Terrapin Station has been an essential resource for music collectors in Murray and surrounding areas since its humble beginnings in a home located on Olive Street in 1985. Valerie Hancock, co-founder of the store with Bobby Copeland, fulfilled a role she thought was missing in Murray. 

“I lived in Lexington and California and there were always places that you could go and buy music,” Hancock said. “I came back here because my family’s from here and there wasn’t anywhere to buy music, so I thought I better change that.”

Hancock and Copeland’s daughter, Cassidy Copeland, took over operation of the store in 2020. 

The store has been a part of Copeland’s life for as long as she can remember. 

“I officially started taking shifts when I was 16 to 18, learning how to make orders, look for products and help customers,” Copeland said. “Then I moved away and went to school. I spent four years in California and a year and a half in Honolulu studying linguistics. I moved back and started getting really involved in the process around 2015.”

Copeland said the key to Terrapin Station’s longevity has been adjusting its focus to the always evolving needs of the community.

“It started out as just a music store and it was mostly records and cassettes,” Copeland said. “Then the CD era came along and we got some of the first CDs. That worked great for a while but at some point it was time to diversify.”

As many music stores across the country closed, Terrapin expanded its inventory with jewelry, clothing, posters, books and smoking accessories. In recent years, Copeland said trends have led back to the store’s original focus. Records are a major seller and even the cassette section is back in demand.

Copeland said artwork and extra features like booklets, as well as a tactile connection to the albums has led people back to physical media.

“People also describe a sense of ownership, being able to have it in your hands,” Copeland said. “On a streaming service it feels very ephemeral or incomplete somehow. It feels like it could disappear and it actually can from time to time.”

Like many record stores, another key element of Terrapin’s success has been its ability to build community. Copeland said the store relies heavily on returning customers, some of which have been shopping at the store for decades.

The community has really grown organically,” Copeland said. “It feels like people who come here get something special out of it and it becomes part of their life too. It’s not just a store where they go pick up some merchandise.”

Part of that community building is the various events Terrapin organizes. The store has been hosting live music since the early nineties, ranging from local artists to acts from other countries. Terrapin has also participated in Record Store Day for almost a decade. 

Copeland said the event has felt like a rare case of the record industry supporting independent record stores and has provided customers with an outlet to get excited about physical album releases again in the streaming era.

Hancock and Copeland named Terrapin Station after the Grateful Dead song of the same name. Hancock said the song’s message of trying to reach a place that’s very hard to get to always appealed to her. Considering the effort it’s taken not only to start a small town music store, but keep it running despite the erratic shifts in music listening habits, it’s easy to see why.

While Terrapin has long been an oasis in a record store desert, the vinyl resurgence has allowed room for new stores to serve the community’s music needs. 

Kent Henry opened Benton Vinyl in Benton, Kentucky in November of 2023 after a physical issue made it impossible to continue working his previous job. He had a record booth at the nearby antique store Antiques Et Cetera for over a decade, but this is his first experience as an entrepreneur.

“I’ve never owned any kind of retail store, anything like that,” Henry said. “I’ve always had a traditional job. It’s exciting, very exciting.”

Henry said some of the stores that have inspired how he runs Benton Vinyl are Grimey’s and The Great Escape in Nashville and, of course, Terrapin Station, which he shopped at in its original location as a Murray State student.

In addition to new and used records, Benton Vinyl offers turntables, guitar effects pedals, posters and CDs of Paducah band The Wheelhouse Rousters. 

Henry said as he meets new customers he learns how to better serve the needs of local music fans, especially in terms of genre.

“They like classic rock,” Henry said. “They like new country, and when I say that, I don’t mean what’s coming out of Nashville. They like Sturgill Simpson, Tyler Childers and Jason Isbell. Beyond that John Prine and the new Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys and on and on.”

Henry said one of the most surprising aspects of running the store so far has been the amount of young people who visit. He offers a 10 percent discount to customers under 21 (as well as active and retired military) to encourage this.

“Now when anything new comes out it’s always going to be on vinyl,” Henry said. “There’s been this nice effect where kids figure out their favorite bands are on vinyl. Then there’s the packaging which is really state of the art. Some of the colored vinyl is attractive to kids, even to me. And you just pay more attention when you put on a record.”

Henry said he plans on participating in Record Store Day and has begun hosting vinyl listening parties at Dam Brewhaus on Wednesday nights. Local collectors can bring their favorite records to listen to together. 

Though Benton Vinyl hasn’t been open long, Henry said he has already seen the sense of community record stores build in action.

“When people come in here, they’re just really excited because they like music and they’re always looking for a record they’ve never heard before,” Henry said. “Hopefully I can offer them something affordable that they can be happy with. I have a lot of musician friends who come here and say ‘If I had this collection I’d be happy’ and that always makes me feel good.”