Record store gives back with community music fund

March 21, 2025 ~ Heather Watson

“With music, your curiosity is never over because there’s always something else to check out. So it’s a way of traveling the world in a way, through different cultures, through their music,” said Kip Luce.

Kip and Karen, spouses and co-owners of Bop City Records Bop City Records in Courtenay, are launching a brand new community music fund to support the local music scene.

Bop City Records sells new and used CDs, records and cassettes, and sometimes when patrons bring in collections to sell, they opt not to take the cash or store credit offered in exchange. Co-owner Kip Luce explained how as a for-profit business, it felt important to find a way to give that back to the community.

“I always feel a bit weird about taking tips or freebies and I explain, ‘well, we’re a business so we want to pay you out.’ And then we realized, well, maybe we can just turn that money that people don’t want into something good,” he said. “And we wanted to do something charitable, but also something music related and something community-based. And so basically the idea of the fund was born, that we can try to support one or two projects a year. And it could be anything.”

Luce said the fund is open-ended, and Bop City’s co-owners will consider applications for anything to do with local music.

“So it could be for education, it could be for recordings, it could be for anything related to releasing physical media, it could be for live events. So anything music related. I mean, I’ve met people that have taken instrument building classes. Well, if you want to take an instrument building class and it’s out of your budget, that could be something that we could help with,” he enthused.

Luce anticipates that with the current scale of the fund, they will be able to support one or two projects, once or twice a year. He says that they have already received a few “really good” applications since announcing the fund.

“There’s been all kinds of really cool ideas out there. There’s gonna be a lot more great ideas than there are dollars to support it, which is a nice problem to have,” he joked.

Luce said the motivation for this community music fund comes from a desire to support local, rather than donate to a music charity somewhere else in the world. He credits local musicians and music fans for the support that has kept Bop City Records open for 31 years. 

“There’s lots of ups and downs. You know, the world’s been a topsy-turvy place with COVID and now with the Orange One,” he said. “And so it’s been a trying time, for various reasons, to be a small business person. But we just keep trucking along and we learn as we go and we make it up as we go along and we’re just having a great time.”

Luce said one of his favourite things is watching customers who come in, and guessing what they will buy.

“And I love it when I’m totally wrong. Or if they’ve got some Hawaiian guitar music, they’ve got some metal, and they’ve got some bluegrass. I just love the diversity of people’s tastes and I love trying to figure out what they want, but I also love surprising them with new sounds too,” he said. “Often somebody walks in and they kind of have this stunned look on their face, and they’re looking at my speakers and they’re standing there and they say, ‘what is this? I need it.’ And so that’s part of the fun too, is just introducing people to new stuff.”

Luce said that since buying the business eight years ago, he and his co-owner have noticed a real shift in the diversity of patrons, and their tastes in music.

“I think that partly is [because] the valley is diversifying. People are coming from other cities and other countries and other provinces, and the next generation, the younger kids are getting into physical media as well. And so we’ve really found our customer base has diversified. So we’re happy about that,” he said.

When asked about the importance of community, Luce said “everyone wants to be a member– feel like they’re a member of a community. And the more you have that the richer your society is, and so that was one of the important things that we wanted this fund to sort of be about, is being able to say, ‘hey, okay, we value whatever you’re doing, give it a shot. It’s worth trying. Somebody’s gonna love it, you’re gonna make yourself and other people happy.’ And if we could throw a little bit of money at that, um, that’s great.”

Those interested in applying for the Bop City Community Music Fund have until Monday, March 31st to submit. Applications are available to pick up at Bop City Records, or can be requested by email at bopcityrecords@gmail.com.

“Music is just sound that hits your brain,” Luce said, “but it’s also some magical thing that transforms your body and your mind, and it conveys a message sometimes. But it also, I don’t know, it’s some kind of little bit of magic in life that I can’t really put my finger on, but I can’t get enough of, I can’t live without. I mean, I suppose if I went deaf I would learn. But it’s just inexplicable really.”

The music playing in the background during this interview is a local trio Air Above Mountains, who perform improvised music.

“If you see them live, it’s a bit of a feast for the eyes because they play about 18,000 different instruments and the guitarist sort of puts his guitar on his lap and beats it with mallets and does all kinds of fun things with pedals and effects and you’re not too sure what you’re hearing and it’s just a trip,” Luce described. “They’ve got a number of albums out on CD and vinyl, and it’s kind of one of the valley’s best kept secrets actually.” 

Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada. Reporting done in the Comox Valley is done in partnership with CVOX.