Grand Palace is a sliver of space on the square, sandwiched between law offices and restaurants. The loft displays a dingy elegance featuring exposed brick walls as customers walk noisily up the creaking hardwood stairwell lined with blue holiday lights. The stuffy air mixes with stale cigarette smells that permeate with the aged scent of records as the loft opens into a long hallway, where works by a local artist known as Doobie hang.
To the left, employee Sean Maloney, 27, greets customers from behind a desk with trendy music by Cut Chemist playing over the speakers in the record shop. The walls in the shop are lined with retro-designed screen prints promoting bands and shows. Customers flip through used and new CDs and vinyl in stuffed homemade bins searching for the perfect album purchase.
Grand Palace houses four businesses?a screen-printing shop, a record store, a record label and a recording studio?all organized by partners Alex Norfleet, Lynn Weaver and James Robbins.
Since he was a teenager, Robbins, 35, said he has dreamed of owning a record store. His tough, cracked hands dug through record bins collecting dusty albums throughout his travels across the United States. Over time, his collection grew to 800 records.
Norfleet and Weaver formed a partnership and started the businesses last October.
Because all partners have day jobs, Grand Palace isn’t their main source of revenue. Robbins’ day job, for example, is in carpentry, laying down hardwood floors. He built the bins stuffed full with records, mostly from his personal collection. Robbins said Norfleet and Weaver made Robbins a partner in the Grand Palace business venture after he sold some records from his collection through the store on consignment.
The screen printing shop was once known as Tennessee Textile and Show Print. A friend offered the name Grand Palace “as a gift” to the partners.
The recording studio features a slightly elevated stage carpeted with a huge Persian rug and surrounded by exposed brick walls. The personal setting of the stage provides audience members a deep intimacy with bands performing at in-store events. (The Evangelicals and The Features just to name a few)
“People seem to enjoy what we’re doing and who we’re bringing,” said Robbins.
Robbins said he struggles to balance conflicting work schedules of Grand Palace and carpentry. His tired eyes and weathered hands physically display his passion for music and the Grand Palace.
“It’s worth it,” he said. “Being open for a year without going broke would be everybody’s proudest moment,” he said.
The Velcro Stars is the first band signed to Grand Palace in conjunction with another label in Georgia called Happy Happy Birthday To Me.
For more information, visit myspace.com/grandpalace.
