Sask. man digitizing old records, cassettes to preserve Prairie music

Dusty old eight-track cassettes and decades-old records found in the bottom of garage sale boxes may not mean much to many, but they're gold to Nels Nielson. 

Those local bands and self-releasing musicians may have faded from the collective memory, but the Saskatchewan man has dedicated dozens of hours to preserving and digitizing the music for others to hear through the Sask Music Project. 

The online channel holds music from Saskatchewan, Western Canada and parts of the United States. 

Nielson was inspired to look into local music more than a decade ago after walking into a pawn shop in Moose Jaw, Sask., and seeing a record from a Moose Jaw brass band that was active in the 70s. 

"To my surprise, I never even heard of them," Nielson told Saskatchewan Weekend. "I picked it up and took it home. I had to find my mother's record player because she is the only one who still had one.'"

Nielson thought someone should be archiving these old records and putting them online. He decided maybe it should be him. He's now been collecting records for 10 years. 

Most of the records or cassettes come from garage sales, local stores and pawn shops. Nielson said he will thumb through records and look for local groups like the Maple Creek Old-Time Fiddlers, or the Jubilee Quartet from Three Hills, Alta.

His collection slowly grew in his home until the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Nielson then decided it was time to learn how to digitize them. He learned the process and now tries to do a different record each time he has a few hours to spare.

"[I] plug it in and start to clean up the record first to make sure it's all clean, because a lot of these records … they've gone through a lot of abuse already, so they're not in the best shape to begin with," Nielson said. 

He records the music onto a computer and uses a program called Audacity to remove clicks and pops to get the best quality possible. 

"Not always going to be perfect, but it's going to be at least very close to it by the time I'm done."

People can stream, download and support the project on Youtube, Bitchute, and archive.org.