Shade Tree Music Store
Venues
Shade Tree Stringed Instruments was a South Orange County music shop run by Greg and Margie Mirken. Both had come up through the 1960s folk boom, drawn to the traditional mountain sounds while most of their peers were listening to polished urban folk groups, and they made it their life's work to keep that older music in circulation. Their shop was crowded with guitars, Dobros, mandolins, banjos, fiddles, harps, and dulcimers, along with music books and recordings by contemporary performers, and nearly every instrument could be rented or studied. Next door, the Mirkens converted a warehouse into a concert and workshop space. The couple also played in the folk group Blackthorn, taking traditional music into local schools, and hosted a Sunday evening folk and bluegrass show on Saddleback College's KSBR, making Shade Tree the hub of a small but devoted Orange County acoustic scene.
In the newsletter
- No. 8 Summer 1996