Who was interviewed for the '2013 Remembered' oral-history project?

The project captured 380 first-person interviews across four narrator categories: Louisville bartenders and hospitality workers, distillers and brewers, public-school teachers and administrators, and church and community leaders.

Can I listen to the interviews online and download transcripts?

Yes. Every interview in the catalog has a streaming audio player on its record page, along with a full searchable transcript, narrator biography, recording date, and archival accession number.

Are the oral histories free to use for research and citation?

The archive is published as an open public resource. Researchers, journalists, educators, and documentary producers may listen, quote, and cite the interviews with attribution to the Louisville 2013 Archive Project and the Louisville Free Public Library.

How do I find interviews from a specific Louisville neighborhood or subject?

The Browse the Archive index on this page organizes the full collection by narrator type, neighborhood, and recording date, so visitors can locate interviews by subject or district without searching the full 380-item catalog.

Sepia-toned scanned plate of a Louisville cooperage room with stacked oak bourbon barrels.

The 2013 Archive — Volume XI · Partnered with the Louisville Free Public Library

380 voices, one watershed year — preserved in their own words.

The 2013 Remembered oral-history project captured bartenders, brewers, teachers, and church leaders across every Louisville neighborhood between January and December of that single, consequential year. Each interview was recorded, transcribed, time-stamped, and accessioned into a public finding aid you can browse below.

This is not a curated highlight reel. It is a working archive of 380 first-person voices — the only public oral-history record of the year bourbon, basketball, and a new economy converged along the Ohio River.

Browse the Catalog Listen to an Interview

Recorded: Jan 14 – Dec 19, 2013
Format: Digital audio + verbatim transcript
Holdings: 380 interviews · 1,047 hrs
Access: Free public listening via LFPL

Bartenders & Bar Owners — 112 interviews

Brewers & Distillers — 86 interviews

Also filed under: Teachers & School Staff (94 interviews) · Church Leaders & Congregants (54 interviews) · Small-Business Owners (24 interviews) · City Workers & First Responders (10 interviews).

See the full browse index →

Sepia archive portrait of Marquita Wells, bartender at The Silver Dollar, photographed during her 2013 interview.

Marquita Wells · The Silver Dollar · March 22, 2013 · Accession OH-2013-018 · Photographer: K. Hensley for the Louisville Free Public Library.

Featured Interview

"Friday nights in March, we were pouring Old Forrester and the whole city was leaning toward April."

Marquita Wells, bartender at The Silver Dollar on Baxter Avenue, recorded over two hours in the back booth on the first Friday of conference-tournament play. Her account of the seven weeks between the Selection Sunday bracket reveal and the championship Monday in Atlanta is one of the most-cited pieces in the collection.

Wells, M. — Excerpt 4 of 11 00:00 / 03:42

Read transcript →

From p. 14 of the verbatim transcript:

"We didn't have a TV behind the bar — just a radio. But you could hear the crowds walking up Baxter after every home game. You'd pour two fingers, look at the door, and know whether we'd won or lost by the way it opened."

Open Full Record Browse by Index

From the Transcripts

"People keep asking me what happened in 2013. I tell them — nothing happened. Everything had been building for twenty years. 2013 was just the year the city finally stood up straight and looked around."

By narrator type

Eight categories covering hospitality, production, education, faith communities, public service, small business, the arts, and the residential neighborhoods that hosted the boom. Categories are not mutually exclusive — a teacher who also tends bar on weekends is cross-listed under both headings.

Bartenders & Bar Owners — 112 interviews
Brewers & Distillers — 86 interviews
Teachers & School Staff — 94 interviews
Church Leaders & Congregants — 54 interviews
Small-Business Owners — 24 interviews
City Workers & First Responders — 10 interviews

By Louisville neighborhood

Every interview carries a neighborhood tag drawn from the Louisville Metro Council district map. The collection spans 28 distinct neighborhoods — from Old Louisville to the Portland bottoms — with the densest concentration along the Baxter Avenue / Bardstown Road corridor that absorbed the bulk of the year's tourism traffic.

Bardstown Road / Highlands — 78 interviews
Portland — 46 interviews
Smoketown & Shelby Park — 38 interviews
Shively & PRP — 31 interviews
Old Louisville — 27 interviews
Germantown & Schnitzelburg — 24 interviews
Remaining 22 neighborhoods — 136 interviews

By recording date

Interviews were conducted across 47 weeks of 2013, with fieldwork paused only during the two weeks bracketing the Final Four championship weekend. The earliest recording is January 14 (a bartender on the heels of the first bourbon export shipment); the latest is December 19 (a teacher reflecting on the school year that just ended).

Q1 (Jan–Mar) — 71 interviews
Q2 (Apr–Jun) — 134 interviews
Q3 (Jul–Sep) — 96 interviews
Q4 (Oct–Dec) — 79 interviews

By access & rights

All 380 recordings are released under a non-commercial educational-use license through the Louisville Free Public Library's digital collections portal. Researchers may request full-resolution audio and machine-readable transcripts by emailing the editorial desk; classroom use requires only a citation to the accession number.

Public listening — streaming via LFPL, free
Educational use — accession-number citation
Researcher access — by request, 5–7 day turnaround
Commercial licensing — routed to the rights holder

Requests: [email protected]

380 voices, one watershed year — preserved in their own words.

All 380 interviews, filed like an archivist would.

Bartenders & Bar Owners — 112 interviews

Brewers & Distillers — 86 interviews

"Friday nights in March, we were pouring Old Forrester and the whole city was leaning toward April."

A working finding aid — not a marketing page.

By narrator type

By Louisville neighborhood

By recording date

By access & rights

380 voices, one watershed year — preserved in their own words.

All 380 interviews, filed like an archivist would.

Bartenders & Bar Owners — 112 interviews

Brewers & Distillers — 86 interviews

"Friday nights in March, we were pouring Old Forrester and the whole city was leaning toward April."

A working finding aid — not a marketing page.

By narrator type

By Louisville neighborhood

By recording date

By access & rights

Press play now. Then let the next 380 find you.

Listen first.

Subscribe to 2013 Retold.