Above: Rainbow Records owner Melissa Forsythe (front) with team members (l-r): Austen Morgan, Mike Glessner and Chrissy Morgan.
By Matt Morrissette
Photos by Joe Hoddinott / Phojoegraphy
Opened in 1979, Newark’s Rainbow Records has borne witness to the tumultuous story of the music industry over the last half century — and survived to tell the tale.
From the arrival of the compact disc in the mid-1980s, to the near collapse of the music business due to the advent of illegal downloading of songs in the early 2000s, to the birth of streaming and the oft-vilified Spotify from the 2010s on, Rainbow has seen it all. However, by hanging in there through a chain of caring and passionate owners, Rainbow has emerged on the other side to experience a true renaissance in enthusiastic vinyl collecting among young people and old collectors alike.
In 2024, the Rainbow legacy finds itself in the very capable hands of beloved longtime employee and musician Melissa Forsythe and her husband Myke Glessner. The couple has owned the store since 2022, which is now located at Newark’s Pomoroy Station shopping center.
No business can experience this kind of longevity without a willingness to try new things, and Rainbow Records is no exception. Over the years, the store has hosted shows (now more than ever with there being few places for bands to play in Newark); started a record club; planned shows and festivals for other venues all over Delaware (Forsythe is the mastermind behind the biannual local music and arts festivals called Hot Jam and Cool Jam); and now a plan that spent quite a long time in the incubator has come to fruition: a Rainbow Records mobile record store in the form of a converted school bus.
Customers browse the vinyl options aboard the Rainbow Records Bus.
The Rainbow Records Bus made its official debut at a joyous and well-attended grand opening event this past Labor Day. According to Forsythe, the event was the culmination of a long journey from the seed of the idea (which drew inspiration from both Jack White’s Third Man Records mobile record stores and the food truck phenomenon finally catching on in Delaware) planted by former Rainbow owners Todd and Miranda Brewer to the fevered rush to complete the bus by Labor Day despite a host of obstacles.
“We bought the bus at the end of April and completed it the night before the grand opening, so we were really cutting it close,” says Forsythe. “It was surprisingly difficult to figure out a way to not have records melt in a hot vehicle! It also took a while to do the building projects, design work and paint job. And the fact that the bus broke down the first day we took it to the hardware store to buy wood and was at the mechanic for a month, was not helpful.”
The completed bus is a glory to behold featuring a stunning retro paint job and the ability to hold about 1,200 records and several hundred compact discs and cassettes. According to Forsythe, the bus comes incredibly close to matching the image she had in her mind’s eye — save for her having to let go of her dream of 1970s van-style shaggy carpets because “they get gross pretty quickly.”
Melissa Forsythe (l) with her mother, Carol Forsythe.
It goes without saying that a school bus full of records is cool and should look the part, and, more practically, function as a rolling advertisement for the business. To this end, Rainbow enlisted the services of local artist and punk musician Dave Spencer (of the band Bad Smidgen) to paint the bus in his inimitable style.
“The mural on the bus is fairly simple and whimsical,” Spencer says. “My art tends to be mainly inspired by animation and cartoons. When I was initially told about the job, my first instinct was to do something fun, but also a bit psychedelic, something that harkens back to the 1960s and ’70s.”
With help from friends and his significant other — and with meticulous planning — Spencer managed to complete the bus painting in a little over a week, likening it to coloring in a really big coloring book.
Now that Rainbow Records has managed to get the mobile store “mobile,” they have big things on the horizon and a packed fall schedule.
Customers wait their turn to board the Rainbow Records Bus, which plans to be a regular at area breweries and live music events.
“We’re really looking to visit some towns in the local-ish area that don’t have a record store, like Middletown.,” says Forsythe. “We’re going to go to a lot of breweries and music events. We plan to be at Fall Fest at Autumn Arch on October 19, Fall Fest at Workhorse Brewing in King of Prussia on October 26, and the Newark Halloween Parade on October 27.
However, the event of the year for Rainbow is their 45th anniversary, and Forsythe and Glessner are going to pull out all the stops (including the bus) for a party at Newark’s Aetna Fire Hall on November 17. The affair will feature more than 40 vendors, vinyl DJs, food trucks, and, of course, lots and lots of records.
— Get on the Bus! Find a schedule at RainbowRecordsDE.com.
