We Can Got Crimed ...And It Was Weird.

PROLOGUE (BELOW THIS MENU)

THE BALLAD OF TUESDAY DUTCH

EPILOGUE –  THE FIONA FACTOR (COMING TMMRW)

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PROLOGUE

Hi, I’m Andy, owner of Wax Atlas Records, a Baltimore Record Store and DIY venue that often acts like a non-profit even though it isn’t one. We sell records, then use the money to subsidize a local show space bands can use for free. Easy as that.

In our 10 years of existence, I’ve often worked 12-hour days. I’ve never taken a regular salary.

We were recently victims of a series of massive thefts, causing losses in the range of $40,000 – $50,000. The crimes were also just WEIRD. The last month has been all consuming, surreal, like living in a bad cop drama where you can’t change the channel. Now, finally, we can share some of our sleuthery.

It’s true, we have tied associate/volunteer Clarence Davis (aka Tyrone Davis, aka Tuesday Dutch) to a portion of the missing items and are continuing to unearth more evidence every day. In the mean time:

– YES, WE ARE OPEN AS NORMAL
– YES, SHOWS ARE BACK AS NORMAL
– NO, IT DOES NOT APPEAR CLARENCE STOLE FROM CUSTOMERS
– YES, WE WILL BE REACHING OUT TO REPAIR CUSTOMERS
– NO, YOU SHOULD NOT CONTACT HIM
– YES, THIS HAS PUT THE STORE IN MORTAL DANGER
– NO, WE AREN’T GOING ANYWHERE
– YES, WE HAVE A PLAN
– YES, IT’S A CHARACTERISTICALLY WEIRD ONE

Before we begin, I want to be clear about 4 things.

1. Under no circumstances do we want anyone to harass, threaten or target Clarence in any way. The truth is all we need here.

2. NO ONE in our investigation has indicated that Clarence is a physical danger.

3. We literally exist to help create community for those that others often overlook. And we believe DEEPLY that ex offenders deserve genuine paths of redemption (trying to figure out what that is is part of the task of this piece). In any case, ex-offenders are welcome at Wax Atlas (THEY JUST CAN’T COMMIT CRIMES).

4. I’m writing this over the course of a few days and likely not reading any comments or commentary until then. I appreciate any offers to help or, as well as admonishments for poor management (I’ll do plenty of that myself), but first just let me cook. I’m going somewhere with this and it isn’t necessarily to court or to lawsuits or traditional fundraisers or any of the other places you might expect.

Over the next few days I’m going to post in more detail about what has happened, where things stand, and what we need to do to move forward.

Day 1: PAST
Day 2: Present
DAY 3 Future

Why, this way, you ask? Because I was a professional word nerd for over a decade and I still think in articles. And, because, frankly, We’re not doing well, mentally, financially or emotionally. This crime and its effects are like an oppressive heat that no amount of sunblock can stop. It just burns and burns. We need relief.

So, tomorrow, we look at the PAST and what happened waaaaay back in the bygone days of 2025-2026 with… THE TALE OF TUESDAY DUTCH

[DEF NO AI USED ON THIS ONE. THESE HOT TAKES ARE ALL ANDY]

“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” –Mark Twain 

“Good writers borrow, great writers steal” -T.S. Eliot

“Always tell the truth—it’s the easiest thing to remember.” –David Mamet

Clarence Davis is a man with many names, but not so many faces.

I can relate. 

When I met him in spring of 2025, I was trying to be multiple men. It was a time of asynchronous expansion and implosion. The record store was getting wild and our DIY show space was absolutely taking off. Despite being a volunteer-staffed initiative, we began running a club-level schedule (up to 60 bands a month!). 

By 2026, it was so overwhelming that I stopped even trying to make it out for everything. Last year MILO (yes the one that went to college), popped up unannounced and did two songs on OUR STAGE with his daughter. AND I FUCKING MISSED IT!

All that to say this weird thing I started in my basement to keep records out of the dump, that I sweated hard on through Covid, that I’ve moved 4 times with my friends: 

It isn’t just about us anymore. 

So, while others were playing and booking shows and sipping drinks and having fun, I was trying to leverage one of the least tenable business models in existence (Used Record Store Retail) to pay for a model so broken we didn’t even consider monetizing it. (Small Concert Space) .

I’d also just moved in with my partner, Liz (aka Lil Bob aka the Super Sleuth) and helped take in a nephew full time. Between that and a little festival I helped found called SubScape, it was a lot.

So imagine how good it felt to find a beacon of pure positivity amidst it all. When Clarence came in off the street with ideas on how we could partner to create a legit electronics repair program, I was all in. 

We gave him space and resources to get started and agreed we would handle customer service. He would be responsible for repairs. We would collect payment and then split whatever was left after expenses. He could (and did) dive right in. 

And he was a HIT. 

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Over the past year, things began to go missing. Small things. Then big things. That’s why Clarence offered to change the locks on the basement door.

As more bits of Wax Atlas Records disappeared (newly bought candles, guitar pedals, hand lotion), our Grandpappy emeritus dismissed it as the work of the “show kids” and offered to install and monitor a new camera system.

 When more, bigger stuff went missing, he helped search. He added more cameras. He printed “Do Not Enter” signs in multiple languages and put them on the staff doors. He suggested potential culprits (often local, underage regulars). 

He never caught anyone, but he was a real go-getter. 

While I knew the theft was a problem, the cameras simply didn’t turn up any evidence. We poured over them, but a record store is a disorganized, slippery business with things coming in and out all day every day. 

With so much going on and so many bands passing through, each event seemed isolated, a case of confusion, or simply the result of mismanagement. We were growing faster than I expected. It was our biggest year ever. Yet the numbers just didn’t add up.  

I blamed myself. I’d taken on WAY too much the previous year (moving in with my partner and then helping take care of a 16-year-old family member). 

I started telling the team, in all earnestness, “I’m not good at this. We need a real manager.”  

Clarence always disagreed, saying, “You’re a great manager, Andy.” 

Maybe, but this past summer’s sales were slow and I wasn’t able to find several more expensive items I’d set aside to research and sell online. More things went missing. Big bills began to vanish from under the drawer in the register. 

This wasn’t isolated. It had to be addressed.

First, the money. I might not be the best retail manager, but I’m pretty baller when it comes to rock-bottom buying. In early August, I took out a loan and bought 13k records sight unseen to bulk up our normal store stock. I also bought a single crate of MIND-BENDINGLY RARE records to sell in September. I told the core team I’d solved our rent issue. 

Then those records went missing as well. 

THIS COULD NOT STAND. 

So, we got to work. Clarence, Fiona, and I went back through EVERY SINGLE BOX in the back. Several high-school age volunteers helped. After three days, 60ish man hours, and moving over 150 boxes, we came up empty.

I might be the worst manager in the world, but, at that point, even I was pretty sure they were stolen. I made a few calls to other stores and then settled in for the evening.   

By dumb luck, just before bed I saw a post from another record store in Pennsylvania bragging about a truly incredible drop from a few days before. I watched the video. It WAS incredible. They were my records.

The next day I told my brother I’d have to miss his bachelor party (that night) but I’d be with him the next three days as agreed. Then I called the cops. 

The police did investigate (they just also didn’t). After making a statement, the investigator called the other store owner, then asked me a question,”What do you want out of this?”

“I want to know who did it.”

“You’ll probably never get your money back.”

“OK, but  we still need to secure our space.”

“OK, Pull out your phone and type what I read.” 

I did as asked and typed as he read each number out……. 

“Any contact come up?” 

CLARENCE DAVIS – CURRENT

FUCK.

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Clarence was very good at placing himself above suspicion…. But he’s pretty crap at crime. 

He sold the records less than an hour away in Pennsylvania, using his own name and phone number. He contacted the owner using a Facebook profile with his name and picture on it. 

Yup, turns out that sweet old man who just loved to help, who would txt us coffee memes on Sunday mornings, who was a grandfather and father figure to the crew, is a man with three aliases and a long criminal history. 

Needless to say. Liz was immediately out to crack the caper. I couldn’t keep up as she cross-referenced white pages with facebook profiles. She pulled case search files and property records. She found phone numbers and addresses. It was incredible. 

• Court records indicate that he has done long stints in jail and has been ordered to pay restitution many times. In 2016, he was sentenced to 8 years in prison.

• He was once even ordered to pay restitution to…. a church. [Central Presbyterian Church vs. Clarence Tyrone Davis – 05/19/2005 – Amount of Judgment: $500.00].

• After reviewing 40,000 (yes, 40,000!) clips from the security cameras Clarence installed, we came to believe he made a practice of erasing short clips (or entire days) in order to mask criminal acts

• After two weeks of exhaustive inventory and search we estimate our losses at $40,000-$50,000 (more on that to come). We have not definitively linked Clarence to all of it, but we’ve certainly made progress. We find new clues at the store every day, be it the thousands of lottery tickets under his desk, or the missing Uranium glass stuffed in an open envelope with his return address on it.

She also discovered  that Clarence has been known to use two other aliases, TYRONE DAVIS and…… wait for it ….. 

TUESDAY DUTCH.   

The staff loved Clarence, customers loved him, I loved him. He was often intoning “NOW I’VE HEARD EVERYTHING!”and “NEVER A DULL DAY AT WAX ATLAS.” We’d repeat his catch phrases when he wasn’t around. He doordashed candy for the kids. He gave job advice to our interns. I talked to him about relationships and store issues in complete confidence. 

And yes, he slowly, but surely, fixed stuff. 

As we all became closer, I pulled him aside several times and said, “Hey, if you want to talk about a new arrangement, I’ll understand. You’re volunteering upstairs more than you’re working electronics. You’re barely making any money.”

Rock solid, as always, Clarence said, simply, “Andy, we’re a team. I GOT YOU.”

He sure did.