Nora Brown & Stephanie Coleman
Nora Brown & Stephanie Coleman
McCabe's Guitar Shop3101 Pico Blvd, Los Angeles 90405
Nora Brown and Stephanie Coleman bring their duo to McCabe’s Guitar Shop for an old-time set shaped by banjo and fiddle. Their partnership began in Brooklyn’s close old-time music community in 2017, and this appearance follows their 2023 debut EP, Lady of the Lake, released by Jalopy Records. It is a natural fit for McCabe’s back-room listening space, where the focus stays on the interplay, detail and acoustic sound of two players working in close conversation.
Brown is a banjo player with three albums on Brooklyn-based Jalopy Records, whose appearances have taken her across the US, Europe and Japan, including NPR’s Tiny Desk and TED EDU. Coleman is an old-time fiddler who has recorded and toured internationally with Uncle Earl, Rhiannon Giddens, Andrew Marlin of Watchhouse, and Aoife O’Donovan. Before their EP, the pair recorded together on Brown’s 2019 album Cinnamon Tree, and they have played the Kennedy Center, Denmark’s Roskilde Festival, Winnipeg Folk Festival, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival and the Cambridge Folk Festival. Reviewing Lady of the Lake, Folk Radio UK heard “a shrewd exuberance” in their exchanges, noting that they take turns leading while leaving room for each other to shine.
McCabe’s is a working instrument shop with a concert history stretching back to the late 1960s, and its back room has welcomed both emerging artists and performers who keep returning. The show takes place among walls hung with guitars and other stringed instruments, with the audience seated in folding chairs facing a small stage. It is a listening room: there is no bar, and the quiet lets acoustic detail and lyrics carry through the room. Concerts are ticketed, and the shop’s current listings and tickets are available online, so check ahead for your show. The shop is on Pico Boulevard in Santa Monica; the concert room is reached through the store. Expect an evening focused on the performance, rather than drinks or dinner between sets.