Our Story

The Bayou Records journey began in 2015. Having lived a life up until that point that was fully immersed in music, our founder bought a second hand turntable and re-entered the world of vinyl collection.

Soon enough, the hobby turned into a small side business. His practice back then was to source bulk lots of second hand vinyl from auctions, keep the titles he liked and list the leftovers on Discogs. 

Not long thereafter, having noticed a lack of nuance in the way the major retailers sold vinyl online, and a lack of online presence for independent record stores, he investigated the notion of an online independent record store. However, he lacked the capital necessary to really match it with the major stores and so for a time, put the online store aside and simply continued to enjoy his own collection. 

Eventually, through attempting to fill out his own collection, he realised that a lot of the things he was looking for were not available through the larger retailers. And he also often learnt about special releases that weren't even listed on other sites or available in stores.

So, he re-launched Bayou Records Australia, as an alternative to the larger retailers. He envisaged a curated collection of things you couldn't elsewhere, as well as limited editions of the things you could.

THE NAME

Arguably, all popular music is derived from two distinct styles - Jazz and Blues; Jazz being a direct descendent of Classical Music and Blues being born of Negro Spirituals and Gospel. From these broad categories, all other genres were born - and the Bayou had a huge part to play in their development. Both styles grew up along the Mississippi river from Memphis to New Orleans. 

From those catalytic roots came genres like Delta Blues, Western Swing, Country and even Rock n Roll. The popular music explosion of the 60s, featuring such heavyweights as The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones is a direct result of the collision between ever expanding sounds derived from Blues and Jazz. 

So the Bayou was where it all started; and in our humble opinion, it's the heartbeat of the best music on the planet. From Blues Rock to Soul to Americana, at this store we celebrate anything that has a direct lineage back to Blues and Jazz.