How many times have you heard yourself say, “I wish I had recorded Grandpa’s stories.”

Usually that statement is made in regret.

StoryCollector, the project of a a local nonprofit group called Gulf Coast Storytelling, formed to help people record those stories in a professional setting with high quality audio recording equipment.

“At the heart of StoryCollector is the conversation between two people who matter to each other: a son asking his mother about her childhood, a young woman asking her grandfather about his first love, an immigrant telling his friend about coming to America, or a couple reminiscing on their 50th wedding anniversary,” states a brochure for the project available online at www.storycollector.org.

The storytelling nonprofit group is run out of Nomad Studios in Daphne, and began as the pet project of owner and sound engineer Barry Little, who considers him a professional story-listener. He teamed up with Wanda Johnson, a premier Gulf Coast storyteller, and they started a storytelling festival in Fairhope.

Tomorrow night, Johnson and Bruce Walker, president of the Alabama Storytelling Association and a well-recognized storyteller, will tell their tales at 7 p.m. at Barnes and Noble bookstore at the Eastern Shore Center in Spanish Fort.

“The event is a way of bringing awareness to our new StoryCollector project,” Little said. “But even if you don’t plan on recording your family stories, listening to Wanda and Bruce, who are great storytellers, would be a wonderful way for the family to spend an evening together tomorrow night.”

Little said that starting this month, anyone can schedule a time to record an interview with someone who is important to them.

“By making a reservation at the StoryCollector.org website, two people will have 40 minutes of uninterrupted time for meaningful conversation at the Daphne studio,” he said. “Before you leave, you will receive a professional quality CD of your conversation. With your permission, the interview will be archived at your local library as well as at Alabama Mosaic, a digital archive for educational and historical research. Your story then becomes part of Alabama folk life.”

A donation of $50 is suggested for the service, according to the StoryCollector website, which provides substantial information on the interviewing process with suggested questions for various members of family and the community.

“Storytelling lives at the heart of human experience – a compelling form of personal communication as ancient as language itself,” Little says. “Since the beginning of humankind, we have shared through stories the events, beliefs and values held dear by our families, communities and cultures. Especially in today’s culture, story is all around us, and it is simply our choice whom we choose as our storytellers.”

For more information, call Little at 626-9997 or visit www. StoryCollector.org. “An Evening of Storytelling” starts at 7 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 23 at Barnes and Noble bookstore in Spanish Fort.