The warm air blew a breeze of live music, the crisp smell of beer, and the aged scent of vinyl records over hundreds of people as they meticulously picked through thousands of the 12-inch cardboard sleeves.

On the afternoon of April 6, Big Grove Brewery hosted the Big Grove Vinyl Market and Big Free Show, bringing together beer lovers, vinyl-record nerds, and concert-goers. The warm sunny afternoon spring day gave a great backdrop for seven Iowa-based vinyl vendors to sell their inventory to hundreds of both longtime collectors and new lovers of the music format.

It would be hard to find anyone from 20 years ago to think a vinyl records market sale would bring out such a large crowd, but with the combination of live music, craft beers, and thousands of vintage and new records, these cultural practices are ever popular.

The interesting rebirth of vinyl records is something that is not lost on the vendors.

“People don’t want the physical world to shrink any further than it already has,” said Jeremy Vega, the owner of Analog Vault record store in Cedar Rapids. “Everything is on your phone or your computer, books, movies, you don’t have anything it’s all out there somewhere. There’s something about the visceral experience of having a record, getting up and turning the volume up, and flipping the record.”

This is the second time Big Grove has hosted a vinyl market. Brian Brandsgard, owner of BOG’s Vinyl, is not just a record enthusiast but helps put on this show and others like it.

“The initial Record Market we did here was last November, and we had well over 300 people in attendance — it was just terrific,” Brandsgard said. ”Since it was so successful, they wanted to do it again and position it with the Mission Creek Festival, thinking combing the vinyl and the live music and everything would be a no-brainer.“

For Record Collector manager Bobby Larson, vinyl is set apart from other music media.

“There’s something about big artwork, seeing a record spin, that you don’t get with other formats,” Larson said. “There’s a special feeling when you put on a record. There’s probably more music out there on record, so there’s probably an endless supply of things to discover.”

In an increasingly digital world, searching through stacks of records to find favorite artists has a sense of exploration that is lost, when access to most songs are now at the tap of a finger.

“It’s all about getting a copy of something, getting that song that you can connect with,” Vega said. “Nobody ever asks to come to your house to see your MP3 collection. They want to see those records.”