in other words, the ‘A’ side on the top and the ‘B’ side on the bottom. Then the press comes together. You then go into ‘high-squeeze’ with more steam, and then you go into cold water, you allow the vinyl to chill out and the record then slides out of the press. It’s then trimmed, making it perfectly round…and it does that about every thirty-four seconds."

In the late 1970’s Nashville companies produced nearly a million vinyl records each week. Today, United is the last of Music City’s pressing plants but by far the most famous. United had a hand in the early success of Motown Records in the late 1950s, waiving up front fees when legendary Producer Berry Gordy couldn’t afford the cost of pressing his first singles. Directly over the plant is a second floor party room where visiting artists and executives would celebrate the pressing of a new record.

"The last party that was here was Wayne Newton’s 16^th birthday party," Mr. Ashworth says. "He had a new record coming out, and he flew on into town, and the record was being pressed downstairs, and they were having a wild and crazy party up here for the release of that record."

United Record Pressing was a gamble for Mr. Ashworth. He purchased the business just five years ago when the vinyl record seemed all but extinct.

"I did do some homework," Mr. Ashworth recalls. "I went to a local bookstore here. They had every music magazine you could imagine. And I spent the whole day thumbing through the magazines trying to figure out what was going on with vinyl records."

Mr. Ashworth’s research convinced him that demand for vinyl should remain stable in several American markets for years to come. Jukeboxes spinning seven-inch singles are still widely used. Record reissues remain surprisingly popular, with commemorative Elvis sets one of United’s biggest sellers.

Many audiophiles remain fiercely loyal to vinyl records, believing they have a much warmer sound than digital recordings. Recording Engineer Spencer Secoy has a personal collection of more than seven hundred vinyl records ranging from early country music to psychedelic rock.

"The warmth, I think comes from the physical nature of a record," Mr. Secoy says. "You have a physical groove, you have a stylus, or needle as some people call it, that passes through the groove, and I think just through the mechanics itself leads itself to the warmness. It’s not that you can’t make digital warm, it just takes a little more effort on the recording engineer’s part."

But there’s more than sentimentality at work here. Pop, rap, techno and independent labels all promote their new releases by pressing them to vinyl and shipping them to nightclub DJ’s worldwide fueling a steady growth in the market.

DJ Clark Warner works dance clubs throughout North America and Europe. He says, "Certain DJs who are a little more high-profile will have access to songs before they are out there for mass consumption. So it’s like a test-bed. It’s a piece of vinyl that you can turn around quickly. This is something that United does for us all the time.

Chris Warner says most DJs are technology sponges, always into the latest equipment or medium, but they can’t seem to resist old-fashioned vinyl.

"I think it’s the hands-on tactileness of the record," Warner contends. "People still want to touch and work and mold sound, either by a knob or by guitar strings or a piano key. And this is where a vinyl record comes into electronic music and definitely DJ culture or club culture."

And the wider music buying public seems to be following that lead. Chris Ashworth has seen United Pressing’s business double in the last five years and he recently noticed vinyl records on sale at a Nashville record store for the first time in decades. But while Mr. Ashworth is pleased that his investment gamble paid off, he seems more intent on preserving a small slice of music history while also simply having a good time.

Mr. Ashworth recalls, "I was with a friend of mine who I’ve known for about 20 years who’s from Dallas yesterday. And he said, ‘What are you doing today, Chris?’ And I said, ‘I’m making vinyl records.’ And he said, ‘Ah, you’ve got you a fun business!’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I’ve got a fun business!’ And he said, ‘That’s a good thing to do right now.’"

If you’d like to learn more about the art of pressing vinyl records you might want to visit the company website. Go to www.unitedrecordpressing.com and click on the link titled "vinyl speak".

One of the few American companies still producing vinyl records in Nashville, Tennessee…just another stop along the American highway.

Would you like to see...

• Vinyl record press at United Record Pressing that creates two seven inch singles every twenty seconds.
• United Record Pressing Owner and President Chris Ashworth with a one ton tote of plastic pellets used to make vinyl records.
• A URP employee prepares a record master plate for the presses by applying pure silver to the surface of the recording.
• A view of the URP's vinyl record presses lined up along the shop floor.
• Record labels wait on the URP print shop shelves for future pressings.
• The entrance to United Record Pressing, just blocks off of Nashville's famed music row.
• Recording engineers Spencer Secoy (L) and Virgil Flatt (R) of Nashville's Custom Mastering standing in front of a record lathe used in the cutting of vinyl record masters.

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