About Turning Slowly Vinyl

I love music. I love trivia. I love writing. Which eventually brought me to create this site, "Turning Slowly Vinyl."

As a kid, every Saturday morning my family went record shopping. It was a sort of just a "known ritual." My dad would flip through bins, usually scoping out new releases, but sometimes adding a missing gem to his monstrous collection. I mostly watched. Until I was about 8 or 9 and then he started letting me choose one album for myself (my first? "Three Dog Night's Greatest Hits").

Vinyl albums filled our house with music almost constantly. And when they didn't, I was in my room listening to my own growing collection of music. I absorbed all of it, the sounds, the stories, the labels, the liner notes, the personnel credits buried in six-point type (which was still legible to me back in the 70s).

Somewhere along the way I developed what loved ones have often described as a "freakish capacity for music trivia." Okay... point taken. The bands, the players, the sessions, all of the connections, the backstories. Admittedly, I have driven many a friend completely batty by volunteering unsolicited facts while all they were trying to do was listen to "Radar Love."

Turning Slowly Vinyl is my outlet for all of it.

The concept is simple: I try to write short, conversational articles about the surprising connections hiding in music history. I try to give every piece a wow moment. That one killer fact that changed how I heard a song, or how you might think about an artist. That's the whole thing. Pull a thread, see where it goes, find the part that makes you go wait, really? Some of these stories I've told over countless beers with my besties. Some of them I'm learning about in real time. I never stopped investigating, it's just now that I'm sharing what I find.

Plus, I like to write. I've been on Facebook since the beginning and I've probably posted a billion times (give or take). For however long Facebook has been around, I've been writing dumb posts and learning through the feedback (likes/comments) to find my voice.

I picked up the guitar at eleven and haven't put it down since. I've also been playing bass professionally for over thirty years, so yes, I'm that guy at the party who will absolutely tell you why John Deacon's bassline on "Under Pressure" almost didn't exist because everyone went out for pizza. And yes, I'm aware that you never asked me.

My wife and I live in Kansas City, which is where I grew up, shopping at Tiger's Records at 95th and Antioch (and hoo boy, is there a story to be told about that place!). Our son is a sophomore at the University of Kansas. We are a Jayhawk household.

This site is built with love, curiosity, and an embarrassing amount of accumulated knowledge that finally has somewhere to go.

If you want to know more about my music, visit timhuggins.com. If you want to know more about my graphic design work, visit timhugginsllc.com.

— Tim Huggins

P.S. Why the name "Turning Slowly Vinyl"? Short story: It was the name of a song I wrote in Austin, Texas, in 1995 with the band, "Foot." (It's on our debut release, "Final Request"). Also, "Turning Slowly Vinyl" was the name of my first attempt at this blog back in the early 2000s, but it was mostly google docs and never took off. I'm hoping this reboot fares better. Thanks for reading.