After flipping vinyl to pay for film school, Isaac Smith now operates a store of his own: Zig Zog’s Records in North Liberty

The vinyl collector bug bit Isaac Smith hard after he asked his parents for a turntable on his 13th birthday. After acquiring a few thousand records since that pivotal moment in 2015, the Bettendorf native recently opened a record store of his own in North Liberty. Zig Zog’s Records is the realization of a pipe dream he’s had since high school.

I first met Smith at a record fair in the summer of 2022. While making small talk at his booth, I learned that he was selling records to cover the cost of attending the University of Iowa — a self-made Vinyl Revival Scholarship, if you will. 

Coincidentally, it turned out that he had already enrolled in my Music & Social Change class that fall semester (for which he wrote a final paper titled “The Beach Boys Encounter Counter Culture”). I kept buying LPs from this tall young man over the years, and by this point, I have shelled out about as much as he paid in tuition to take my class, a fair trade in my opinion. 

“I had been collecting everything,” the 23-year-old said, “comics and cards and toys and whatnot. But once I started getting into music, I kind of went all-in and asked for a record player for my birthday. My mom got me that and the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack, Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers, and Oingo Boingo’s Dead Man’s Party, which was a band that I really liked at the time, and still do.”

His uncle — Jake Cowan, a.k.a. Dr. Nasty Ph.D. — also introduced him to a lot of cool music. Dr. Nasty plays guitar in a Quad Cities psychobilly band named the After Darks, so Smith would go see his uncle’s shows and chase new music down other rabbit holes. 

“A couple weeks after my 13th birthday,” Smith continued, “a neighbor dropped off about 25 records for me. One was Grover Washington Jr.’s album with ‘Just the Two of Us’ on it, which I liked, but I remember some of those records freaked me out. Like, the cover art for Klaatu’s first album was a little unsettling, but I thought the music was cool.” 

“One record that I regret getting rid of was Kate Bush’s The Dreaming because, when I put it on, I was like, ‘This is really weird.’ My mom was home at the time, and she came in and said, ‘What are you listening to?’ I thought, ‘I … um … don’t think I like this,’ so I got rid of it. Later, when I was a senior in high school, I listened to it again and loved it and said to myself, ‘What was I thinking?’”

Smith used his high school-issued laptop to scour music sites for information about older albums and found other ways to fill in knowledge gaps. After moving to Arkansas for a couple years starting in 2018, his collection ballooned when he combed through every dusty antique store and thrift shop that he could find in the state. By the time he moved back to Bettendorf at the start of this decade, he owned over 500 albums, but that was just the beginning. 

“I’d scan Facebook Marketplace, where people would be looking to offload records for free, so I’d meet them in a parking lot across from my house and haul back a bunch of records,” he said. “Then I kept buying and selling so that I had enough money to save up for college. I’d put ads in the paper and drive around to buy people’s collections, and that was basically how I paid for my film degree.”

While Smith was finishing his coursework as a Cinematic Arts major, he came to realize that working in the film industry wasn’t necessarily the most realistic career option. A few of his friends had moved to Los Angeles after they graduated, but he decided to remain in Iowa. 

“What would I do in L.A., really,” he said, “push around an ice cream cart? That was the point when I thought that it would be nice to try the record store thing. I started working for Paul [Young] at Sweet Livin’ [an antiques and record shop in Iowa City], alphabetizing and helping around the store. Doing that solidified the idea of opening a record store, which I didn’t think I could do until I started learning from Paul.”

Smith learned the ropes of retail and realized that this really was what he wanted to do with his time. “I definitely had that idea since I was in high school, but working with Paul made me realize that it’s an achievable goal. It’s like, ‘Oh, if you enjoy this type of work and you have some wits about you, it’s actually possible!’”

“I met Isaac at a record show in Des Moines,” Young recalled, “That was about three or four years ago. I probably spent thousands of dollars on his records, and it just sort of organically grew into asking him if he wanted to do some work around the store. Eventually, I just gave him a key and sometimes would leave him in charge. I didn’t have to babysit him or anything.” 

Zig Zog was the title of the first film that Smith made in school. That’s one reason why he picked it as the store name, as well as his fondness for the end of the alphabet. You’ll find plenty of business names that begin with an A in order to appear at the top of listings, but Smith’s offbeat sensibilities pulled him in the opposite direction. 

During the store’s grand opening on Valentine’s Day, music fiends descended on Zig Zog’s. For two straight hours after the doors opened, Smith had a nonstop stream of customers who lined up to purchase their booty. As the bleary-eyed record store owner rang me up while hunched over a tablet, he quipped, “I feel like an iPad kid.” 

It wasn’t just crusty old fogies like me digging through the stock of roughly 3,800 records and 750 CDs. Plenty of others closer to Smith’s age were also in line, so I asked him why he thought these formats were appealing to a younger generation who grew up in an online world. 

“With streaming,” Smith said, “the quantity can get more than a little overwhelming. It’s like going into an ice cream store and instead of having 20 flavors to choose from, you have 3 million to choose from. ‘I dunno, I guess I’ll have the mint chip graham cracker post-rock jazz fusion flavor,’ or whatever. It just makes things more confusing.”

“In a lot of cases with people I know, the emotional process of holding an object that is connected to the music that you’re hearing really makes that connection stronger,” Smith continued. “For me, I think gravitating to physical media was partially a way of finding my own identity, like, ‘OK, I’ll occupy this corner over here.’ And then I just got sucked in by the chase of discovering new stuff every day, just digging around.”

Isaac Smith has been slinging records for half of his young life, an experience that will serve him well on this new venture. 

“Isaac knows so much about records,” Paul Young said of his apprentice-turned-friendly competitor. “It’s not just broad and expansive, his knowledge goes deep. And he has a wonderful personality, so I really know he’ll do great.”  

This article was originally published in Little Village’s March 2026 issue.