Used Kids Records owner Greg Hall purchases Musicol

Used Kids Records owner Greg Hall said he heard through the grapevine about a year ago that Musicol – the long-running recording studio and vinyl pressing plant located in North Linden – might be available for purchase. 

“And it’s such a natural extension of what we do here,” said Hall, who saw in the Musicol-Used Kids pairing the ability to have a hand in every step of getting a vinyl LP into the hand of a listener, from recording to production to retail. “It’s the old business idea where you talk about the gold prospectors going out West back in the day, and the guys that really made the money were the ones who owned the hardware stores and sold shovels – not that I’m looking at crazy numbers in regards to making money.”

After hearing these initial rumblings, Hall reached out to Musicol owner Warren Hull, who took over operations from his father, the late John Hull, who founded the studio alongside business partner Boyd Niederlander in 1966. After working through financing, the deal closed on April 17, with Hall taking over operations the eve before Record Store Day. “And you can imagine how busy Record Store Day is already,” Hall said, and laughed. “But I was glad, because it gave us the chance to get the word out organically, passing out handbills to folks. And we had hundreds of people come through the store that day.”

Hall is no stranger to taking over iconic Columbus businesses, having purchased Used Kids from former owner Dan Dow in 2014. “And I think the people who have been around the music scene, particularly, see [Musicol] as a beacon, as a legacy institution here in Columbus,” Hall said. “And to lose it would be tragic. And I think that’s the thing that gets me really excited, that people really care about it. And that helps me invest that much more energy to really make the thing hum, to make it rock and roll.”

In this first month, Hall has made investments both financial – he immediately hired three more people to work on the pressing side of the business, aiming to significantly ramp up record production – and others of a more physical nature. “A lot of the work I’ve been doing is yeomen’s work more than anything else,” he said. “There’s a lot of old stuff at Musicol that needs to be cleaned out and freshened up.”

This reality was captured in a richly detailed 2013 Pitchfork feature on the studio, which documented how founder John Hull’s packrat nature was reflected in everything from the studio’s trippy carpet – salvaged decades prior from the Cincinnati Convention Center – to stacks of boxes stamped with the words “Army Signal Corps” stored in the building. “He doesn’t sell anything,” former Musicol engineer Adam Smith said of John Hull at the time. “There’s attics full of gear.” 

Of course, this pull toward preservation is part of what has made Musicol such an unique institution, as much of its vintage equipment remains fully operational, including a 1944 Scully lathe, the hand-operated Finebilt presses, and one of the original consoles John Hull built in the 1960s. “The term DIY gets thrown around a lot, but John actually did do all this stuff himself,” Smith told Pitchfork. “The stuff he built around here is bananas. All the control systems, boxes that I still use, the bits and bobs that make a studio work– he built all of it.”

The analog nature of the business clearly speaks to Hall, who has been slinging vinyl at Used Kids for more than a decade and believes strongly in the future of the medium. “There’s a book I’ve referenced many times in conversation called The Revenge of Analog, and in the book [author David Sax] talks about human experience and the importance of engaging with physical things,” Hall said. “And the whole book is about the idea that humans need to touch things, to feel them, whether it’s holding a book, where you bookmark it when you want to stop, or listening to a record, where you flip it over to hear side two. It’s a physical interaction with something that seems to be far more satisfying on a human level.”

Hall said he was also drawn to the rich history that accompanied Musicol, which has served as a recording home for everyone from Ric Ocasek (with his pre-Cars combo Id Nirvana) to rapper Bizzy Bone of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, who once in a fit of anger punched a hole in the studio’s wall that remains there to this day. The space has also produced recordings for a wealth of Columbus bands, including the Gibson Bros., Great Plains, and Times New Viking, among countless others.

Taking over any business that’s been in place for 60 years, Hall said there are going to be surprises when you begin to peel back the veneer. And he allowed that there have been moments over the course of this first month where he’s nearly been roiled by these discoveries. 

“But I’ve been through so many things in my life, both professionally and personally, that I’ve learned to just roll with it,” he said. “My staff will sometimes hear me quote one of the final scenes in ‘Forrest Gump,’ where the military guy (Lieutenant Dan) straps himself into the top of his boat in the middle of the storm and he’s yelling, ‘Fuck you, God. Is that all you got?’ And that is kind of my own personal fire in my belly that I used to keep pushing forward. I look at things that other folks might be overwhelmed by and it’s like, ‘Bring it. What’s next?’ And let me tell you, none of that gets done without me having a great staff both at Musicol and Used Kids. This is not a one-man operation. Someone might have to steer the boat, but I need a good crew with me. And it’s a blessing that I’m surrounded with really good people.”