Trailer for Jeff’s new movie: "Dopamine"
Current mood: excited
Category: Art and Photography

Check out this video: "Dopamine"

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On Meeting Ben Harper
Current mood: rejuvenated
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities

It's Sunday night and I'm sitting up at Bill's Records reminiscing about the night that we met Ben Harper for the first time.

"I had been listening to Ben's music for a couple of years before he came to Dallas for that first time.  I really loved "Welcome to the Cruel World". The first song that I heard on the album was the thirteenth song.  I went straight to the 13th song just because of the title, which was "I'll Rise", a Maya Angelou poem that Ben had set to music.  When I got the promo copy of the album I saw that title and that was a poem that my mother really loved.  So once I heard that, I listened to the rest of the album and just fell in love with his music."

Bill and I attended Ben's first Dallas show at Club Dada in May of 1996.  I believe it was a Monday night, and there were less than 50 people in the audience.  Ben performed the whole show sitting down and it was absolutely amazing.

Bill: "Ben was touring for his second album "Fight For Your Mind", which a lot of Ben Harper fans will still say is his best record.  I couldn't wait for him to come play here.  Back then I never went out, but I really wanted to go see him play.  I used to call his record company to see if he was ever going to play Dallas and finally they called me back and said that he was coming to town.  At that time I used to stay open to at least midnight every night, but I shut down early to go down to Club Dada and go see his show."

I remember freaking out that Bill was actually out and about.  Even it was a Monday night.  But there he was, sitting at the bar at Club Dada.

More from Bill: "The show itself that night was just great.  It was a really intimate performance, just perfect for the room.  Tracey Brown from Virgin/Capitol Records kept buying me drinks all night, and by the end of the night I was really drunk.  Drunker than I wanted to be!  Anyway, I was sitting out on the patio in back with Johnny Hawkins talking about about how amazing our mothers were, I was almost crying, and all of the sudden I just felt this hand on my shoulder. And it was Ben."

A little later that night Ben gave Bill the metal slide that he had used during the performance that night.  He still holds onto it to this day.  "I've carried this with me every day since then.  I had it with me when Mother was in the hospital and when she passed, and I've always kept it with me as a way of connecting with both of them."

It was on that night at Club Dada that Bill found a new best friend forever.



-J. Liles

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Erykah Badu TONIGHT at Bill’s Records
Category: Life

Come meet Erykah Badu tonight at the new store! Her album goes on sale at midnight, the party starts at ten...

This is going to be a blast!

Jeff Liles will also be hand to give away a few DVD copies of "The Last Record Store" documentary film as well.

Request the music video for Erykah's "Honey" on BET and VH1!!!

See you tonight at Bill's!


10 pm

free


972.234.1496

Currently listening : New AmErykah, Pt. 1: 4th World War By Erykah Badu Release date: 26 February, 2008

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Please Come See the New Store!
Category: Jobs, Work, Careers

Hey, if you still haven't been to the new store, you don't know what you're missing!

We're here and all settled in. Sure would love to re-connect with our customers from the old location!

Love you...

Currently listening : Diamonds on the Inside By Ben Harper Release date: 11 March, 2003

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"Obituary For A Storefront" by Jeff Liles

Obituary for a Storefront (from "Unfair Park" blog - Dallas Observer)

If you've spent most of your life in Dallas, then you've grown accustomed to seeing most of your favorite signature city landmarks sacrificed for the alleged greater good of Change.

Examples are everywhere: The Bronco Bowl location in Oak Cliff is now a Home Depot monstromart. The Dr Pepper bottling plant on Mockingbird Lane was leveled to make way for a Kroger's grocery store and condominium complex. What was once the old Gemini Drive-In is about to be redeveloped yet again. The legendary Arcadia Theatre was never rebuilt after a catastrophic fire, and now the gateway tunnel to Deep Ellum is but a large pile of twisted metal and splattered concrete.

Here yesterday, gone today. Urban character sacrificed for high-density real estate.

Yesterday, Bill Wisener finally handed over the keys to the space in a North Dallas strip mall that was, for the last 26 years, Bill's Records. Wisener understands the development dynamic and holds no hard feelings. After all, before this was a record store, it was once the Northwood Hills 4 movie theater. Now it looks like the same space will likely be subdivided into some sort of swap meet, which is kind of ironic when you consider that the first version of Bill's Records was his mother's booth in Vikon Village, a similar Garland-area flea market.

Wisener's landlord at the North Dallas location is the family of former Dallas mayor Robert Folsom, and the Folsom clan is sorry to see Bill have to move elsewhere. As the tenant with the longest tenure in this particular shopping center, the Folsom family has a particular affection for the distinctive record store. They also understand isn't cost effective for him to lose more than $100,000 a year in this business that has changed so dramatically in the last decade.

For many local music lovers, street people, touring bands and pop culture historians, the closing of Bill's Records North Dallas location is more than just an end to an era. It is a statement about resilience and determination.

Bill Wisener, now nearing retirement age, isn't about to throw in the towel; he's just downsizing considerably and relocating to the Southside of Lamar neighborhood. Rather than closing the book on his career as a record store owner, he's writing a new chapter in much smaller font.

Most of us have no idea how hard it is to own and operate a Mom and Pop record store in today's retail landscape. Independent record stores pay a much higher wholesale cost per unit, because their retail sales aren't tracked by the SoundScan sales monitoring system. Often stores such as Best Buy or Circuit City will sell a CD for less than what Bill paid wholesale for the same title. Many wholesalers refuse to take returns of defective product from indie stores, and major labels no longer spend time or energy putting up promotional displays in retail outlets that don't report to SoundScan.

It's almost as if record stores don't exist anymore.

As former employee and DJ and producer Kelly Reverb once observed, the walls in the restroom at Bill's Records are like cave paintings. They tell the story of styles and genres that have come and gone, the names and likenesses of the kids who worked there, and the autographs of the many touring acts who either visited or performed at the store. By the end of this week a new coat of paint will erase the memories of 26 years in this location.

Says Wisener: "When I first opened the Rolling Stones were really big, they were touring and everybody wanted a button with that big ol' tongue on it. Then punk rock and new wave got huge. The Cure, Depeche Mode, the Circle Jerks and Dead Kennedys all came to town." (The DK's played an infamous show at the protest site in front of the Republican National Convention in 1984.)

"I just ran across a 14 page long letter from Jello Biafra the other day," Wisener continues. "He came to the store and hung out here for, like, six hours one afternoon. He was a really smart guy. I went to go see them play at some place in European Crossroads by Bachman Lake. He wrote me the most wonderful letter. Morrissey and The Smiths were really big then too. We had a whole huge section of nothing but Smiths' singles and imports."

Birthdays are the markers in time that help Wisener mark the arc and trajectory of his experience as an integral part of the Dallas music scene.

"I remember when Frank Campagna had a big birthday party for me downtown and John Cale played," he says. "Don Nedler from Lizard Lounge had a four-day long party for my 50th birthday party. Vanilla Ice performed under an assumed name on Friday night. Bugs Henderson played on Saturday might, and Material Issue and Eve's Plum played the next night. Joel Folger from The Edge brought me up onstage and they sang 'Happy Birthday.' That's right when dance music started getting real big. Everybody wanted to be a DJ. We were actually selling turntables at the time and mail-ordering a lot of really obscure dance records.

"In the late '80s rap and hip-hop became the big thing. Eazy-E came to the store. I remember when your band [Decadent Dub Team] played at the store in 1988. Then a few years later everybody started getting into Master P. From there Dirty South hip-hop music from Houston started getting real big — Paul Wall, Mike Jones, Bun B, that kind of stuff."

In the early '90s Wisener discovered the music of the man who would go on to become one of his closest friends: Ben Harper.

"In 1993, Welcome to the Cruel World by Ben Harper came out, and it had a song on it called 'I'll Rise.' My mother always loved Maya Angelou's poem 'I'll Rise,' and Ben did a version of it on this record. My mother had been very sick off and on for three years, and she later passed away in November of 1996. She was in the hospital for three months, and I closed the store to stay there by her bedside every night."

Since then, Harper has been what Bill calls "the echo of my DNA." Harper flew him to see him perform at three straight sold-out shows in Paris, France. Wisener has also attended shows in Harper's hometown of Claremont, as well as shows in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Inglewood, Colorado and the Apollo Theater in Harlem. At this point Wisener has seen Harper play live over 30 times, including his very first Dallas performance at Club Dada.

"Ben did a show at Trees on March 27, which was my mother's birthday," he recalls. "He dedicated the encore 'Waiting on An Angel' to my mother. I was sitting in that balcony that overlooked the stage, and he pointed up to me and said, 'This is for your Mom, Bill.' It was such a gracious, personal gesture."

Since then, the sound of Ben Harper's music could be heard literally every single day inside Bill's store. The employees often insist they've heard his records so many times they know every single lyric to every one of his songs. Harper recently sent Bill a gold record that will go on the wall of the new location.

When I ran into Harper at the Roxy Theatre in Los Angeles last summer, he placed his hand on his heart when I mentioned Bill's name.

To say that Ben Harper's music has helped Bill Wisener deal with the stress and adversity of life would be an understatement. Harper's songs have been a sort of therapy, and have given Bill hope and humility at a time when it seemed that all hope was lost for good.

Which brings us to the point in time in which the landscape was changed forever: September 11, 2001. For a little while, and then a long time, people stopped spending money on entertainment and music. And it didn't help that around the same time, Napster was taking off and kids were starting to swap MP3s.

Bill's customer base transitioned to alternative country and Americana music. KHYI-FM (95.3) began an ongoing promotional event every Friday afternoon featuring live acts, free beer for the adults and free ice cream for kids. Artists such as 1100 Springs, Jack Ingram, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Guy Clark, Max Stalling and Rhett Butler were all regular performers. The audience became a perfect fit for Bill's Records: They still bought new CDs and old records, they appreciated the Mom and Pop vibe, and they were loyal till the bitter end. Many of them are Bill's age, so they love to spend time in the store reminiscing about the old days.

"I would love for Jay Johnson to come sing 'Deep in the Heart of Texas' when we open the new store. It would perfect for the opening of the store," Bill says. He would also love for Monsignor Donald Fisher of St Joseph's Catholic Church in Richardson to come give a dedication on opening night. "I'm not Catholic, but I listen to him every Sunday morning on WRR. He came for one of the last shows here, and he gave a Christmas prayer. Austin Cunningham was here performing, and Don started it all off with a beautiful Christmas prayer."

These days, tears come to Bill Wisener's eyes rather easily. He hopes that people like Jerry Haynes and Trini Lopez – regular customers, no kidding — will find him in the new location. He misses folks like former Longhorn Ballroom and Yellow Belly Drag Strip owner O.L. Nelms, former airline exec Clyde Skeen, legendary architect Albert Frey and his dear friend Stanley Marcus.

Before Marcus passed away, he called Bill one afternoon and asked him to come to his home the next morning. Stanley Marcus then gave him his entire lifetime collection of old 78 rpm records. Bill gets emotional when he thinks of the gesture.

"I went to his service at the Meyerson," he recalls. "It was…beautiful. He was such a lovely man, such a wonderful, wonderful man…What a gift is was just to know him."

Two night ago, Wisener's old friend (and former Dallas art gallery owner) David Quadrini stopped by the store. Quadrini, like Hydroponic Sound System founder Jeff "Skinny Fresh" Wade, radio personality Jeff K and the late Elliott Smith, was one of those kids who discovered alternative music at Bill's store. Quadrini and Wisener stayed up until almost 4 in the morning reminiscing about the past.

Quadrini was in town visiting relatives and had no idea Bill's was about to move. " I guess he just now heard about it, so he came up here to pay his respects and to talk about all of his memories of the store," Wisener says.

It won't be easy to lay out the floor plan of the new location. The physics are impossible. His old store was 9,000 square feet, and the new one is about 3,000 square feet. For the last 20 years, Bill has also had two warehouses filled to capacity with movie memorabilia, autographs, T-shirts and posters. He's using this occasion to bring all of that stuff out and put it in the new store. While a lot of that material is going on eBay, it's not hard to imagine that the new location will have a very different look and feel.

There might even be a cash register.

The new store will also bring about an interesting change for those of you who are used to seeing a cigarette in Bill's hand all the time: The new store will be a no-smoking area. "I'm gonna have to go outside a lot, but I decided that this might help me stop altogether one day," he says. "I promised the new landlord that I wouldn't smoke inside, so maybe it's a blessing."

Last week, Wisener was checking out the new space when Donnie Nelson from the Dallas Mavericks came by and introduced himself. Nelson said, "I've heard you're a great guy, and I just want you to know we're going to have a great time here with you around." Wisener appreciated the gesture.

"He just made me feel so welcome, he was just so nice," he says. "I mean, I know it's gonna be a work in progress there for the next 10 years, but I can't wait to start this thing all over again. I know that being near all of these great live music venues and all of those wonderful people is going to be really wonderful."

With that, for the first time in weeks, the apparent stress of making this move finally disappears from his face, and he relaxes into a pleasant smile.

The Bill's Records North Dallas location was open 365 days a year. I'll miss bringing Bill a warm plate of my Mom's cooking every Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. Holidays have always brought out the best in Bill. Prior to September 2001, the store was always brisk with biz, and old friends would come out of the woodwork. The last few years have been quite different.

This past Christmas season, one of his customers even brought in a "tip jar" for contributions to help keep the store open.

As I look around the nearly empty shell of what was Bill's Records North Dallas location, it actually looks a lot smaller than it did when all of the merchandise was still inside. It was his vision, this functional work-of-art-as-record-store, that made the last 26 years seem so much larger than life.

If there is anything to be taken away from my experience as one of Bill's longtime friends and customers, it's that you can't ever take these precious relationships and memories for granted. Bill Wisener will always cherish his ongoing opportunity to contribute to the fabric of this community, and we should recognize that his store helped give this city real character.


–Jeff Liles

Currently listening : Diamonds on the Inside By Ben Harper Release date: 11 March, 2003

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In This Sunday's Dallas Morning News
Category: Life

N. Dallas record store destined for new digs

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From D Magazine's FrontBurner blog

The Last Record Store is a documentary about Bill's, a struggling indie music store in North Dallas.

The film features a series of touching and often humorous testimonials from employees, customers and musicians..all whose lives have been touched by Bill over the last 25 years. It's sort of like Oprah's 20th anniversary DVD but without as many celebrities, big hair and wagons of fat.

How does Bill's stay open despite competition from bigger chains and the Internet? Well it's not easy but he caters to the die-hard music aficionados. They're his customers and his employees. Plus, he lets people smoke in the store.

Music likers will enjoy the 66-minute film but wish it was a little shorter. Music lovers will adore the film but wish it was a little longer.

Jeffrey Liles, the filmmaker, spent about seven years putting the documentary together, he said in the Q&A after the screening. His next move? He plans to shop it as a TV show to cable networks like HBO (..since they let you cuss..). He would go from city to city, finding the Bill in each.

If the subjects he finds are as passionate about music and their indie record stores as people are about Bill's, he's got a hit on his hands. It's sure to be as big as Oprah..with more cussing, smoking and a much better soundtrack.

Currently listening : Diamonds on the Inside By Ben Harper Release date: 11 March, 2003

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By Robert Wilonsky of Dallas Observer

Bill Wisener
The Store of Record

The beat goes on. Can Bill's Records and Tapes?

Bill Wisener does not know this story, because I've never told it to him; to others, meaning his friends and customers, I've repeated it often. It takes place not long after Wisener opened his eponymous record store on Spring Valley Road 25 years ago, which, as it turns out, is when the Dallas Observer began publication.

I was all of 12 or 13 when I'd saved up some 40 bucks to buy import records that, back then, one could only find at Bill's Records and Tapes; I believe they were Adam and the Ants' Dirk Wears White Socks, a Wall of Voodoo EP and a Clash record, as well as a few others. My mother had driven me to Bill's, where I collected my vinyl and placed them on the counter. Wisener thumbed through the small stack and demanded twice what I'd brought, $20 for the Adam and the Ants record alone.

I recall trying to argue with Wisener, who did not and still does not put prices on his product, but he was a veteran salesman, and I was a spindly nerd with an allowance. My mother, sensing my tirade was about to melt into tears, grabbed my hand and led me out of the store.

I would not return for more than two decades, no matter how often people like Decadent Dub Team co-founder and Observer contributor Jeff Liles, The Adventure Club host Josh Venable and former Observer music editor Zac Crain insisted that Wisener had softened over the years.

Today, the place looks as it did during my first visit: as though someone had set off a bomb in 1980 and no one ever noticed. The left wall is still lined with cassettes, some from 1980 still in the shrink-wrapping; the right wall is now covered with CDs, piled alphabetically, but just barely. The middle of the place overflows with loose posters that poke out from cardboard boxes like discarded treasure maps, and next to them are boxes and racks of old rock-and-roll T-shirts.

The shelves and shelves of vinyl are still here, too, and so is Bill--good ol' Bill, much, much kinder than I recall as a kid, this blessed patron saint of the vanishing record store. He has been here damned near every day, every hour, since 1980. And he will never leave, unless his landlord and his lease force him to go in about 15 months.

In April, Wisener thought he was on his way out even sooner: He got word from the landlord that an auto parts store was moving in and needed the 8,000-square-foot space. The Observer, with whom Wisener has had an umbilical-cord relationship for almost three decades, ran a story documenting his woes; the landlord's grandfather, former Dallas Mayor Robert Folsom, told the kid Bill stayed for as long as he wanted. But the mere thought of moving plagued Wisener, perhaps because he's come to realize that one day, and maybe one day soon, he will need to go after all.

Business isn't what it used to be, because the neighborhood ain't what it used to be: His is one of the only businesses in the Northwood Hills Shopping Center where English, not Spanish, is spoken. Long gone are the kids who dropped in after high school to plow through the bins for the latest new wave import or local-band offering; long gone are the customers, period, save those who stop by for Friday afternoon concerts and the free beer.

"I just started thinking about what all I needed to do, and it just becomes overwhelming," Wisener says, filling up his cup of Diet Coke. It's a Friday morning, around 11, and only he and an employee are in the place. He has time to talk, and uses every second.
"I don't want to have a nervous breakdown because as you get older..."

The 61-year-old Wisener pauses, grins. "I'm happier than I've ever been in my whole life about living my life. And I feel sad about a lot, too. From the time I opened--I started doing this in 1973 at Vikon Village--it got a little better every year, and then I came into some money a couple of times, and I put it all into inventory because I wanted to have something for everybody. I wanted to have no regard to what I bought. The word was out that I would buy whatever. It's just a lot of water under the bridge. It's my life. It's really hard thinking about doing anything else. From the very beginning, and I didn't know what it was, it was like magic. It used to be packed. I used to have nine people working here."

Wisener loves to talk about this store, why he's here every day, why he can't stomach the thought of leaving though he knows he ought to. He grew up here. He lived with his mother and father when he opened the store, but they're dead now.

Many customers have become his closest friends; one, Jeff Liles, has even made a poignant documentary about Bill's, called The Last Record Store, which he would like to screen in the Deep Ellum Film Festival in the fall. Radiohead and Jeff Buckley, among so many other beloveds, have shopped here. Ben Harper and Wisener have even become good friends: Among the few times Wisener skipped work was to go to one of Harper's concerts. In Paris. On Harper's dime.

There is a chance Bill's will move in the near future. But pulling up roots will be akin to tearing down a redwood forest: Not only does he have this expansive mess to clean up, but also three warehouses full of clutter, including one he hasn't been inside since the 1970s.

No wonder he is overwhelmed: Some people have memories kept in their heads and hearts, and others store them in thousands and thousands of feet of warehouse space.
"I think it would be OK if I had to move, but I don't know," he says, fidgeting one of his Carltons.

"It's like, I've always been..." He pauses, begins again. "I like to know the results of something before it happens! I think my biggest problem all my life, and I'm sure it is with a lot of people, is fear. I think, because there's so many things I think I would have liked, that I wished I had not been fearful to do something or make a change...I feel comfortable in this routine, but I'm not comfortable in the fact that I can't pay all the bills on time here. But I'm comfortable in the fact that I've done it so long."

--Robert Wilonsky

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"The Last Record Store" in LA next weekend
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities

Jeffrey Liles' documentary film "The Last Record Store" is showing next Saturday, July 1 at the "Don't Knock the Rock!" film festival in Los Angeles, California.

The screening  is at noon at the RedCat Theatre in the Disney complex, and there will be a brief question and answer session with Jeffrey afterwards.  The cost is eight dollars. 

If you're in LA, show your support for Bill's Records by attending this event!

Currently listening : Fight for Your Mind By Ben Harper Release date: 01 August, 1995

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It's Official - We're Moving in January 2007
Category: Jobs, Work, Careers

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

By THOR CHRISTENSEN / The Dallas Morning News

After 25 years in North Dallas, Bill's Records is moving to a smaller space in the 1300 block of South Lamar, next to Poor David's Pub, south of downtown.

"I'm getting teary-eyed just thinking about not coming here anymore," owner Bill Wisener said Tuesday, standing in his sprawling, 8,000-square-foot store at 8118 Spring Valley Road. "I'm 62 and don't like to make changes. But I have to. I can't keep going into the hole."

Like many record store owners, Mr. Wisener has suffered declining sales as more consumers download music and buy CDs over the Internet. "I sell about 30 percent what I sold 10 years ago, and it's just getting worse," he says.

The new Bill's Records will be smaller 3,500 square feet with much cheaper rent. The downside is he'll have to weed out thousands of LPs, cassettes, posters and T-shirts that have piled up in his store since the Reagan administration.

He hopes to open the new Bill's Records by Jan. 31, when his lease runs out in the Northwood Hills Shopping Center. Poor David's owner David Card says he's "ecstatic" to have Bill's Records moving next door, and Mr. Wisener says being next to Poor David's will mean more live performances in his record store.

"We'll work together and have concerts in the day from a lot of the same people who play his place at night we'll just shift them back and forth from one place to another," Mr. Wisener says.

E-mail tchristensen@dallasnews.com

Currently listening : Both Sides of the Gun By Ben Harper Release date: 21 March, 2006

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