On the record: John Dwyer of Bunker Vinyl
John Dwyer, a former social care worker, has created that rare thing: a shop with a soul in the heart of Cork city centre.
When John Dwyer moved back to Ireland after 20 years living in the UK he brought with him eight or nine thousand records, by his count, and a bag of clothes.
“And that was it. That’s all I had like, books, clothes and that was it, man.”
I laugh. He laughs. We laugh, and John says “Yeah, man.”
Some of those records subsequently found a home in Bunker Vinyl which John opened in the basement of Ozalid House on Camden Quay in 2017.
There’s a few things I should say about where Bunker Vinyl is before switching back to John.
First, Ozalid House, which sounds like it was plucked from a novel, dates back to the early part of the 19th century. It’s a small miracle that it and the other red brick houses on Camden Quay remain intact when you consider the urban murder that was committed just across the River Lee on Merchant’s Quay when the shopping centre was thrown up. Also, there are very few basement shops in Cork, and I’m willing to bet none like the community that John has built at Bunker Vinyl, Ozalid House, Camden Quay.
It started with a record. Or a pile of them.
If you frequent Bunker Vinyl you might know some of the John story, but for those who don’t, here’s the condensed version.
The day after his eighteenth birthday, the Dungarvan man took off to London and there he stayed for two decades. He couldn’t wait to get out the gap and leave, but his father made him stick around until he turned 18.
In London, he first studied nurse training at Brunel. He was living on a £200 bursary a month, so money was tight.
“I think the first three years in London, I didn't pay for a bus or a tube - it was jump where ever you can.”
From college he went on to work for Ealing Council in West London and for the next 15 years he stayed with the council working for people with profound learning disabilities.
John worked with adults and children and a lot of his work was spent in advocating for them, as well as looking after them. When the Conservatives were returned to power in 2010, they ushered in a decade of spending cuts and rolling back state services.
“Like they just sold everything off and got rid of what 750 staff,” John says of the Tories. Staff had the opportunity - to use the language of the market - to be rehired under the private sector “but for a third less of your wage than you were on and you’re still living in London.
“So it was like, ‘right, time to get out of that place, man’”.
A world away, breaking down cardboard boxes in a basement record store, John says he misses the work, the community and London. As he says, he grew up in London, and he did, spending most of his adult life there.
“I do still miss it like because it was a lovely job when you're doing it, but it's one of those jobs man that without the right money and stuff it was like, ’fuckit get out of there,’” he said of his decision to leave social services.
“I nearly dislocated my shoulder when they were saying voluntary redundancy,” he laughs.
So that is how John ended up back in Ireland.
The music part, well, that’s always been with him.
Well before he moved to London where he DJed (under the name Bipolarbeats) in clubs across the capital and the continent, he was making mixtapes that his father, a lorry driver, brought home by the box load from Esso petrol garages. (John’s father was a sax player in the showband era and he has pride of place in the shop; a framed black and white picture hangs over the counter).
John’s first business was making bootleg tapes at school, for which he said he made a fortune, or what was likely a fortune to an eight-year-old school kid.
“I was always wheeling and dealing with tapes and posters and anything music-related,” he says.
That’s essentially what he’s doing too with Bunker, wheeling and dealing, but just with vinyl. Lots of it.
His first business in Cork was a market stall at the Mother Jones Market, and then a few months in he found the space in the basement at Ozalid House.
His landlord, he tells me, had a bet on - not with John - that he wouldn’t last six months, but five years on he’s stuck it out and come through three lockdowns, which he says nearly pushed him to the brink.
“But, no my landlord is sound, hasn’t changed rent for five years and was like ‘tickety boo, just keep going as your going man.”
When the shop opened in 2017 he shared it with Aileen Wallace, a local musician who taught drums in the part where I am now standing talking with John. The pandemic restrictions put paid to the lessons and subsequently John expanded the footprint of the shop. It’s small, compact, low ceilings with stickers and posters on the walls and vinyl on the shelves and a small cubby hole to the back that acts as a listening post. It’s kind of like what you would expect an independent record shop to be like. As it is. As it should be.
John says he built the business up slowly; yes, he’s been helped by a resurgence in vinyl, he definitely noticed that people bought turn tables during the two-year long pandemic, but also he could give a flying fuck about whether vinyl is hot or not. Vinyl’s just good listening.
What it also is though is scarce, and Brexit threw a massive spanner in the works for his business as he had to find new dealers to source his records, most of which are second-hand. Before Brexit, everything came through England, but it’s just too costly now, and so Sweden is where he does most of his business.
He also avoids the big labels such as Universal, Sony et al in the same way you’d expect him to avoid a Tory, unless he wanted to have a shouting match with them. But John’s not really a shouty type of guy. At all.
So what does he stock: hip-hop, punk, indie, a lot of world music, jazz.
“I just try to get as much weird stuff as possible on a weekly basis. It seems to work,” he says with a laugh.
John’s philosophy on music and taste has to be one of the best I have ever heard and is likely why he runs a music store and the rest of us don’t.
“To me there's only two types of music: what you like and you don't like. I don’t give a shit what anybody buys.”
“My youngest customer, Ruby, is eight. My eldest is like 84, 85, yeah so it's a big old age range one. But like I sell Buddy Holly, Elvis to all the old lads, but then you have I don’t know Phoebe Bridges new one. So it's kind of keeping it a mixture of everything like, yeah.”
But everything does not include say Adele or Ed Sheeran. As John says, the market for them is well taken care of, and also stocking them would involve dealing with the majors.
On record shops, John thinks they should be more pub-like than like a university library in atmosphere (I’m paraphrasing here, but he wants people to feel at ease).
“I hated those shops that are so specific you feel nervous going into. I've been in shops in London where you ask for something they just start laughing at you and you think ‘fuck off’”
Of the stock of youngsters who frequent Bunker, John says their taste range is all over the place - “you just never know what they’re going to buy.”
But, as he says, they have the internet.
“Like the knowledge they have is phenomenal really. Yeah. Oh man, these kids come into me and they know every producer, who recorded it, who was in a session. You're like, fuck, but you know they’re just deeply into it.”
Of course there are times too when there are school kids who come in to Bunker to pass entire classes where they should be in school, but they’re busy on the mitch.
John laughs.
Which brings me to a school story and why you shouldn’t underestimate or judge John. Or anyone really.
Last year, John and a handful of other supportive shops and businesses around Cork stocked the first ever print edition of Tripe+Drisheen (now a collector’s item!). I remember when I was in Bunker there was a transition year student on placement with John. A nice fellow too.
For any kid with an interest in music, you’ll get some schooling in the records at Bunker and I imagine a lorry-load of stories from John. You’ll also meet some characters, who know that John is a well-travelled and compassionate soul.
But, parents if you’re reading this, don’t assume that your kid wants to do work placement in a record store. It’s better coming from the student John says. He’s right.
I digress.
A while back there once was a boy in a secondary school who wanted to do his work placement in Bunker, but ran into a problem when the guidance councillor ruled it out by telling him “that only wasters work in record shops,” and packed him off to work in a solicitor’s office.
“I got little bee in my bonnet,” John says. Actually more like an Asian hornet.
John’s got tattoos, wears T-Shirts, has piercings, but he’s also risen up the ranks to management position in a big institution in a big city and he knows how power works and who’s accountable. He knows who to write letters to and how to word them to get results.
So on hearing how only wasters work in record shops he fired off a letter to the Department of Education and demanded an apology. And got one. In the form of a hand delivered letter from a “very embarrassed” teacher.
John recounts this less with glee, and more so in a kind of matter-of-factly manner of there’s a lot of people out there who use their influence and power to malign and belittle others. Okay there’s a bit of cursing in there, but his point being is there’s room in the world for us all, just as there’s room for all types of music.
In fact, Bunker acts as a kind of unofficial stop-off and drop-in for a lot of different characters who were they to walk into mostly any other shop in the city they’d be trailed by security or watched. A lot of these are lads who just want to talk, or browse, or walk up and down the narrow aisles, but John’s made a space for them.
Bunker is that rare, rare thing. A welcome house with Buddy Holly, Johnny Cash and a whole lot of other characters.
Yeah man.
John Dwyer’s five desert island vinyls:
Pod / The Breeders
A Love Supreme / John Coltrane
Kind of Blue Miles Davis
Erpland/ Ozric Tentacles
Goo / Sonic Youth
A great read and a great shop... unpretentious , passionate and as we say in these parts the man knows his onions ... any shop that stocks Sun Ra has to be good.... Regards from Ealing..