County Sales, the Floyd-based record store that specializes in bluegrass and old-time vinyl albums and CDs, is closing after almost 60 years.
The store and mail-order business, which moved to Floyd in 1973, had in recent years been under a nonprofit umbrella. It will close after April 30, according to a news release.
The board of directors at Handmade Music School, which has been operating the business since 2021, voted to focus resources on its core mission — teaching old-time, bluegrass, and other traditional music and dance, said Dylan Locke, the school’s executive director.
Locke, who with his partner, Heather Krantz, owns the Floyd Country Store, bought County Sales in 2018 from Dave Freeman, who had closed it shortly before. Freeman, who brought the business to Floyd from New York, was elderly and could no longer manage it. Locke bought the stock and closed the lease on the store and warehouse’s longtime address, on Talley’s Alley. He moved the business, which had focused primarily on mail-order sales, across from the country store, on South Locust Street.
“And I was optimistic about … moving it a little bit more into the future and kind of modernizing the website and moving it out of the warehouse, the alley there, even though that was a historic venue,” he said. “I wanted to get it up onto the street and [make it] more visible and get a little more foot traffic in there.”
Yet the realities of digital-driven modern music consumption, the rise of Amazon.com and the COVID-19 pandemic conspired against the store’s success. Handmade Music School, where Locke is executive director, took on the store in 2021, but the nonprofit couldn’t save it. County Sales employs one full-timer and three part-timers in its leased space, Locke said.
“Financially, it was not holding its own,” he said.
Locke added: “Let’s face it, we live in a world where people don’t buy music as much. That’s an understatement, and we also just went through COVID, which was not the best time for small businesses in this country. So there was just enough things stacked against the ability to sort of sustain the project.”
The nonprofit’s board of directors decided that County Sales could potentially be a drag on the rest of Handmade Music School’s mission, he said. None of that discounts the business’s legacy or Freeman’s contributions to the bluegrass and old-time music worlds, Locke said. At one time, County Sales was the go-to for new releases, and it shipped products internationally.
Much of its buzz centered on Freeman’s biweekly newsletter, which included sometimes hilariously scathing record reviews that customers found credible. Freeman, who in recent years had lived in Chapel Hill, N.C., died in late 2023. He also owned the bluegrass-centric Rebel Records label, and he founded old-time label County Records. Freeman is in the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame.
His son, Mark Freeman, still runs both record labels from Charlottesville. He said he applauded the work that Locke did with the store, but a niche audience had responded strongly to his father’s newsletter with phone calls instead of website hits. Modernity caught up with the business.
“It was hard to duplicate what my dad had done with the newsletter,” Mark Freeman said.
County Sales, founded in 1965, was a pipeline before the digital age, especially because fans couldn’t find their favorite releases in most major record stores or department stores, he said.
“County Sales was your place to go,” he said. “So it’s sad. It’s just, I guess, the official nail in the coffin. … I’d love to see other stores or someone else try to replicate what County Sales did. But I personally don’t think it’ll ever be replicated. You either buy bluegrass on Amazon or you buy it digitally. That’s how it is now. … But it was a great operation, and it was run by great people.”
The music, however, is thriving, said Locke, who sees evidence almost daily at Handmade Music School, which hosts private lessons, workshops and camps, among other events.
“Our dream was to connect students of all ages to the recorded music,” Locke said. “You know, we thought the adoption of County Sales under Handmade Music School would be a beautiful marriage of people wanting to learn the music and the best resource in the world.
“The truth is they can find that resource in plentiful little pockets all over the internet, and in a lot of ways that’s a wonderful thing. My hope is that [the school] supports musicians in a way that’s more healthy in the future.”
He said the country store will celebrate County Sales’ legacy during events marking 40 years of the store’s iconic Friday Night Jamboree. 
