After More Than a Quarter-Century, Saratoga Guitar Says Goodbye

SARATOGA SPRINGS — A dozen deep stood the queue to enter Saratoga Guitar on its final Sunday afternoon. 

Matt McCabe owned and operated multiple Saratoga Guitar stores in and around the city for a generation. In January, McCabe, who was 63, died from complications of COVID-19. 

“June 14, 1994. Flag Day. I started in a little 160 square-foot hole-in-the-wall space on Caroline Street,” he remembered, when I’d asked him on the occasion of his 25th anniversary in 2019, seated on the public bench outside his Broadway shop, where he’d sometimes carve a few moments from his busy day to dialogue with everyone from local musicians to elected officials. 

His first sale? “I don’t remember specifically. It was probably a couple of picks,” he had said, with a laugh. “I sold a couple of picks today too. So, pretty consistent!” 

McCabe served two 2-year terms as city Finance Commissioner, from 2004-2007, for more than 20 years hosted The Capital Region Guitar Show – drawing to the city a bevy of instrument dealers, musicians, and fans from across the northeast. Musicians Graham Nash and Stephen Stills, John Fogerty, Joe Bonamassa, and Dave Matthews and actor Sam Shepard were among those who visited his shops. 

On June 13, Saratoga Guitar held its final day closing sale. A line of people who showed up Sunday afternoon creeped up the stairs of the Collamer Building and spilled onto the Broadway sidewalk, where a pair of bronze lions guarded City Hall. Inside the store, violins and cellos dangled from hooks along the shop’s southern wall. The north wall provided safe harbor upon which clung acoustic wood and latter-day electric guitars, the perusing path in-between dotted by amplifiers and accordions awaiting the everything-must-go shoppers to take them home.