In Cashmere, building community is a family affair

CASHMERE — Even if you believe that Cashmere is someday going to be an urban hotbed of shopping, dining and nightlife, the focus for now is on community. In fact, it has been for more than 120 years.

Sometimes, being community-minded leads to the kind of cultural experience that the people of small towns like this across America deserve without having to travel as far as one of the more urban places.

That’s exactly the aim of John Mainord, his wife Hailey, and his sister Mary. They may not originally be from Cashmere, but their ties to the community run much further back than just to the businesses they’re opening in the next few weeks in Cashmere’s newest block-long complex, Side Street.

A new family comes to an old town

The Mainords fell in love with Cashmere years ago, when they would come visit a friend who worked in the Forest Service in Entiat. The natural beauty of the town, with the Wenatchee River running through it and the hills surrounding the area, make the geographical center of Washington a magnet for folks that come from other naturally beautiful areas — just like where the Mainords grew up in Texas.

Eventually they relocated to this area, living at first in their RV. But after time, they wanted to make things permanent, and Cashmere was the town they’d come to love. In fact, the first thing they printed as part of their new business venture here were t-shirts declaring “Cashmere is Cool.”

Currently, the storefronts for both Cashmere Records, the brainchild of John Mainord, and Understory Books, his sister Mary’s store, are just booths inside Brassbound Collective, an amalgamating space of makers and small businesses. It’s a little like what you might see over at Apple Annie’s or at Simply Unique down in Wenatchee, but less segregated into strict areas. Brassbound Collective is owned by Hailey Mainord — John’s wife — who put her degree in business and merchandising to work immediately just working there at first. She bought the business, and then when Side Street began expanding, it was only natural that John and Mary would have their storefronts there as well.

The family branches out

Over the next couple of weeks, both the record store and the book store are set to open, and John and Mary have been working overtime to get things in order. Down a set of stairs inside Brassbound is the hallway to Understory, which is still in the sorting and finishing phase of setup. But from among the boxes of books, Mary plucks her prized possession so far from her buying adventures at estate sales and in warehouses full of books: A first edition copy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion.

Mary proudly shows off where the children’s section will be, and even a darkened area with a spaceship-shaped bookshelf and a fixture for a rotating disco-style light that’s just begging for sci-fi and fantasy books. One can already picture a dog-eared copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy waiting on the shelf for an unsuspecting new reader.

The opening date for Understory is less fixed than that of Cashmere Records, however. Mary has just a little time left before John opens his doors — which happen to be directly through her space. Across the hallway from Understory, you can see the 12-inch by 12-inch sleeves holding every manner of recordings, from jazz and blues to rock, folk, country, alternative, hip hop, comedy albums, and John even has a section dedicated entirely to local musicians.

The first album visible as you walk in the door is to the left of his cash register, and you can make out the silhouette of legendary local saxophonist Don Lanphere. Amazingly, John is unaware that Don is from the Valley born in Wenatchee in 1928. He just knows he scored two autographed albums at an estate sale nearby.

John has engineered the opening of Cashmere Records to coincide with the celebration of independent record stores around the world that takes place twice a year, Record Store Day (RSD). He doesn’t get to participate yet this year, because a record store has to have been open for at least six months to sell RSD merchandise or anything like that.

“But at least the anniversary of the store’s opening will be on RSD, though,” John says.

His real prize possession is at home in his own collection. It’s an original Tomato Press edition of Townes Van Zandt’s Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas, which makes sense for a guy who grew up near where Van Zandt was from. But here at the store, John’s secret treasure is an original pressing of “Weird Al” Yankovic’s self-titled 1983 debut album, with the plastic wrap still sealing everything but the opened side and therefore not a single scuff on the pristine jacket, which features MAD Magazine-style artwork depicting each of the songs on the record.

Community is the goal, not just sales

So how does this all translate into building a place that feels like it belongs in Cashmere? After all, the end result should be something that seems like it should have been here all along. That’s the ideal result for any business in any town.

But John and Mary are determined to make this not just a place to buy things, but to feel like a part of the community. On opening day for Cashmere Records, John’s going to be raffling off an electric guitar and giving goodie bags to the first customers through the door. Mary’s got plenty of seating to just pick out a book and read for a while. Straight down the hallway that runs between the two stores, there’s a set of double doors that will stay open during business hours leading into Yonder East Taproom, the Cashmere location for Yonder Cider Company, a local cidery that picks and presses apples from the Wenatchee Valley.

Along with Hailey at Brassbound Collective, the Mainords plan to make Side Street the hangout in Cashmere — and make it a destination for people in the surrounding area as well. What makes a better hangout than books, music, coffee and cider next door, and a town small enough that you know everyone inside?

Andrew Simpson: 509-433-7626 or andrew@ward.media