After 48 years in the same spot, Endless Horizons is moving, but the music store’s owner vows the Odessa icon will continue offering the same unique vibe it always has.
Tom Logan loved the Beatles and the Grateful Dead and grew up dreaming of opening his own record store, his son, Sam, said.
“He was living in Arlington selling pots and pans door-to-door and he had the idea to open up a record store. He had narrowed it down between Austin or Odessa and he chose Odessa and moved down here in February of ‘75 and then opened the shop in July,” Logan said.
He has no idea why his dad settled on Odessa, but he remembers the building on Grant Avenue near University Boulevard used to be a hamburger joint in the ’50s and ’60s. He also remembers being told his dad thought up the name of the store while on the long drive from Arlington to Odessa.
“I used to joke with him all the time, telling him, ‘You picked wrong,’ but now I love it. There’s not a lot of places like this around this area,” Logan, 33, said.
His dad rented the property from its original owner until 2003 when Odessa College bought it, Logan said. At that time, his dad signed a 20-year lease which will end on Halloween.
“We’re in the process right now of looking at all of our options and looking at different spots. We’re going to try to keep it in the same area of town,” Logan said.
Logan, who has worked at the store on and off over the years, took it over when his dad died in October 2012. He and Odessan Ron Rogers, who worked at the store 44 years before retiring a few years back, are part owners.
It’s a highly emotional time for him, Logan said.
“I mean, it’s like losing a family member to me. Honestly. I’ve grown up in this building. Since I was little. I mean, I have a picture up there of me sitting on this counter with my dad when I was a little kid. So I mean this building is part of our family,” Logan said.
He’s not alone, though. The store has a long list of customers who have been coming in for decades. They remember the days of 8-track and cassette tapes and buying Elvis and other concert tickets. They’ve watched Rogers’ original and brilliantly-colored mural on the building’s facade get updated and updated again.
They, along with new generations of music lovers, have watched vinyl records come back.
“We sell more records than we do anything else and the age group of people buying records is so varied now. It could be anywhere from a 10, 11, 12-year-old up to a 67-year-old,” Logan said. “Here lately it’s been funny to see when the parents bring in their kid or the parents, kids and grandkids all come in … it’s really interesting to me seeing people that grew up buying vinyl and now they’re coming back to bring their kids in to buy vinyl.”
The fact Endless Horizons offers so many different types of music has always kept people coming in the doors, Logan said.
“We sell anything from jazz to country to metal, gospel, Spanish music, a little bit everything. We also do a lot of special orders, too. So if there’s ever something that somebody’s looking for that we don’t have in stock, we can order it and have it just a couple of days,” Logan said. “That’s always been a big thing, that we’ve always ordered stuff for people.”
Endless Horizons has also drawn some celebrities over the years, including Steve Martin, Billy Bob Thornton, Bob Denver and, of course, Odessa’s own Gatlin brothers.
He hopes to have a new place lined up by late August, early September. In the meantime, Logan said he is planning a 48th Birthday party and he’s auctioning off cardboard cut-outs, posters and other promotional material they’ve collected over the years.
“That way people can have little bits and pieces of this place,” he said.
Although emotional over the move, he’s also looking forward to putting his own spin on things at the new location and seeing how the store evolves on its own, Logan said.
Logan, who worked as a musician in his ’20s, dreams of having an area where local artists can display their masterpieces and local musicians can come and play.
“The character of this place grew over the years. How it looks in here now is not how it looked in 1975 by a long shot,” Logan said. “I feel like places like this build their own character through the people that work there and the people that shop there. You just organically let it build its own culture and its own vibe and environment.”
He’s hopeful people will love the new store as much as the old.
“I had somebody the other day telling me this place looks like somebody’s basement and it’s funny because they said that to me as an insult, but I actually took it as a compliment. That’s kind of what it’s supposed to look like. You know, you step out from the real world and into something else. That’s kind of what this place has always represented, I think a little escape from the real world, a normal world, I guess,” Logan said.
“I like having safe places that people can go and relax and be themselves and kind of let their hair down a little bit. I feel like we need those kinds of places. It helps people understand the world and understand more about themselves.”
