A few weeks back, our own Marc Brubaker detailed ten of the best record stores in the Houston area. This past weekend I finally visited another one to add to your list of must-visit shops in Houston, and it is worthy of the drive if you live inside the Inner Loop.
Sweet Spot Audio and Records is located in Webster, at the corner of Highway 3 and Bay Area Boulevard, and is run by a husband-and-wife team from the area who retired and jumped into the record store business.
Rewind:
Houston's Top 10 Record Stores
Nigel Harrison first opened up Sweet Spot in League City two years ago, intending to make his store a sort of "Hallmark for men," but he soon shifted gears into audio components (turntables, speakers, receivers) and new and used vinyl. He still carries band shirts and other trinkets alongside the vinyl.
Sweet Spot is now the only true record store in the Webster/Clear Lake area, and Harrison has customers aged 14 to 75 he says, some who come from as far as Beaumont to visit.
"I dropped 4,000 albums from my own collection into the store. I just thought it would be fun to give people a chance to listen to music the way it was intended," Harrison says. He was a successful banker for 36 years, and his wife Cathy was a school librarian.
Their son Brian covers shifts on the weekends for his folks when they leave town. Brian used to be in the late, great Balaclavas, a Houston band that I spilled plenty of digital ink over. He's now a promising lawyer here in town.
Harrison says that when his son was growing up, he complained about his father listening to music too loud in the house. The day I visited Sweet Spot, Harrison was happily blaring Jack White's latest album in the audio room at a rich, deafening level.
