Mystic Disc Is More Than Worth the Trip
- Jill Stoodley
- Apr 11
- 5 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
I visited Dan Curland’s record store in Mystic, Connecticut every year for more than a decade but had absolutely no idea just how cool he was.
Don’t get me wrong. Dan has always been the coolest — an infectiously enthusiastic music aficionado whose joy is 100% his customers. Name any artist, any music genre, he has a favorite album to recommend and a story to go with it.
Rumor has it, his entire inventory, thousands of records and their locations on the shelves, are all in his head. Every inch of the tiny store is filled to the brim (and often overflowing to the street) — an eclectic mix of decades of timeless artists, classic rock, jazz, blues, soul, R&B, interspersed with the best of punk, hardcore, indie, goth, new wave, and the latest music to hit the charts. The entire store is an experience — covered from the rafters to the floor in vintage concert posters and T-shirts, rare Beatles paraphernalia, his beloved Hendrix autograph. No one leaves the store without a smile or a friendly word from Dan and his staff.
The last time my family and I were in Mystic about a year ago, he chatted with us crouched on the floor leaning against the record bins as he cleaned vinyl for a customer. He had just seen Bruno Mars in concert and was reveling in the sounds of Leave the Door Open as he cleaned. Obsessed with Mars’ amazing falsetto range, he held out his hand, silencing the room as the music crescendo and Mars’ falsetto took the spotlight.
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Mystic Disc has never been just a store...
It’s always been an immersion into a different world, an escape, a little semi-annual vacation for the three of us. My husband and daughter are the music buffs, and I just go along for the ride … and their fantastic playlists.
But I only learned the history of the store in recent years.
Until then, I just thought Dan was a super cool guy from a super cool record store my husband found nearly 20 years ago. Over the past few years, Dan has told us about the store’s 40th anniversary party in 2023 (a massive celebration we can’t believe we missed), his career as a bassist, his appearance in a Woodstock documentary, and his unthinkable friendship with Graham Nash (of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young). "Being a huge CSNY fan since Woodstock (and even before), meeting him and creating a friendship has been incredible, like a dream," he says.
Well-known in the small Mystic community, Dan often uses the local movie theater to show music documentaries for free to the public. My daughter and I were thrilled to hear Depeche Mode made the list of future films. She and I have frequently chatted with Dan about our obsession for the band. (The three of us saw their New York and Boston shows last year, two in a six-month period — pure bucket list material for this life-long fan.)
It was the store's 40th anniversary YouTube videos that sent me googling, where I discovered a trove of articles and features that gave much more detail about his playing with the likes of Dan Fogelberg and Michael Clarke of the Byrds in the 60s (Curland was in the “cool” local Boulder Canyon bar band that Fogelberg and Clarke loved to "casually" come play with), earning 2019's Vinyl Me, Please (VMP) best record store in Connecticut, sealing its place as one of the top 50 stores in the U.S. I learned how he kept the store afloat since its opening in 1983 — staying vigilant in his faith that vinyl would last through the age of CDs and Napster, making it to the vinyl resurgence of recent years, and even thriving during the pandemic. Dan insists he’ll never retire — claiming to VMP that in his final days, “they’ll find me dead on the floor of my store when I go.” He’d much prefer talking with the local kids about music than any retirement dreams.
Despite years of visits, I hadn’t known how influential, how much of an institution he’d been throughout the past 40 years — because there is no sign of pretension, privilege, arrogance whatsoever. He’s so refreshingly unaffected and truly thankful to be surrounded every day by music and the people who love it as much as he does. Dan has no need to go the extra mile but always does. For many years he’s been a life saver to me, taking my requests by phone from Massachusetts, locating and shipping records from my husband’s wish list in time for the holidays, even texting and calling to make sure they arrived safely.
When our daughter, Allie, first started coming into the store at age 9, Dan was equally conversant with her then as he is now that she’s 17 and a musician herself. Each visit, he’s talked with her about the music she loves. He’s never talked down to her. And he’s always commented on how much he loved that she came into the store with her dad.
Dan takes very little credit for the store's success, insisting it's the customers that have kept him going through the years, whether they came in yesterday or 10 years ago to buy a $2 record. "You have a garden, and you plant a seed — and you nurture it, and you love it, and you water it, and you hope something grows from it," he told his friends, customers, and loved ones at the store's 40th anniversary bash. "Well, I might have planted it, but you are the ones who loved it, and watered it, and nurtured it, so that I am here for 40 years... I am living the dream because of you."
See For Yourself!
If you’re a music lover, vinyl collector, or just in need of an East Coast adventure, do yourself a favor and give Dan Curland a visit (be sure to tell him I sent you!). The store is small and a bit hidden down a little Mystic side street. But it’ll 100% be worth the trip.
Mystic Disc
10 Steamboat Wharf
Mystic, CT 06355
(860) 536-1312
We're Not the Only Ones Who Love Mystic Disc!
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