—David Menconi, Down on Copperline
You’re most likely to run into Virginia Maxine Sloop in her natural habitat, in a rock-show crowd at Carrboro’s Cat’s Cradle (on occasion, you’ll see her working behind the bar there, too). And if you see her in a bookstore, chances are you’ll find her in whatever section of music books it has.
After years of making a beeline for the music in every bookstore, Sloop started thinking there should be a bookstore dedicated to just music books. She talked the idea over with friends, including Mark Smith, who had a brainstorm and texted her a possible name earlier this year:
Read Band Books.
That was the inspiration behind Sloop’s mini-store Read Band Books, billed as “A Bookstore for the Music-Obsessed.” It occupies a cozy closet-sized space amid a number of artists’ studios in Attic 506, upstairs from the long-running Chapel Hill nightclub Local 506. Sloop opened it at the beginning of April, and customer traffic has started to grow as word spreads.
“The idea of the bookstore, either you get it or you don’t,” she says. “A few friends have asked if I really think this will work, and yeah, I do or I wouldn’t be doing it. People are either completely confused by the idea, or they’re one of us and they’re saying, ‘Perfect, this is something we’ve needed.’”
Sloop works as a realtor, but that’s just the dayjob to pay the bills. An aspiring filmmaker and music obsessive straight out of the pages of the Nick Hornby novel “High Fidelity,” Sloop has done a little of everything over the years. Her various passion projects have included running a vintage clothing store as well as a boutique startup label called FEEL/FREE Records (stylized in homage to the legendary Minneapolis indie-rock label Twin/Tone Records). She is also one of the organizers of this month’s Dex Fest, the second annual roots-rock festival in memory of the late great Dexter Romweber, set for June 25-28, 2026.
A devoted reader of rock literature, Sloop cites the 1996 punk-rock oral history “Please Kill Me” as the book that’s “top of my pyramid.” Also in her personal pantheon are Patti Smith’s 2010 memoir “Just Kids,” Michael Azerrad’s 2001 under-ground rock chronicle “Our Band Could Be Your Life” and former Squirrel Nut Zippers hitmaker Tom Maxwell’s 2024 local-music history “A Really Strange and Wonderful Time: The Chapel Hill Music Scene 1989-1999.”
That last title looms particularly large, since it documents Sloop’s own place and time. She came to Chapel Hill from Lexington, North Carolina, in 1990 to attend UNC, variously majoring in journalism and art. She never found her footing as a college student and left without a degree, but the local music community became a cause to support.
It takes a great audience to make a music community great, and Virginia and her late husband Marc Sloop were one of Chapel Hill music’s all-time great music-fan power couples. They were local fixtures and faces in the crowd at shows through 20 years of marriage, before he died in 2023 after a long period of failing health.
“Marc had an almost folk-hero quality that’s hard to explain,” she says. “I’ll talk with friends who have also lost someone, sometimes in a bitter divorce. But I’m oddly calm about it. It’s not that I was unharmed by losing him, but I just feel so lucky I got to spend such a long time with someone so cool.”
It’s still early days for Read Band Books, and Sloop has been working on bulking up its inventory. The store is typically open from noon to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; check its Instagram page for the latest schedule.
Most days you’ll find either Virginia or her 19-year-old son Rose Sloop behind the counter. Read Band Books also just started an online eBay store, and Sloop will sometimes take it out on the town as a pop-up bookstore at area flea markets. Future plans include author events downstairs from the store at Local 506, and eventual relocation to a larger and more permanent storefront space.
“I don’t idle well and my wiring is such that I have to be doing multiple things all the time,” she says. “But I have to be careful about not trying to grow too fast, even though I’m not good at pumping the brakes. It’s why I’m a terrible runner, I always collapse because I can’t pace myself. But I really want to add to that idea of community, build on it.”
Read Band Books is in Attic 506, the upstairs space above Local 506 nightclub at 506 W. Franklin St. in Chapel Hill. Check Instagram.com/readbandbooks for daily hours, usually noon to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
