Americana in the Park Returns to Santa Monica Sept. 13

A free afternoon of roots, blues, jazz and folk music takes over Gandara Park in Santa Monica this Sunday, September 13, as the sixth annual Americana in the Park showcase runs from 1:30 to 6:30 p.m. at 1819 Stewart St. The all-ages event brings Grammy-winning British guitarist Albert Lee to headline a lineup that also includes Ricardo Lemvo & Makina Loca, Abby Posner & The Big Fall, singer-songwriter Jason Luckett and a performance from the Bob Baker Marionette Theater. The festival is presented by McCabe's Guitar Shop, the storied Pico Boulevard instrument shop founded in 1958 by furniture designer Gerald McCabe, which opened its acoustic backroom concert stage in 1969, according to Wikipedia and the National Association of Music Merchants. That backroom seats just 150 people but has hosted legendary acoustic performers including R.E.M., Tom Waits, Emmylou Harris, Townes Van Zandt and Beck, per LAist, and the venue maintains a strict no-bar, no-cellphone policy focused entirely on live music. For Americana in the Park, McCabe's partnered with the City of Santa Monica's Cultural Affairs Division and KCRW to bring the showcase to the neighborhood park, as reported by the Santa Monica Daily Press. Lee has built his reputation over decades touring and recording with rock and roots icons including Eric Clapton, The Everly Brothers, Emmylou Harris, Jackson Browne and Joe Cocker, and he's won Grammy Awards in 2002 and 2008, according to the City of Santa Monica. He's also received multiple Best Country Guitarist honors from Guitar Player magazine and is widely regarded as a master of fingerstyle and hybrid picking technique. Sharing the bill is Ricardo Lemvo & Makina Loca, whose sound blends Afro-Cuban rhythms with pan-African styles including Congolese soukous, Angolan semba and kizomba. The Santa Monica Daily Press's report notes that Lemvo sings in six languages — Spanish, Portuguese, Kimbundu, Lingala, Kikongo and Turkish — connecting West African musical traditions with trans-Atlantic Afro-Cuban clave rhythms. Abby Posner & The Big Fall, a genre-defying multi-instrumentalist act that's been featured on NPR's Mountain Stage, and Jason Luckett, a singer-songwriter who mixes jazz, soul and samba with social justice themes, round out the musical lineup, per the same account. Family programming comes courtesy of the Bob Baker Marionette Theater, a nonprofit puppet theater that's served the community since 1963 and holds status as a Los Angeles Cultural-Historical Monument. The theater, founded by Bob Baker and Alton Wood, was designated Historic-Cultural Monument No. 958 in June 2009 as the longest continuously running puppet theater in the United States, according to the Los Angeles Conservancy, and it maintains a collection of more than 2,000 handcrafted puppets. Attendees are encouraged to bring a blanket, lawn chair and picnic, and onsite food trucks and kid-friendly activities round out the free, all-ages event. Gandara Park itself carries its own layered history. The 3.8-acre site once operated as a clay mine and later as a construction debris landfill before being redeveloped into a public residential park in 1975, per Wikipedia. Known as Stewart Street Park for more than four decades, it was officially renamed Gandara Park in February 2017 to honor Pvt. Joe Gandara, a Santa Monica native posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor in 2014 by President Barack Obama, 70 years after he died in World War II action in France at age 20. Gandara had been overlooked for military honors for decades because of his Hispanic heritage until federal reviews corrected the record, according to the City of Santa Monica and the Rafu Shimpo. The city is encouraging attendees to use public transportation to reach the park. Big Blue Bus Route 43 serves Gandara Park and runs every 45 minutes, while Metro Rail's E Line stops near the 26th St./Bergamot station and runs every 10 minutes between East Los Angeles and Downtown Santa Monica. That station sits within walking distance of the Bergamot Station Arts Center, a creative campus housing more than 20 art galleries on Santa Monica's Eastside, according to Mapcarta. This year's condensed format marks a departure from the festival's roots. Americana in the Park launched in 2021 as a four-week Sunday concert series spanning September and October, but the sixth annual edition has been consolidated into a single five-hour afternoon showcase, reflecting how Santa Monica Cultural Affairs has adjusted its scheduling since first instituting the multi-week format to activate the Pico neighborhood park. The event is part of a broader 2026 push by the city to activate local parks with free cultural programming, which also includes the six-week Tongva Twilight series at Tongva Park and the Santa Monica International Jazz Festival.