What do you actually do with three hours on a Saturday afternoon in Fargo when the wind has made going outside feel like a bad idea? I used to not have a good answer for that. Then a friend pointed me toward Spud & Sons Records on Broadway, and I’ve been losing track of time there ever since.
The shop sits in the Broadway corridor, in one of those storefront spaces that still has the original pressed-tin ceiling and wooden floors that creak in a specific, satisfying way. Walking in, the first thing you notice is that it doesn’t smell like a chain store. It smells like cardboard sleeves and old paper and something vaguely like a library that also sells coffee. The second thing you notice is that nobody’s going to rush you.
Spud & Sons stocks a genuine mix: new releases alongside used bins that go deep into classic rock, country, jazz, soul, and some genres you’d have to ask about. The used section is where I spend most of my time. Prices on used LPs run roughly five to fifteen dollars depending on condition and rarity, and I’ve found things here I genuinely wasn’t expecting — a mint-condition copy of a mid-seventies Chet Atkins record that I carried home like it was made of glass, a compilation of Fargo-area bands from the early nineties that I didn’t even know existed until I pulled it out of a crate near the back wall.
The staff knows the inventory. Not in an intimidating, quiz-you way, but in the way that if you describe something vaguely — ‘I’m looking for something that sounds like late-period Townes Van Zandt but maybe a little more electric’ — they’ll actually think about it and walk you somewhere specific. That’s rarer than it should be.
On the Saturday I went most recently, I spent the first forty minutes in the jazz section, flipped through maybe sixty records, bought two. Then I got pulled into a conversation near the front counter about a Fargo musician who’d pressed a limited run of a hundred records that were sitting right there in a small display. I bought one of those too, mostly because the person explaining it was so genuinely enthusiastic that it felt rude not to.
They also carry used CDs if you’re still in that world, plus a small selection of music-related books, turntable accessories, and cleaning supplies. The new release wall near the door gets updated regularly. On Record Store Day — which Spud & Sons participates in — the line forms early and the energy is different from any other day of the year. Worth experiencing once, though I’d personally rather come on a quiet Tuesday when the crates are all mine.
Budget-wise, it’s easy to walk out having spent twenty dollars or having spent eighty. Depends entirely on how lucky you are in the bins and how much self-discipline you brought with you. I’ve never had the second kind.
If you care about music at all, or if you used to care about music and just need a reason to remember why, give yourself an afternoon here. Fargo doesn’t have unlimited options for this kind of browsing, which makes Spud & Sons feel like something worth protecting.
