Wichita bands discovering hot new format – cassette tape

First there was vinyl – arguably the king of analog recording media.

Then there were cassette tapes, which Rolling Stone dubbed “the jewel of 1980s audio.” Those tapes largely fell out of popularity when CDs arrived.

Vinyl records have enjoyed a mainstream renaissance in recent years, but what about cassettes?

Can cassette tapes be cool again?

That’s what Dan Davis is betting on.

Davis, who runs the Wichita-based label This Ain’t Heaven Recording Concern, records and releases music exclusively on cassette tapes.

According to Davis, cassettes never really went away – they just went underground. For years, people in online indie/DIY circles have used tapes as their media of choice – but as always, trends on the coasts are typically slower to come to the Midwest.

“Around here I’m sort of hoping I can make a case for tapes,” Davis said. “In the underground world right now ... (new) music, across genres, is on boutique cassette labels.”

Making cassettes in Wichita

It all started when Davis, who was working for his father’s Wichita nonprofit, came across a room full of “dead media.”

In it, boxes upon boxes of blank VHS tapes, cassettes and other old media languished, destined for the Dumpster.

“I mean hundreds and hundreds of them,” he said. “I just kind of had the light bulb go off in my head.”

Davis, who was settling down in Wichita after years on the road as a touring musician, decided to start a cassette-tape label at his Riverside home in April of 2013 – This Ain’t Heaven Recording Concern (or as people in the scene know it: TAHRC).

He’s not the only game in town.

Phil Ross, co-owner of Delano’s Spektrum Muzik record store, also has a cassette-tape label, 5nakefork Records – which “introduced me to the idea that punk kids were still buying tapes,” Davis said.

“Vinyl is the most obvious media that nobody uses anymore that the underground has brought back into the mainstream, but as soon as vinyl became expensive ... then all the kids who were just making music and didn’t want to spend a bunch of money gravitated to cassettes,” Davis said.

Now Davis, 33, is working on his 146th cassette-tape release. He’s released cassettes both for local acts – including Marrice Anthony, Domestic Drone and Francis Moss – as well as artists from China, Australia and England.

“Our community at large kind of gravitates toward things that are out of the public eye and, because of that, are affordable and easy to innovate with,” Davis said. “It’s so affordable that the sky’s the limit.”

Typically bands come to Davis with finished albums, recorded on a laptop or other means. He charges bands $2 per cassette tape – each of which comes complete with a liner and tape art.

Bands sell their tapes at shows, and Davis sells them online.

Wichita native Luwayne Glass, who performs under the name Dreamcrusher, released music with This Ain’t Heaven in Wichita before moving to New York.

When he moved to New York, he found he already had a fan base there who had listened to his cassette tapes, Davis said.

“I think it’s still in that stage (locally) where people are like, ‘What are you doing trying to sell people cassettes?’” Davis said with a laugh. “In places where the exposure is so much bigger and where things are saturated, especially on the coast, finding a medium where you can kind of do your own thing” often leads to cassettes.

But to play them?

Sure, it’s nostalgic and cool to buy a local band’s cassette tape, but how would you play it?

Cassette decks are typically only available on Craigslist, Ebay and other second-hand sources – and even then, they may be in need of repair.

Davis realizes most people who buy his cassettes won’t ever actually play them; each tape also comes with a code to download the MP3 files online.

In a world that’s moving further away from having physical media, Davis is trying to bring back the tape collection.

“The media we’re using is permanent,” he said. “The most depressing things happen to CDs. If you have that album for 10 years, it’s gone – the sun will warp it. No matter how much you love it, you don’t have a permanent collection.”

The next step for This Ain’t Heaven Recording Concern: sell functioning cassette-tape decks for people to play the physical tape.

“At some point, music collectors are going to want to listen to the object they bought – that’s a totally different experience than (listening to MP3s),” he said. “If we have a strong music community and a lot of it’s being released on cassette, then yeah, they might be surprised or confused at first, but if it’s cool, people will want to be involved.

“I know there’s at least a handful of kids that didn’t listen to tapes before, but do now.”

But in the end, it’s more than just a hipster pastime – it’s an attempt to create a permanent archive of local music, Davis said.

“There’s so much music that’s come out of this town and is still coming out of this town,” he said. “Hopefully This Ain’t Heaven is playing a role in those being a part of our permanent history, rather than just being something that fades when the last CD gets cracked.”

This story was originally published August 4, 2017 at 1:32 PM with the headline "Wichita bands discovering hot new format – cassette tape."