James Acaster Is Ready to Answer All Your Questions at Wax Trax Today

Pete Stidman, who started working at Wax Trax when he was twelve, knows a lot about the music business and keeps growing the Capitol Hill institution that his father, Dave Stidman, and Duane Davis founded five decades ago. But he didn’t know much about James Acaster before his marketing and events manager, Delaney Schoenfeldt, discovered that the former musician/current hot British comic was coming to the Paramount for a sold-out show tonight, February 7.

A “huge fan” of Acaster and Temps, the forty-musician collective Acaster formed during the pandemic, Schoenfeldt reached out to his agent with an idea for an “out-of-the-box,” in-store appearance at Wax Trax. Turns out, former mayoral candidate and Wheelchair Sports Camp mainstay Kalyn Heffernan, who was part of Temps and collaborated on the song “at(moves)” on the 2023 PARTY GATOR PURGATORY album Acaster curated, was planning to hang out with the comic when he was in town.

“They’d love to come talk about music and comedy,” Schoenfeldt recalls the agent saying. So she arranged for Heffernan to interview Acaster during a free, in-store appearance at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, February 8, and when the agent noted that Acaster didn’t have a social media presence, Schoenfeldt asked if he could mention the Wax Trax gig during his Paramount show.

He did much, much better.

In advance of Acaster’s in-store appearance, Stidman remembers thinking that “maybe I should know more about him, get a sense of his style,” so he decided to check out the Seth Meyers show on February 5 when Acaster was booked as a guest. And halfway through, as Meyers was asking the comic about London, Stidman suddenly heard:

“Wax Trax, Denver, Colorado, 8th of February.” And then Acaster repeated himself.

“1:30 p.m., Wax Trax record store. I’m doing a Q&A,” Acaster said. “They’re very worried that people aren’t going to show.”

No danger of that: hometown hero Heffernan has plenty of fans, and Wax Trax’s Instagram post about the “very unexpected (and very long) shout-out on Late Night with Seth Meyers last night” has already had a million views.

“I was stunned by the response,” Schoenfeldt says. So she checked the store’s supply of Party Gator Purgatory. “It’s a great album, we played it in the shop,” she says. “Everyone was asking about it.” Wax Trax has exactly eighteen copies. (No mention of the Wax Trax onesie Acaster mentioned to Meyers.)

The store at 638 East Thirteenth Avenue doesn’t have a lot of room, either, so Stidman’s asking fans to line up outside before the event, which will be first-come, first-served.

Remember: “1:30 p.m., Wax Trax record store, Denver, Colorado.”

On Late Night, Acaster kept returning to that date, when he said he’d answer all the questions Meyers asked. “If you want the full answer,” he said, “you’ve got to come to Wax Trax…that is all I do when I come to America. I do Late Night with you, and I do Wax Trax in Denver, Colorado.”