Wax Trax — Denver’s oldest record store — is opening a new location.
In total, that’ll bring the local chain up to five locations: the original new and used stores on 13th Avenue, the Broadway Bazaar store on South Broadway, the kiosk in Aurora’s Stanley Marketplace, and the forthcoming store planned for Denver’s West Highland neighborhood.
The new location will open at 3641 W. 32nd Ave., where Candelaria used to be, on Oct. 11.
Owner Pete Stidman said he’s been eyeing locations west of I-25 for some time.
“We like walkable neighborhoods, like our homeland in Capitol Hill,” he said. “The West Highland neighborhood has a great mix of locally owned businesses, like West End Books, St. Killians Cheese Shop and Mondo Vino, that attract people from all over West and North Denver. We saw this little corner spot and it seemed like a natural fit.”
The new store will carry new and used vinyl, including 45s.
Details about the grand opening will be announced in September.
“We’re still planning the festivities,” Stidman said, “but — of course — there will be music.”
Wax Trax has been a family affair for nearly 50 years
Pete Stidman has been managing Wax Trax for five years, but the business has been in his family for nearly 50 years.
In 1978, Stidman’s father, Dave, and his father’s business partner, Duane Davis, bought the store from its original owners, Jim Nash and Danny Flesher. (There’s a documentary about the store’s founding called “Industrial Accident: The Story of Wax Trax! Records,” if you’re looking for a deep dive.)
Stidman was six when his father bought the store.
“I’ve been thinking about managing it in idle moments since I was around 13,” he said.
In 2022, Stidman took that leap and bought Davis out of his shares so he could retire.
“Now me, my Dad, and my brother, Sam Rosenberg, work together with about a dozen great staff to run the shops,” Stidman said.
In 50 years, records have been in, out, and in again
And Stidman is stepping in at an interesting moment in music history, when vinyl sales are on the up and up, even as many physical media stores have closed.
Back in the 1990s, Stidman said, Wax Trax had locations in Denver and Boulder. Competitors, including Tower Records and Independent Records, surrounded the stores.
“They were on almost every major road to get to Wax Trax, and I thought, ‘That probably isn’t good for sales,” Stidman said. “Nowadays, small operations like ours face heavy competition from online sellers and big box stores.”
Plus, he said, there’s always the threat of big chains returning.
“So, in my mind, expansion is really about making sure Wax Trax is around for another 50 years,” he said.
“I think it’s pretty obvious to a lot of young people at the current moment that the world’s march into the digital/virtual/artificial — aka non-physical — world has led us into a quandary,” Stidman added. “Vinyl records, at their best, are a physical connection to a real moment in time that you can listen to with friends. You can travel to that moment. It can be truly divine. And we need that kind of escape.”
