In the beginning was the music. For Doug Wainoris, anyway.

When you step into the garage-like building where he does business, the signs of music are everywhere. In fact, you can hardly walk a straight line through the drum kits, amplifiers, speaker cabinets, racks of drumsticks and harmonicas, and guitars, mandolins, banjos and basses leaning and hanging on the walls begging to be played.

This is the place Wainoris calls home – Down Home Music Shop, that is, a small but big-hearted operation set back a few humble yards from Main Street in Fairfield. Down Home has been one of the most reliable fixtures on central Maine’s music scene for 25 years, and the store’s ringing success has several components, not the least of which is Wainoris’ palpable love of music.

Wainoris, 51, played guitar for The Blues Prophets, one of Maine’s best-known blues bands of the 1970s and ’80s. The musician’s life took him to shows far and wide, including the New Orleans Jazz Festival. By the early 1980s, with children becoming part of the gig, Wainoris and his wife, Vicki, decided they needed to settle down, so they bought a house in Fairfield where Vicki ran a small crafts business.

Wainoris wanted to make his living through music, he said in a recent conversation at the shop, and the best way to do that was to give lessons and supply local musicians with the basic necessities – strings, picks and eventually guitars.

“I pretty much started with nothing,” he said. “My office was the lesson room.”

He borrowed $300 to buy some supplies and joined sales forces with his wife’s crafts business.

Already well-known on the music scene, Wainoris sold accessories to friends and acquaintances, and word of mouth boosted sales quickly. By 1985 he decided to shift operations out of the house. So he moved the barn back a hundred feet or so and erected the building that still houses the main shop. The barn eventually was renovated into practice studios where guitar, drum and piano lessons were given.

Since then, Down Home Music has been a rock-solid outfit. The shop keeps more than 300 acoustic and electric guitars in stock, as well as the original basics like strings, picks and tuners, and even a violin or two.

Specialties

Wainoris said his success comes mainly from paying attention to his customers’ needs and doing his best to fill them. In addition to selling the hardware, Down Home gives advice and help with sound equipment, provides music lessons, and specializes in repairs and maintenance.

“We service what we sell, basically,” Wainoris said, and make sure customers are confident that anything they buy will be well-maintained.

He and his son-in-law, Jeff Rowe, 25, work on guitars in the small workshop behind the store’s counter area, and farm out repair work to local music craftsmen as well. They also install sound systems, a dimension of the business that’s enabled them to help out several local schools and churches.

Indeed, Wainoris sees his shop in one respect as a focal point for promoting musical creativity. “Music is a powerful thing,” he said. “It can bring a lot of people together.”

In that vein, the lessons given by local musicians in the studios are an important part of Down Home’s work.

“I always believed in the lessons,” he said. “It builds loyal customers, and shows we’re not just a place that sells stuff.”

Cooperation & competition

Even among local music shops, the emphasis is less on trying to outsell each other and more on cooperating to keep central Maine musicians fine-tuned. Wainoris said, for example, that Down Home and Al Corey Music Center in Waterville frequently refer customers back and forth depending on who can provide the best help.

Wainoris said he thinks some commercial competition may be in store from chains such as Wal-Mart. “The big-box stores are testing the waters” for sales of entry-level music equipment, he said, but he doubts they can make much headway. “They carry a lot of gear, but we focus on the service,” which not only keeps the customers coming back, but helps promote the music, too.

Down Home’s cozy, homey atmosphere is also an advantage, Wainoris thinks. He and Rowe take a hands-off approach to selling instruments, and allow customers to browse as they like and try out a guitar without feeling pressured.

‘It’s all about the music’

In talking with Wainoris, you get the feeling that, while everyone needs to make a living, Down Home Music Shop was never about getting rich.

“People get stuck because they can make a lot of money. But they hate it,” he said. “Do something you really enjoy, and things happen.”

For Wainoris, things continue to happen. While operating Down Home, he’s also played as a session musician with well-known bluesmen such as Stevie Ray Vaughn’s Double Trouble and Pinetop Perkins, and he arranged songs and played with Muddy Waters’ band for a tribute album to Willie Dixon. And recently his band, after a 1980s and ’90s incarnation as The Blue Flames, have reformed as The Blues Prophets once again.

“I feel very fortunate to be doing what I love to do,” he said. “It’s all about the music.”