McCabe's Guitar Shop

The decor at McCabe's is stripped down, with concerts being given in a back room with folding chairs and walls covered with vintage guitars, banjos, ukuleles and other instruments. A poll by Los Angeles Magazine in 2008 ranked McCabe's as one of the 32 greatest things about Los Angeles, with McCabe's defeating the Hollywood Bowl in a direct face-off.[1] In The Guide prepared by the Los Angeles Times, McCabe's is described as "an achingly intimate room" with a "bare-bones setting" featuring "the best guitar music west of the 405 Freeway."[2] The Guide continues: "Legends, traveling minstrels and local talent—they all seem to pass through McCabe's at some point. They may be there to get their guitars fixed; the club has a day job as one of the oldest stringed instrument stores in the city."[2] Frommer's describes the McCabe's experience as "intimate in the extreme; the gig would have to be in your living room to get any cozier."[3] The Metromix guide to Los Angeles calls McCabe's "a mild-mannered guitar/stringed instrument shop by day" that "opens up as a world-class concert venue by night."[4] At full capacity the concert room holds 150.

The first ticketed concert was held in 1969, a benefit concert to help Elizabeth Cotton with travel fare to get her back home after a concert engagement elsewhere was cancelled, leaving her stranded in the area. That first concert was organized by Mike Seeger and the line-up featured Bryndle, Karla Bonoff, Andrew Gold, and Kenny Edwards.[5] The opening act was Jackson Browne.[6][7]

McCabe's is owned by Robert and Esperanza Riskin. Robert is the son of actress Fay Wray and screenwriter Robert Riskin ("It Happened One Night"). The Riskins retired from running the store in 2020, citing COVID.[8] McCabe's Guitar Shop weathered the worst of the era and continues to host concerts most nights of most weekends throughout the year.[9]

The list of past performers[10] includes:

In the mid-1970s Takoma Records had offices two doors east of McCabes and built a recording studio, with audio and video cables going from the sound booth at McCabes to the control room of the studio, which allowed easy recording of concerts. These master live recordings now reside within the McCabe's Guitar Shop Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Southern Folklife Collection.[11] Numerous artists have also recorded live albums at McCabe's (some of which were recorded using Takoma Studios from the mid-1970s to early 1980s) including:

R.E.M.

• Norman Blake: Live at McCabe's released in 1976[12]
• Mike Bloomfield I'm With You Always (Recorded 1977, Benchmark Recordings)
• Byron Berline: Live at McCabe's released in 1978[13]
• Maria Muldaur Gospel Nights (with the Chambers Brothers) (1980, Takoma Records, TAK-7084)
• Ted Hawkins: The Final Tour (1998, Evidence Music)
• Townes Van Zandt: Live at McCabe's recorded in 1995[14]
• Ralph Stanley: Live at McCabe's Guitar Shop 2-11-01[15]
• Tom Paxton: Live at McCabe's Guitar Shop recorded in 1991[16]
• Henry Rollins: Live at McCabe's recorded June 1990[17]
• Robin Williamson: Merry Band's Farewell Concert at McCabe's recorded in 1979[18]
• Nancy Wilson (from Heart): Live at McCabe's Guitar Shop released in 1999[19]
• Freedy Johnston: Live at McCabe's Guitar Shop released in 1998[20]

Tom Paxton

• John Stewart: Deep in the Neon: Live at McCabe's released in 1991[21]
• Chris Smither: Chris Smither Live at McCabe's Guitar Shop 3/14/03[22]
• David Hatfield: David Hatfield Live at McCabe's released in 2003[23]
• Lyle Ritz & Herb Ohta: A Night of Ukulele Jazz Live at McCabe's recorded in 2000 [24]
• Paul Siebel: Live at McCabe's released in 1981[25]
• Batdorf & Rodney: Live at McCabe's 1975[26]
• Gene Clark & Carla Olson - Silhouetted In Light

Pianist George Winston recorded a song, "Blues in G," at McCabe's in 1975. It was later released as a bonus track of the expanded edition of his first album, Piano Solos (George Winston album).

A bootleg recording was also made of R.E.M.: Live at McCabe's Guitar Shop in 1987,[27] some of which have appeared as legitimate B-sides.

Bruce Springsteen joined John Wesley Harding onstage at a show to help sing Springsteen's "Wreck on the Highway," which later turned up on a Harding release.

Numerous audience tapes circulate of McCabe's performances, and several soundboards, including a set by T Bone Burnett in December 1993 that featured the Williams Brothers, Maria McKee and a cover of Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You." It also featured "My Life and the Women Who Lived It." Days later, Burnett performed at Rockpalast in Europe and claimed that "My Life..." was written on the flight to Europe. That was clearly not true.

John Hiatt sang many of his songs from "Bring the Family" at several McCabe's shows just prior to recording that album. Those songs included "Memphis in the Meantime," "You Dad Did" and "Lipstick Sunset," among others. McCabe's booker at the time, John Chelew, produced "Bring the Family," which was recorded in four days and became Hiatt's best-known album.

• Cromelin, Richard (January 22, 2010). "Gerald McCabe dies at 82; founder of folk music venue McCabe's Guitar Shop". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 23 January 2018.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to McCabe's Guitar Shop.

• Official McCabe's Site
• Yelp: McCabe's Guitar Shop
• KCRW - McCabe's at 50
• Bob Riskin Interview NAMM Oral History Program (2013)

34°1′33″N 118°27′27″W