From the Vault 

• Courtesy Photo

It's not as if Salt Lake City is without compact, tightly-focused record shops, as anyone who's walked into peasantries + pleasantries or The Heavy Metal Shop would attest. But Adam Michael Terry and Justin Burch have created a space that's likely the smallest record shop around.

As in, possibly, the smallest record shop ... well, anywhere.

At 25-square-feet, the space that they're calling Elevator is a repurposed vault that resides inside of King's Peak Coffee Roasters (412 S 7th W Suite 140). It's a tiny location, for sure, but it's not as if the pair of curator/sellers are treating it as a lark. Instead, they're filling the space with anywhere between 500-1,000 vinyl albums, as well as other items. The spot's not 100 percent exclusively given over to jazz, but it's pretty safe to say that jazz is the absolute central genre stocked at this unique micro-store.

"We're going to have vintage Downbeat magazines from the '60s and '70s," Terry begins, running down a list of items. "I'm selling off my own collection of Wax Poetics magazines, just to give them a new life. We're going to have books, movies (potentially), CDs and tapes. And we'll have shirts. Right now, there's just a collection of used T's that we'll sell through, but the goal is to do customized t-shirts, our own little line. And the goal's also to do little, themed releases, for books that tie into records and records that tie into shirts. That's why we're calling it a gallery. We're using creative ways to roll out music and keep people interested."

When the store debuted in mid-March, the items weren't even for sale. Instead, Terry, clad in a bright bellhop's uniform, flitted throughout King's Peak, which was an immersive experience of Terry's interests. Having a pre-existing relationship with the neighboring Modern West Fine Art, Terry added to the affair, curating a musically-thematic art show inside the coffee shop while offering a sneak peek into Elevator. Nothing was for sale, but the space was a major teaser for some of Terry's friends, who happen to be major vinyl collectors themselves.

"We really wanted you to feel like you were stepping into an experiment, a concept, an art performance," he says. "I thought jazz worked well for such a small space, and that a focused music approach would lend itself a little bit better to the space. And jazz is my favorite genre of music, and probably the one that I most want to promote."

Having already done some pop-up record sales at Modern West, Terry saw something intriguing inside of that wee, wood-paneled King's Peak's vault. The idea for the shop was really born then, to complement the space and to extend the work that Terry had already been doing on this block in recent months.

For careful readers of this paper's music pages, the name of Adam Michael Terry might ring a bell. In fact, Erin Moore profiled Terry not long ago (November 2021), when he'd taken on a residency at Modern West. She wrote, "One of their current residents is Adam Michael Terry, known around town as a talented DJ, founder of the label FOUNTAINavm and music creator, curator and fan. But upstairs at Modern West, he's currently fleshing out multi-media fusions of film, collage, photography, field recordings and musical compositions he calls picture scores—a project 10 years in the making."

Needless to say, Terry's been on an incredible creative run, curating a variety of events around town.

On Thursday nights, he's been tending to FOUNTAINavm Night, a four-hour DJ set at the International Artist Lounge (342 S. State Street). He and friends play everything from punk to psychedelic rock to free jazz from 8 pm-midnight; his own band, Quiet Pillage, brings "live exotic country music" on about half of those evenings. On Sundays, meanwhile, he and some more friends assemble at T.F. Brewing (936 S. 300 West) where they bring "some of the deepest crates in town" to a weekly, Sunday afternoon record spin from 3-7 pm. The audience at both have been increasing in numbers and consistency over the past few months.

His record label and creative umbrella called FOUNTAINavm is active, too. Terry runs it with Alysha Kester-Terry and they've got several upcoming releases, including works from legendary Utah jazz educators, composers and recording artists Lloyd Miller and Jon Scoville.

And, obviously, Elevator's now going to take up a chunk of Terry's time, with the tiny shop mirroring the hours of the coffeeshop—Monday-Friday 7 a.m. - 2 p.m., and 9 a.m. - 2 p.m. on the weekends.

Elevator will provide a central anchor, a flagship to his efforts, and Terry is "super excited. It turned out cooler than I'd thought. I'm happy to have other people come in and be stoked about it, too."