Record stores aren’t known for packing in the people these days. They hopefully get enough money to get by, but they tend to please the “quiet browsing” crowd.

But on Saturday, Feb. 5, Oz Music turned into a mini Times Square. A solid 200 people came to listen to a folk band that, by a twist of fate, had the top selling record on all of iTunes.

The Civil Wars have blown up in the way that bands used to. As opposed to learning about a great record six months after its release, people were made aware of the solid work of the duo’s debut full-length “Barton Hollow” within a week of its release.

Not only does this just not happen with folk artists, this doesn’t happen at all.  Joy Williams, a career songwriter for the major labels, and John Paul White, an old school singer-songwriter, have simply been performers toiling away at their craft. Williams has recorded music since 2000, been signed to a major label deal, and certainly deserves recognition for having, for lack of a better term, a very pretty voice.

Simply put, both White and Williams have done this a long time.

On Jan. 14, the duo played “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” which is pointed to as a big deal, but it still doesn’t explain the success. Lots of bands – a shocking amount of great ones, even – play the late night circuit and get only a few eyeballs to their product. These artists don’t suddenly blow up, at least not in the modern environment.

While the song “Barton Hollow” has a great video and is some great country-folk, it’s not number one on the Billboard Hot 100. Hipsters didn’t throw down a great Pitchfork score for it.  The record is not released on a major label, but on Sensibility Music, a label co-founded by Williams.

So how did this happen?

To avoid sounding cheesy, it was hard work and luck. Williams and her husband Nate Yetton founded Sensibility Music in 2008 and have worked hard to get both Williams and The Civil Wars out to a wider base. They didn’t fear the idea of “selling out” because television shows like “90210” wanted their songs.  They embraced the exposure instead.

As it turns out, when people produce music that is fine-tuned and recorded by talented people, sometimes, people actually notice. That’s such a strange thing to say in the world of Ke$ha and Katy Perry, but it actually is possible.

I tire of the “America’s music tastes suck” argument because it implies that there is nothing we can do about “taste” and that people are helpless to avoid pop.  We think that certain types of people only listen to certain types of music exclusively, and that our friends are the “diverse” ones of the bunch.

I’m here to tell you that among the 200 or more at Oz Music that day were frat guys, sorority girls, musicians, older adults, Marines, men in wheelchairs and hipsters in suits. While a straw man argument would yammer that the greeks were only there “because they’re famous,” or the adults wouldn’t be in the audience if it wasn’t pleasant, or some such horse manure, it spoke a hell of a lot more to the capability of great music.

I was in the back of the line for the autograph session, measuring the folk around here. Most everyone wanted pictures and such, and when I finally got there, I was pleased to see that Joy Williams, a major label songwriter by trade for country and pop artists here and yonder, noticed my New Pornographers shirt. She said, “I love those guys!”

And you know what? It made sense. Because great music is in the head, and it’s all around us.