OUR STORY
Citizen Vinyl opened in October 2020 with just one record press and the mission to provide high quality vinyl albums for record labels and independent artists. To be at the heart of community is not only in our mission, it’s in our name: Citizen means much more to us than our namesake building. It’s an expression of commitment to the city we love and call home, and the musicians and labels whose projects that we are entrusted to both record and press to vinyl.
Today, Citizen Vinyl is home to three record press machines: the semi-automatic LiteTone, the customized SMT Model 1500, and a 2022 computerized, fully-automatic press custom-built for Citizen Vinyl by Record Pressing Machines, LLC.
A PIECE OF ASHEVILLE'S HISTORY
The Citizen Times building in downtown Asheville, North Carolina has been a long standing monument to both the communication and archiving of our region's events. Through the highs and lows of the years, it has always stood strong as an icon of quality and honest story-telling.
Built in 15 months in 1938-1939, The Asheville Citizen Times Building was designed by architect Anthony Lord as the grand center for the city’s two newspapers and radio station WWNC. Located at 14 O. Henry Avenue, the massive three-story building of reinforced concrete, black granite, and limestone is considered Asheville’s finest example of Art Moderne design. With soaring twenty-two foot ceilings, mezzanines with curved railings, and 20,000 glass blocks providing natural light and insulation, there is no other space like it in Asheville.
In 2019, Citizen Vinyl claimed the dramatic first floor and its decorative mezzanines as the future home of a vinyl record pressing plant, as well as the third floor’s historic WWNC radio station studio, restored into Citizen Studios — a beautiful, modern analog recording studio and media lab.
FROM PRINT TO VINYL MANUFACTURING
Both The Asheville Citizen (the morning paper) and The Asheville Times (afternoon) were born in the late 19th century but did not find common ownership until 1930, under Charles Webb. He had previously bought the WWNC radio station and in April of that year, he moved his two newspapers and radio station into the newly built Asheville Citizen Times building. The two papers were printed in the basement of the building from 1939 until 1986, when the printing was moved to a new facility in nearby Enka, NC. The papers finally merged into a single edition, The Asheville Citizen Times, in 1991.
And while the printing presses are long gone, Citizen Vinyl is proud to be reviving production in downtown Asheville by replacing the print manufacturing tradition with a new one—the pressing of vinyl records.
AND FROM RADIO TO RECORDING & VINYL MASTERING
On February 21, 1927, WWNC radio (‘Wonderful Western North Carolina’) first broadcast from the nearby Flat Iron building in downtown Asheville. Its two large transmission towers on the Flat Iron’s roof earned WWNC the title of “the highest broadcasting station east of the Mississippi.” The station’s 1,000 watt signal reached across the South and East, promoting the region’s natural beauty and Asheville’s bountiful culture of arts, crafts and commerce.
From the start, the station (at 570 AM) featured live musical performances, stretching from orchestras and choirs to banjo pickers and fiddlers. In early 1939, a new group called Bill Monroe & the Bluegrass Boys played daily, launching a new style of American music. That same year, WWNC found a new home on the third floor of the Asheville Citizen Times Building, where a state-of-the art radio studio complex was created, drawing on the most sophisticated acoustic and sound technologies of the day.
