McCabe's Guitar Shop Celebrates 50 Years, Throws a Big Coffee-n-Cookie Party

“We’ve done things our own way this whole time. We’ve somehow survived the Guitar Centres and all of that,” says Lincoln Myerson, the concert director at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica. “Here we still are, the little shop that could.” Myerson is, incredibly, only the fifth concert director that McCabe’s has had in over 40 years of shows. A quick visit to their website reveals that in its long history, names like Jeff Buckley, Jackson Browne, Tom Waits and many, many others, have all dropped in to play in the back room of what started as just a guitar store. It’s a past that Myerson feels acutely—he first discovered McCabe’s when he followed friend Nels Cline (now of Wilco) to a gig there in 1985. It was a double bill with the Minute Men, and Myerson was hooked. “We don’t have a bar, just coffee and cookies, and so everybody really listens,” he says. McCabe’s has long been praised for providing intimate (read: drunk free) opportunities to see the world’s best.

And now, McCabe's is celebrating fifty years of making folk rock history with a huge show at Royce Hall at UCLA, on October 2nd. Headlining is Jackson Browne, who was the shop's first official performer, back in 1969. The UCLA show will also have “special guests,” that Myerson refuses to reveal. But they will be friends, and that’s all that matters to McCabe’s. “Our mantra is that when a musician walks in the door for a gig, this is now their home,” says Myerson. “We’ll get them whatever they need.” – KAITLIN FONTANA