Pembroke City Limits Records and Books brings a vinyl revival to Suncook Village

Suncook Village has been getting louder lately — first with strumming guitars and crooning voices at Pembroke City Limits, and now with the crackle of needle-on-vinyl next door.

What began as a forgotten floor-to-ceiling maze of old records transformed into a shop determined to give the village its long-missing soundtrack.

Two summers ago when Rob Azevedo and Eric Klesper opened the live music bar Pembroke City Limits in a former furniture store in downtown Suncook, they hoped their new spot would be met with excitement.

As the bar took off, with different local acts taking the stage on a regular basis, the co-owners began brainstorming how they could continue to grow the sense of community and love of music fostered within their walls.

Their answer? Pembroke City Limits Records and Books.

The storefront holds a lot of history. Neighboring the bar, the space had once been a pizza shop before transitioning to Bobby Dee’s Record and Audio Repair. It remained Bobby Dee’s for nearly two decades until it became Village Music, which lasted through the pandemic.

Village Music, filled to the brim with tens of thousands of records, CDs, DVDs, cassettes and books, was rarely open, Azevedo said. He and Klesper knew the owner was struggling to keep up with the business. The Pembroke City Limits owners saw potential. They connected with the owner and began planting the seeds of their idea.

When the pair bought the space in July of this year, the insides were so stuffed with music-related items that they didn’t know there was a basement because the door was blocked. They couldn’t even see the thermostat.

“Everything was to the ceiling,” Azevedo said.

What the pair inherited when they bought Village Records wasn’t exactly a record shop. It was more like a storage unit with a sign. But they believed they could turn it into the perfect downtown addition, one that would serve as a great complement to their bar.

An homage to the store’s history, an old “Pizza: Free Delivery” sign still hangs in the back, although Klesper and Azevedo still haven’t agreed on whether to keep it up or not.

“Eventually, he told us he was ready to go,” Azevedo said of the Village Music owner. “He wasn’t going to leave with the inventory. There was no place for him to go. So we just bought it all.”

That inventory turned out to mean around 40,000 albums, thousands of DVDs and a deep archive of books. Over the past few months, the two have hauled thousands of items to the basement, sorted through decades of music, repainted walls and started shaping the store into a cozy, browsable space where customers don’t pop in for five minutes — they stay.

The partners have poured thought into every decision they’ve made in the new store, from dollar bins, $5 bins and curated selections of new arrivals to copies of new releases from local musicians. A jazz corner. Rock and soul on the front wall. Punk, new wave, hip-hop, metal, and modern country coming soon. Books of all kinds in the back.

When they opened the bar, the focus was on the music. Azevedo had hosted a radio show on WKXL, “Granite State of Mind,” for over a decade; after moving to Pembroke, he wanted to tap into the live music scene.

Azevedo began by hosting local musicians in his barn. The crowds at these casual concerts slowly grew in number, indicating a desire for more. As his friend, Klesper witnessed the success. Together, they came up with the idea of making live, local music the focal point of a new bar in town.

Expanding the business a year later made sense. It was a no-brainer to buy the record store next door and make it their own. What better than something that can feature music in a different way, with the same spirit and vibe? Vinyl plays a huge role in that.

“It never really truly went away, like people that collected and have a home stereo with turntable,” Klesper said. “As every other medium started to kind of peter out, vinyl started increasing in sales, and it’s really not that recent of a thing.”

When it comes to music taste, Azevedo leans Americana, whereas Klesper leans punk and new wave. The overlap works.

When they opened Pembroke City Limits, Klesper joined as a business partner because of his restaurant experience, but Azevedo made the place his own. Now, in a way, they’re swapping. Klesper will bring his own vision to the record store and curate the decor and the shelves.

“We’re a dream team,” Azevedo said. “He lets me run the bar. I let him run this. We support each other’s vision.”

They want the walls covered with curated art — concert posters, local show flyers, classic album art — but not just as filler.

“We want it to reflect the store’s personality, our personalities and the personality of the village,” Azevedo said.

And they want music playing continuously — from the stacks, not Spotify. Klesper has a small boombox he’s been using exactly for this purpose.

“Not streaming. We’re not going to be streaming any music,” he said.

He had a point. Why stream when there are hundreds of thousands of songs on the shelves?

Beyond the LPs, the store holds a surprisingly rich cache of items: classic literature, jazz biographies, New Journalism, gonzo writers, rock history and more.

The vinyl and physical media revival is real. In record stores across the country, Gen Z and millennials browse the racks as eagerly as Gen X collectors. Klesper sees this play out with his son, despite them sharing a Spotify family plan.

“He’ll get CDs, or go through my CDs, and he bought an old MP3 player, and he’ll rip them to the MP3 player,” Klesper said.

Pembroke City Limits Records and Books opened in a soft-launch phase in November, with a full opening anticipated by the end of the year, if all goes according to plan. The owners look forward to hosting events, such as local musicians doing record and book signings.

Their endeavor fits into a bigger vision of a revitalized Suncook Village, which is in the process of becoming its own thriving downtown in the greater Concord area.

“We signed a long-term contract,” Azevedo said. “We’re here not only for the growth of the record store and our own bar, but also for the whole village.”

Soon, customers will be able to walk in, flip through stacks that smell like the 1970s, hear a record spinning on the player behind the counter and feel the revival taking shape.