Ear-X-Tacy
If you lived in Louisville in the late 1980s and 1990s — and especially if you were a teenager or young adult heavily into punk, grunge or college alternative radio — you were likely spending an inordinate amount of time in the Highlands. You may have grabbed a bite to eat at Twice Told Coffeehouse or Another Place Sandwich Shop. Dessert was probably at White Mountain Creamery.
Depending on where you began your journey along Bardstown Road and how far you went, you almost certainly followed a path of shops that included The Great Escape and Electric Ladyland. But a trek wasn’t complete without perusing the latest albums and CDs at ear-X-tacy.
John Timmons, who founded the store, didn’t intend to create an iconic place that anchors thousands of people’s good memories. He would probably be the first to tell you he didn’t have a plan at all.
Although he was born in Evansville, Indiana, his family moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, where John spent much of his childhood. During those years, he listened to a lot of music — either 45 rpm records or a transistor radio that was in his hands wherever he went.
“I was burning out those nine-volt batteries like crazy,” he says.
When he wasn’t listening to music, he was playing baseball. In 1955, his parents purchased a Motorola console stereo, and he remembers spending hours lying on the floor with his head between the speakers, immersing his brain in sound.
His brother Mark, four years older than John, exposed him to a lot of new music. While John’s first purchase was a Monkees record, his brother introduced him to bands of the British Invasion, including The Kinks and The Rolling Stones. One of John’s clearest memories is of The Beatles performing on television in 1964, a moment when he fully understood the power of music by seeing fans’ reactions. Another turning point came when he and a group of grade school friends went to see The Beatles movie “Help!” at the theater.
“It was at that point I decided I wanted to be in a band,” he says. “I was probably in sixth grade. Somehow I convinced my mom to buy me a $50 set of drums at Woolco.”
He continued to play drums through high school and into college, eventually also learning to play guitar. His family returned to Evansville around 1969, and John headed to college, where he says he “minored in everything and majored in nothing.” He didn’t land on anything that thrilled him, so he decided to sit out a year.
He had been working at a local record store called Karma, where his depth of knowledge and interest in music soon earned him the job of buyer. Still, with three years of college under his belt, when he developed an interest in photography, he returned to Arizona to major in it and finish his degree.
After several months, it became clear to John that he didn’t like the program at Arizona State University, but he had stayed in contact with management at Karma. When they offered him a job at a Karma store in Louisville, he packed up his belongings and drove across the country. In 1976, with his first apartment on Cherokee Road, Louisville “felt like home from day one,” he says. “I landed in the right place at the right time.”
After several years at Karma, he moved to Vine Records and then Phoenix Records until it went out of business. He began selling music out of his apartment and created a mail-order catalog. On weekends, he traveled regionally to record collector shows in Columbus, Cleveland, Nashville, Chicago and St. Louis. He made the rounds, but it got old quickly, so in 1985, he says, “I took my record collection and a cash advance on my Master Charge” and opened his first store on Poplar Level Road.
After six months, when space on Bardstown Road next to The Great Escape became available, John moved there. He named the store ear-X-tacy in homage to one of his favorite bands, XTC, though one can’t help but think he was also inspired by the ecstasy his young ears experienced sandwiched between thumping bass notes, crisp hi-hats and wailing guitar riffs on the Motorola stereo. Drawing from his experience in record stores, he took the best of what he had seen others do and applied it to his shop. Still, he had never taken a business class, so his expertise was limited at first.
“My business plan was to stay in business one more day,” he says.
For many years, ear-X-tacy was the place to find alternative music in Louisville.
“We were carrying a lot of music that people wanted but other stores weren’t carrying, like imported records from Europe and Japan,” he says.
Over time, the store expanded beyond the niche of punk and alternative music. But it wasn’t just the music that made ear-X-tacy special. The shop had an aura of coolness, even for people who felt like misfits. For many young people, it was a store of possibility.
As the owner, John admits he saw ear-X-tacy differently than anyone else, particularly the stresses and negatives of entrepreneurship, which worsened with the rise of Amazon and Apple Music. When the store closed in 2011, John took it hard.
“There were numerous reasons why it had to close, but I feel better about it now because it hasn’t died,” he says. “People still talk about it.”
He even brought back ear-X-tacy bumper stickers and shirts due to demand. “It still amazes me that there’s this much talk about the store,” he says.
What do people say about ear-X-tacy? They might recall the time the Foo Fighters played at the store.
“They were early in their career and in town for the Fourth of July,” he says. “Dave Grohl had shopped the store when he was with Nirvana. It was an all-acoustic show, and the store was packed. The fire marshal was not happy.”
Others may remember when My Morning Jacket held an album release show there, or when John Mayer or Tenacious D met fans at the store.
Or their memories may have nothing to do with famous musicians, but with the bands that formed within the walls of ear-X-tacy. It was a place for musically minded people to hang out, explore new sounds and feel connected to something bigger than themselves.
While we can’t go back in time — and John wouldn’t want to recreate the store — he does give listeners a taste of ear-X-tacy through his radio show on 91.9 WFPK called, what else, “ear-X-tacy.” For 12 years after the store closed, John worked at the station doing a daily show, but he recently switched to a three-hour slot on Saturday nights in an effort to slow down after turning 70.
“It’s music from the 1980s and ’90s, alternative and college rock. I have free reign to play whatever I want to play,” he says.
It isn’t a stretch to say John Timmons created a legacy with ear-X-tacy, even if he would rather focus on the fact that he never decided what he was going to do with his life. But to the people who worked for him, the customers who browsed the bins and the listeners who tune in each week, what he began in 1985 has only become a more beloved Louisville institution.
