Local, Local/County, Pittsboro, Video

CDs, tapes, and treasures: All Day Records in downtown Pittsboro

By Gene Galin

Pittsboro, NC – A few steps from the traffic circle in downtown Pittsboro, Charlie Hearon has filled a small storefront with the possibility of discovery. The bins at All Day Records hold familiar names – The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, Willie Nelson and Paul Simon among them – but Hearon is less interested in steering every visitor toward a prescribed canon than in making room for the search itself. The store’s mix of vinyl records, compact discs, cassette tapes and vintage stereo equipment reflects both the renewed demand for physical media and Hearon’s belief that music culture grows when people have places to browse, listen, talk and occasionally stumble across something they did not know they needed.

Charlie Hearon inside All Day Records in Pittsboro. (photo by Gene Galin)

All Day Records’ Pittsboro location, at 45 West Street just off the circle, is the second shop Hearon and his longtime friend and business partner, Ethan Clauset, operate. Their original Carrboro store has endured for roughly 16 years, building a reputation around new and used music, electronic sounds, punk, disco and the unpredictable inventory that comes with buying collections from the public. The Pittsboro outpost opened shortly before Christmas 2025, extending that model into Chatham County on a smaller scale.

For Hearon, the new shop is not simply a retail expansion. It is the latest chapter in a life spent helping create the conditions in which music and art can happen – as a musician, disc jockey, record-label operator, venue manager, teacher and now record-store owner.

“Ending up with a record store was just sort of the culmination of trying to live in a community where things that I think are fun are happening,” Hearon said during our conversation on Thursday afternoon.

A second store, built on a long partnership

The Pittsboro shop is modest in size, but its shelves and bins carry the same broad invitation as the Carrboro location. Customers can look for well-known albums, investigate music outside their usual listening habits, buy an inexpensive CD or sift patiently through lower-priced records. The store also buys and trades records and stereo equipment, giving collections and components a chance to circulate to new owners.

Hearon co-owns the business with Clauset, whom he described as a longtime friend. The two established All Day Records in Carrboro after Clauset proposed the idea while Hearon was taking a break from elementary-school teaching to focus on music-related work.

“My buddy Ethan said, ‘I’m thinking about starting a record store. Do you want to do that together?'” Hearon recalled. “And I said, ‘Absolutely.'”

The answer may have sounded spontaneous, but Hearon had spent years preparing for it without necessarily intending to own a store. He moved to the Chapel Hill area after college in 1997, attracted in part by the indie-rock scene that had given the community a national reputation during the 1990s. He played bass in rock bands, became interested in electronic dance music and DJ culture, operated independent record labels and helped at Nightlight, the Chapel Hill music venue. During the venue’s second decade, he served as general manager.

That varied background taught him that a music scene depends on more than performers. It needs venues, promoters, labels, record stores and people willing to do the largely invisible work of organizing events and connecting artists with audiences.

Hearon described himself as someone drawn to that infrastructure. The phrase helps explain why All Day Records is both a business and a form of cultural work. A shop must sell enough inventory to survive, but its function cannot be measured only by the day’s receipts. It also becomes a meeting point where information travels: a customer asks about an artist, a clerk remembers a record, a flyer announces a performance and a used album begins another life.

The Pittsboro location remains, in Hearon’s words, a work in progress.

“We’re slowly creeping along,” he said. “But I’m feeling really, really glad that we’re giving this a try, and I hope we’ll be down here for a while.”

From bass guitar to the DJ booth

Hearon resists grand claims about his own musicianship. He said he has played for enjoyment across several settings and joked that he is “mediocre on a variety of instruments.” Bass guitar was his primary instrument during his rock-band years, but his interests moved beyond the standard band format.

Electronic dance music, disco, house and techno led him toward DJing. He also developed an interest in string-band and folk traditions and booked traditional string music at Nightlight. That range – indie rock, electronic music, disco, folk and experimental work – now informs the breadth of the store.

Asked what produced the greatest satisfaction when he was performing, Hearon did not name a packed room or a flawless solo. He pointed instead to the effect of collaboration.

“The biggest smile as a musician is to play with people who are better than you and to see yourself playing better as a result,” he said. “You’re being carried along by the strength of musicians who are better than you around you.”

It is a telling answer for someone whose career has repeatedly placed him beside other artists rather than at the center of the stage. He speaks with enthusiasm about the nationally known musicians who pass through the Triangle, but he is equally interested in talented people who work without broad recognition.

“We live in an incredibly rich area full of talent in a multitude of genres,” Hearon said. “There are famous people that you can see on TV and read about in books, but there are also, everywhere, amazingly talented people who are unsung or are not noticed.”

Helping events, recordings and venues come together gave him access to that talent. The exchange, as he describes it, was straightforward: He helped make things happen, and in return he learned from the people around him.

An inventory shaped by curiosity – and demand

The Pittsboro store’s assortment can look eclectic because it is. Rock, country, soul, disco, electronic music and other styles share a relatively small room. Records by major artists sit near releases that may be unfamiliar even to committed collectors.

Hearon’s explanation combines enthusiasm with practical retail judgment. He believes every genre contains worthwhile work and forgettable work. His personal interests are wide, but a store cannot stock only what its owner likes.

“We do this because we love it, first off,” he said. “But it’s a business, and we hope to take a few dollars home at the end of the day. The music we carry is related to the music that people are looking for. We carry anything that we think anybody might want to buy.”

That balancing act is central to independent retail. A store needs recognizable titles that bring people through the door, but it also needs enough variety to make browsing worthwhile. Online shopping can locate a specific title quickly. A physical store offers something less efficient and, for many customers, more rewarding: the ability to notice an album one was not searching for.

All Day Records’ website displays a similarly wide spectrum. Recent listings have included house, techno and electro releases alongside records by Portishead, Sade, Funkadelic, My Bloody Valentine and other artists. The Carrboro store is also connected to Tone Log Records, Hearon’s current label, and to the broader network of independent music that has defined much of his adult life.

The stock changes as people sell or trade collections. That means the store’s identity is never completely settled. A customer’s castoff can become another listener’s long-sought find. A common record in one household may be an entry point into an entire genre for someone else.

The national market offers a favorable backdrop. The Recording Industry Association of America reported that U.S. vinyl revenue reached $1.04 billion in 2025, up 9.3% from the prior year, as unit sales rose to 46.8 million. It was the 19th consecutive year of vinyl growth. Streaming still accounted for the overwhelming majority of recorded-music revenue, but vinyl’s continued expansion showed that digital convenience had not erased demand for a tangible object.

That trend does not make the independent record business easy. New vinyl can be expensive, used inventory varies in condition and value, and online marketplaces give sellers immediate access to price data. Hearon said record prices have risen in ways that can discourage young listeners who are curious but cannot afford to build a collection one $25 or $35 purchase at a time.

He remembers a very different market when he began buying records near the end of college and in his 20s.

“That was a time when there was tons and tons of amazing music available for three or four or five bucks,” he said. “With the current culture of everybody being a flipper, we’ve done what we can to fight the inflation on record prices.”

Hearon believes All Day Records’ prices remain competitive, but he does not dismiss the larger problem. A format built around discovery loses some of its openness if newcomers cannot afford to experiment.

The CD finds a new generation

One answer has been sitting in plain sight: the compact disc.

All Day Records did not sell CDs when the business began, Hearon said. It does now, and the format has become increasingly important. Used CDs are plentiful, relatively inexpensive and easy for younger customers to buy on impulse. In an era when vinyl’s popularity has driven up prices, the once-dominant CD has become the bargain bin of possibility.

“We’ve seen a big uptick in kids coming looking for CDs, and they’re kind of the cheap format now relative to the other formats,” Hearon said. “We’ve really been leaning into the CDs more recently.”

The shift complicates the easy assumption that each generation listens only to the technology it grew up with. Young customers may stream most of their music while collecting CDs, records or tapes. They may discover an older artist through a movie, a social-media clip, an algorithm or a family member, then decide they want a physical copy. Some arrive already knowledgeable about music that predates their birth. Others ask for new releases that an older shopkeeper has not yet encountered.

Hearon is wary of sweeping conclusions about age groups. Access to music has changed too radically for the old boundaries to hold.

Growing up in a small town, he remembered the arrival of a Best Buy with a large CD section as a major expansion of what he could hear. Before online streaming, a person might read about a band that sounded fascinating but have no practical way to find the music. Today, an enormous catalog is available within seconds.

That access has not produced uniform taste. It has produced countless paths into music.

“There are young folks rediscovering things that are classics that I would have thought everyone would have heard already,” Hearon said. “There are young folks digging for things that I’ve never heard of, things that are brand new.”

For a shop owner, that unpredictability is useful. It keeps the work from becoming a recitation of established knowledge. Customers can educate the person behind the counter as readily as the other way around.

Why an object still matters

Streaming has solved one of the central problems of Hearon’s youth: access. Listeners no longer have to find a scarce record or wait for a radio program to hear an unfamiliar artist. Nearly any musical question can lead immediately to a recording.

Hearon sees that convenience as a genuine benefit, not an enemy of the record store.

“It’s amazing that you can listen to almost anything that you can think of without having to physically have it in your hand,” he said. “That’s great. There’s nothing wrong with listening to music online.”

The continued appeal of records, CDs and tapes therefore rests on something other than necessity. A physical recording has weight, artwork and a place in a room. It asks the listener to choose it, carry it home and interact with it. An LP divides an album into sides. A CD booklet carries photographs, credits and lyrics. A cassette must be turned over or rewound. None of those actions is required for music to be heard, but for some listeners the actions become part of hearing it.

Hearon compared the impulse with buying printed books. Digital editions can provide the same words, but some readers still want the volume in their hands and on their shelves. Music collectors feel a similar pull.

There is also a social difference. Streaming typically begins with a private screen and a known selection. Browsing in a store exposes a person to other shoppers, staff members and hundreds of objects competing for attention. The friction that digital services remove – the time required to look, ask and decide – can itself become the pleasure.

Hearon calls record collecting an “itch” or even a “disease,” with a collector’s blend of affection and self-awareness. He acknowledged that his own collection has grown to the point that it can be hard to walk through his house. But when asked to identify one or two treasured records, he declined to reduce the collection to favorites.

The real attraction, he said, is not simply owning what one already loves. It is looking for what one has not heard.

“You can spend a life learning about music, but there’s always going to be something that you haven’t heard yet,” Hearon said. “You know that it’s finite, but it feels infinite.”

That sense of a “bottomless well” is the store’s most persuasive product. Every bin suggests another branch of musical history: a producer’s side project, a regional label, a forgotten dance single, a classic album heard in a new pressing or an unknown record whose cover is intriguing enough to justify a chance.

Recommendations without gatekeeping

The romantic image of a record-store clerk often involves instant expertise: A customer names three favorite albums, and the person behind the counter produces the perfect obscure recommendation. Hearon is more candid about the limits of that exchange.

He described himself as a slow processor and said he can feel like “a deer in headlights” when a stranger asks for a recommendation without offering much context. Taste is personal. A suggestion becomes easier after a customer describes current favorites, a desired style or a particular mood.

Even then, he prefers conversation to pronouncement.

“I’m not the sort to be heavy-handed,” Hearon said. “That sort of thing has to, for me, happen organically. You get a sense of somebody.”

Sometimes the right recommendation arrives too late – after the customer has walked out and Hearon spots the ideal record while flipping through a bin. That admission makes the shop more approachable. Expertise at All Day Records is not presented as omniscience, and uncertainty is not treated as failure.

The stance matters because record collecting has sometimes carried a reputation for gatekeeping: debates over formats, pressings, equipment and whether a listener’s taste is sufficiently serious. Hearon’s view is more expansive. “All formats are good formats,” he said, and any way of listening is worthwhile.

His job is to help when he can: point a visitor toward the right section, locate a requested title, explain how to continue the search or let someone browse without hovering. In that sense, restraint is part of the service. The customer remains in charge of the discovery.

Record labels and the long life of art

Hearon’s work with small independent labels provides another perspective on why physical media matters. He operated one label from about 2004 to 2012 and now runs Tone Log Records. He does not describe label work as his most successful venture in conventional business terms. He describes it as an art project and a way to collaborate with people he loves.

The reward appears over time. Once the immediate labor and pressure of a release have receded, he can look back at a body of work and decide that it added something worthwhile to the world.

Modern recording and distribution tools have made it easier than ever for artists to release music. That abundance is energizing, but it also means new work arrives continuously and competes for a brief span of attention. Hearon is interested in a longer test.

“The arts is the long game,” he said. “It’s not just, can you make something that is buzzing this month, but can you make a record that someone finds unexpectedly in a used bin 10 years from now and listens to it and says, ‘I never heard of this, but it’s pretty good’?”

The used bin becomes more than a discount section in that formulation. It is an archive without a curator, a place where commercial timing loosens its grip. A release that attracted little notice when it was new can be reconsidered years later by a listener with no memory of its original reception.

Hearon believes the value of art is sorted out over time. A record store gives that process a physical setting. Albums disappear, return, change hands and reach people who were not the initial audience. Labels document scenes; shops keep the documents moving.

A small store in a network of downtown stops

All Day Records’ arrival also adds another stop to Pittsboro’s downtown economy. Hearon readily points visitors toward other businesses carrying records and physical media, including Screaming for Vintage and the bookstore up the street. The presence of multiple shops, in his view, gives people more reason to spend time downtown rather than creating a winner-take-all competition.

That attitude reflects the same community-building instinct that shaped his venue and label work. One shop may not have the record a customer wants. Another might. A person who comes to town for music may also visit a thrift store, restaurant, gallery or other local business.

The Pittsboro location’s published hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. Because business hours can change, customers making a special trip should confirm them through the store’s website or by phone. The shop sells records, CDs, tapes and stereo equipment and buys or trades items in those categories.

The original All Day Records remains at 112A E. Main St. in Carrboro. Its longevity offers a measure of reassurance for the newer location, though Hearon is direct about the economics of the trade.

“For anyone who’s looking for a career or a way of paying bills, this is not it,” he said with a laugh. Devotion, even obsession, is part of the qualification. The joke contains a real warning: Independent cultural businesses often survive because their operators assign value to the work beyond the income it generates.

Yet survival is not the only standard. The shop’s significance also lies in whether people use it – whether beginners find an affordable CD, experienced collectors uncover an overlooked pressing, families introduce children to turntables or local musicians find another place where their work and interests are understood.

The takeaway: Come prepared to look

All Day Records does not promise that every visitor will find a rare album or receive a life-changing recommendation. Its offer is simpler and, in an age of automated playlists, increasingly unusual: Come inside, look through the bins and give curiosity some time.

Hearon’s path from classroom to club, from bass guitar to DJ booth, and from independent labels to two record-store locations has been guided by a consistent idea. Music communities do not sustain themselves through talent alone. They need rooms, shelves, sound systems, organizers, audiences and people willing to keep the doors open.

The Pittsboro store is one of those rooms. It is small enough to browse without becoming overwhelmed but varied enough to make the outcome uncertain. Familiar artists provide a starting point. The more important find may be the title a customer has never seen.

Residents who want to explore can visit All Day Records at 45 West Street in downtown Pittsboro during its posted Thursday-through-Sunday hours, browse the store’s online listings, and bring in records or equipment for possible purchase or trade. The best preparation is not a shopping list. It is a willingness to linger.

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