John Vanderslice

After eight years, Beulah called it quits. In support of YOKO, their fourth and final album, the band embarked upon a twenty-three city tour in the fall of 2003. They journeyed eight thousand miles throughout the US and Canada, kicking off what would prove to be the last days of "the best band you never heard."

The vinyl record renaissance over the past decade has brought new fans to a classic format and transformed our idea of a record collector: younger, both male and female, multicultural. This same revival has made buying music more expensive, benefited established bands over independent artists and muddled the question of whether vinyl actually sounds better than other formats. Vinyl Nation digs into the crates of the record resurgence in search of truths set in deep wax: Has the return of vinyl made music fandom more inclusive or divided? What does vinyl say about our past here in the present? How has the second life of vinyl changed how we hear music and how we listen to each other?

Pat Spurgeon is a professional musician whose dreams of being in a successful rock 'n' roll band have come true. But just as his band, Rogue Wave, starts to take off, his kidney starts to fail. "D tour" chronicles the life of a musician with "no back-up plan" as he's faced with daily dialysis, a grueling tour, and a search for a new kidney.