Legendary record store site in Minneapolis will soon house a new shop for musicheads

Good news for Twin Cities music lovers ahead of Saturday's annual Record Store Day: The corner storefront that previously housed two of Minneapolis' best-loved record shops will soon be home to a new store for musicheads.

The former location of Oar Folkjokeopus and Treehouse Records, on the corner of Lyndale Avenue and 26th Street, will reopen as Lucky Cat Records this summer.

Former Treehouse owner Mark Trehus, who still owns the building, is leasing out the storefront to a local music fanatic who said she believes "the history of the space should live on."

"It was that location specifically that got me thinking about opening a record store," said Lucky Cat proprietor and first-time shop owner Michele Swanson. "It just seems like that's what should be there."

The site's history centers around the store commonly known as just "Oar Folk," where a scruffy young singer/songwriter named Paul Westerberg handed a demo tape to store clerk and future band manager Peter Jesperson in 1979 to jumpstart the Replacements.

Members of that band and many others regularly hung out there and at the kitty-corner dive bar CC Club in the late 1970s and '80s, also including Hüsker Dü, the Suburbs and Suicide Commandos.

Oar Folk staffer Trehus took over the site and renamed it Treehouse in 2001, and for nearly two decades the site remained a hub for Twin Cities collectors and musicians. In 2017, however, Trehus decided to close his record shop and lease the space out to a more lucrative business.

"My initial thought was that the neighborhood had become so gentrified that a record store would not be able to justify the rent I was going to need to semi-retire on," he said. "Michele was very persistent in insisting that she wanted the spot, and we worked something out."

The storefront has rather infamously sat empty for five years with a giant, old Paul Wellstone campaign poster board sitting in the window.

The big Wellstone sign is down — "It sat there so long, it was kind of crumbling," Swanson noted — and work began this past week on redesigning the sign above the doorway. Rebuild construction is also now being done inside to tidy the space up in time for a grand opening celebration in early July.

In the end, Trehus said, "I am thrilled that someone wants to keep a record store in that spot."

Aside from a stint working for Musicland in her teens — and being an avid music collector and concertgoer — Swanson has no experience running a record store. She worked in management for Delta Air Lines for many years; her love of traveling to Japan turned her onto the storefront "lucky cat" statues that inspired her store name.

Swanson said she has been planning for the store for several years now and building up inventory and a game plan. One of her chief goals for the store is to be more inclusive to women and genderfluid music lovers "because so many times you go into a record store, and it's all men in there," she said.

Noting the many new condo and apartment buildings that now dot Lyndale Avenue near the store, Swanson said: "There are a lot of new folks living in the neighborhood who don't even know about the history here. So we'll try to educate them on it and preserve that history."