The legendary, long-lasting Long Ear

By DEVIN WEEKS

Staff Writer

COEUR d’ALENE — Long before North Idaho became the home of the Long Ear, owners and then-newlyweds Terry and Deon Borchard were in California, attending concerts and listening to fresh LPs on a waterbed under blue candlelight.

"It was a real experience to listen to music then," Deon said.

"It still is,” Terry added.

"It wasn’t Netflix, it wasn’t all this stuff on TV," Deon said. "It was, ‘Let’s listen to this new album.’”

That was the summer of ’72, just a year before the husband and wife opened their first music store in the tiny town of Big Bear Lake.

"It was a close network of people," Deon said recently, sitting in the office of the present-day Long Ear at 1620 N. Government Way in Coeur d'Alene.

“We would have Christmas and eggnog parties at the store," she recalled.

Friends, neighbors and even local police officers would come to their holiday parties, where the eggnog became increasingly potent as more people arrived and slipped in more Christmas cheer.

"It had a little hooch in it, and everybody would come in and it would get pretty strong,” Terry said with a smile.

"We had to keep adding more eggnog to thin it out,” Deon said, laughing as she and Terry shared this memory of Christmas in a small town where everyone knew each other.

The music-loving couple brought that small-town joy and appreciation with them when they and their young son, Victor, made the move to Coeur d'Alene in 1985. They opened the Long Ear in a strip of businesses on Government Way just south of Neider Avenue on Nov. 4 of that year.

"We thought this was the big city,” Deon said. “They had a theater that showed two or three shows at once. But the feeling up here was the same as Big Bear, as far as you could tell. You’d walk down the street and people said ‘hi’ to you and smiled.

"We were really well-accepted. We were warned to immediately get our California plates off, which we did, but we never got pushback from it. We were just really welcomed."

At the time the Borchards arrived, North Idaho was transitioning from the old industries of logging and mining into a more tourism-driven economy. It was just beginning to develop.

“When we came up and found our building, there was not a stop sign or a traffic light at Appleway and Government Way,” Terry said. "We’ve been up here for 33 years now. It’s always been really great. Everybody’s always been really open and helpful."

When the Long Ear originally opened, its inventory consisted of vinyl records, 8-track tapes and a few cassettes. As its doors opened in the Lake City, cassettes were all the rage and CDs were yet to be mass-produced.

During those days, Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Emmylou Harris was performing in Sandpoint and rented a car that didn’t have a CD player, only a cassette player, so she stopped into the Long Ear and purchased a bunch of tapes to listen to while she cruised around Lake Coeur d'Alene.

"Cassettes were really popular because of the portability factor at that time, the Walkman and things like that,” Terry said. “What made that medium was the Sony Walkman … We called it the ‘instant smile machine.’ You’d have something on and go, ‘Hey, listen to this,’ because nobody had ever experienced that, really, and you’d put the little headphones on people and you’d hit play and it was like, ‘Oh! Man!’”

The name "Long Ear" comes from a play on the old term "longhair," which was used to describe long-haired classical composers like Beethoven before it was used to describe hippies or rock stars.

"For some reason I had thought, ‘Well, we’ll call it the Long Hair,’ and we go, ‘Naw, that’s not good,’" Terry explained. "I’m kind of punny anyway so we go, ‘OK, we’ll call it the Long Ear, instead of the Long Hair,’ and from that kind of sprung, ‘Oh, the Long Ear,’ and Deon’s family was in the rabbit business.”

“My sister drew up the first logo of the rabbit and the headphones," Deon said.

That no-name rabbit and his relaxed listening pose has served as a welcoming sign to local music enthusiasts and collectors of interesting items, such as candles, incense, tapestries, posters and other colorful and global goods the Long Ear offers.

This eclectic inventory has helped Long Ear stay relevant and alive in a day of digital downloads and media streaming.

"Digital is a great thing, but it has these repercussions,” Terry said. “We didn’t used to carry a lot of things other than music, but you have to expand your horizons because of shrinking demand for music.”

He said when iPods and similar devices entered the market around 2005, a majority of the nation's record stores closed.

"Two-thirds went out of business that first year," Terry said. "That’s totally, totally amazing that somehow, we’re still around."

Earlier this month, the Borchards had their biggest sale ever to thank their customers for the many years of support and keeping the Long Ear in business. About 320 customers came through that day, to enjoy the discounts and to wish the Long Ear a happy anniversary.

"We ran a hell of a sale. It was busy all day long,” Terry said. "It was a fun day. We looked back the next day and thought, ‘God, that was great.'

"People that were shopping with us when we opened 33 years ago, they’re bringing their families in, they might even have grandkids at this point in time,” Terry said. "We still hear from customers in Big Bear, or customers from here, ‘I bought my first cassette at the Long Ear.’”

Six location moves, countless midnight release sales, huge anniversary celebrations and Record Store Day events, surprise celebrity guests, employees who have become family. As Terry describes it, "It's just a great gig."

"We enjoy doing it," he said. "If you do something you like, you’ll never work a day in your life. I’ve worked a couple, but overall, hey, I enjoy coming into work. Keeps you busy, gives you something to do. We hopefully can do it for a lot more years."

Info: www.longear.com