Matt Vaughan
Owner - Easy Street RECORDS
Matt Vaughan has been at the center of Seattle’s music ecosystem for nearly four decades, steering Easy Street Records from two struggling, collapsing shops in 1987 into one of the country’s most iconic record stores. As a Seattle University freshman working at both Easy Street and Penny Lane, he inherited the leases, inventory, and debt, and rebuilt them into a single store. By 1989, he relocated Easy Street to its California Avenue location as Seattle’s underground scene was beginning to break out. The shop quickly became a hub for musicians, touring bands, and local collectors.
Over the next 35+ years, Vaughan turned Easy Street into a global destination, hosting nearly 2,000 in-store performances and supporting local artists. His industry background runs deep, with early exposure through his mother’s work as an independent radio promoter and Queensrÿche manager. Today, he continues to run Easy Street as a cultural anchor in Seattle, balancing the store, café, Record Store Day efforts, and long-standing relationships with artists from Pearl Jam to emerging local acts.
Photo by Rosetta Greek on California Ave in front of Easy Street Records
Transcript
Matt Vaughan here, Easy Street Records. I'm often asked how the infamous Pearl Jam Unannounced Surprise Show happened at my shop back on April 29th, 2005. It's been widely regarded as one of the most legendary PJ shows, but how did it happen and what was the reasoning behind it?
I was going to be hosting a music convention for my Sims group, a coalition of independent music stores here in Seattle. There would be 120 of the top retailers in the country descending on Seattle for a 4-day ComFab Summit. I had events scheduled throughout. John Doe, special guest Nancy Wilson at Chop Suey, Ben Gibbard at EMP, Sub Pop Showcase, the Triple Door, Young New Talent, Jim James at the Northwest Film Forum, Cameron Crowe talking and premiering his film Elizabethtown, a new band, Kings of Leon, doing an in-store at the Queen Anne's Shop. On the last night, there was an event listed, Party at Easy Street, Free Beer, Live Entertainment.
A month before the convention, I bumped into Mike McCready at the shop. We get talking about the state of the industry. In 2005, the music business was challenged. Napster essentially had made music free. Big Box retail was undercutting us retailers and putting many of us out of business. Amazon had moved on from just being a bookseller to now being a very powerful music seller too. I tell Mike what I'm planning next month and then I'll be discussing all this stuff in detail. He says he'd love to say hello to everyone at least. He goes on to say that without record shops, he would never become the music fan that he became and that Pearl Jam may not have gotten off the ground as quickly had it not been for record shops supporting them early on. He says maybe the band could buy everyone dinner one night. I half jokingly replied, "Well, you might as well just play then." His eyes bugged out, he laughed and then stopped and with an Eddie Haskell grin said, "We wouldn't be able to say anything, you know. It would have to be a surprise." I replied with, "Cool! It's set then and we'll cover our own dinners."
Mike and I had known each other since we were young adolescents, had mutual friends, went to the same keggers, bought records. My sister's best friend Aaron was Mike's girlfriend so we saw Mike a lot. He had been a great supporter of Easy Street from the very get. Even so, this was all still very far-fetched. A few days later I call Mike, full well expecting we were going to be talking about where to have dinner with everyone. Instead he says, "I've talked to Jeff and we think we might have an idea. Can you put together a proposal and send it to Kelly Curtis? We're going to act like we know nothing about this. He'll bring it up to us and much to his surprise we will all unanimously jump up and say we want to do it. He's going to shake his head because it's ludicrous thought, which it is, but we're going to find a way." At that time both Mike and I were thinking that the in-store would take place at my bigger Queen Anne location. Eddie, he had other ideas. He wanted it at the much smaller original store in West Seattle.
BJ's security team and a couple of techs met with Kelly at the shop. They walked around and then Kelly sat me down and went on to say, "I think we need to just do a dinner. This would be the smallest show we've ever done and out in the open like this on the busiest corner of West Seattle, we'd be too exposed." As he's given me all the reasons as to why it's not going to work and walks Eddie better. Doesn't say anything to either of us. Starts playing air guitar by the Sonic Youth section and then yells over to Kelly, "This'll do!" and walks out. I look at Kelly, his head drops, he looks up and says with a wry smile, "We're going to have to find a way." On the night of the event, three buses unload the record geeks. We party for an hour or so. People start asking what band is playing. Are they any good? Are they local? I just keep saying, "Yes, they're local. They're good." People rib me and jokingly say, "Better be Pearl Jam, haha!" I see a guy look under a sheet covering all the band's equipment. He sees a Stickman logo on a cabinet. His eyes pop out. I heard they run over to him and tell him that PJ just recently sold some equipment. I run upstairs to the balcony, which was closed off for the night. The band is hiding up there, looking through boxes of records. Drinking Rainier beer. I start rush riding down a speech. Eddie walks over, grabs a red pen and crosses everything out except, "Will you please welcome Stone, Jeff, Mike, Band today?"
A magical night. A magical night. The live recording of Pearl Jam Live at Easy Street was released exclusively to indie retailers the following year. It has gone on to become our single best-selling release of all time. The following year, we helped create another coalition and eventually created what we now know as Record Store Day. Without that night and that release, I'm not sure us indie retailers ever get that far. Pearl Jam gave us the validation and the confidence that we will survive and we'll make the record business fun again.
Matt Vaughan, owner of these records, thank you.