Warling Guitars

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The Fretted FroG guitar shop: A brief History

The Fretted Frog was a guitar shop dreamed, planned, and achieved by Roland Belloir. With his business-finance background and my carpentry/luthierie skills, we literally built out two shop locations that became a staple of Los Angeles for nearly a decade. Initially, the shop was located in the heart of the Echo Park neighborhood, at 1200 N. Alvarado St. - a brick building built in the 1920s, and host to several other notable small businesses: the Lemon Frog, the Downbeat Cafe, and the Echo Park Film Center. After 4 years in this location, Roland decided to move us to a larger building at 1414 Colorado Blvd, at the border of Eagle Rock and Pasadena, making the transition in May of 2014. At the Pasadena location, we became a destination with a distinctive selection of guitars, while in Echo Park, the shop was often treated more or less like a hangout or ‘jam spot’ by local musicians.

Ultimately, Roland curated the most unique collection of harder-to-find acoustic instruments in all of Los Angeles. It was a shop that favored the lesser-known, less-abundantly accessible, but high-quality instruments from around the world, including: Lowden (Ireland), Furch (Czech Republic), Cole Clark (Australia), Camps (Spain), Simon & Patrick/Art & Luthierie/Norman/Godin (Canada), LAG (France), Hozen (Previous student of Ervyn Somogyi, Singapore), Taylor (customized models only), Boulder Creek, Alvarez, Blueridge, Guild, Deering Banjos, Weber Mandolins, Kamaka Ukuleles, G&L, and the instruments of many local makers who built a rapport with us over the years. The shop existed in Pasadena until August of 2018. It all seems like a flash in the pan - a quick amalgam of wonderful memories - yet, Roland and I shared thousands of hours of experiences across 8 years: learning how to operate a guitar shop from the ground up, open-mics nights and concerts, filmings at the store, countless celebrity encounters, some bad celebrity encounters, and many more unbelievable stories. Sadly, in the absence of the store’s own website, the Fretted Frog Guitar Shop mostly exists in the hearts and memories of years of customers and students. This page is dedicated to its continued and lasting memory.

Beginnings

In March 2010, I was working for Luthier, Jim Ellsberry who was preparing to shut down his operations, and thus my employment would soon be ending. I’d begun taking more guitar and instrument repairs independently through craigslist, and so I had been receiving an increased amount of calls from unrecognizable numbers; I needed to answer in order to secure work.  One afternoon,  I was sitting in northbound traffic on the 405 during rush hour when a new number began to call. Not expecting the opportunity, nor the French accent with which I would be greeted, this was my first time speaking with Roland. I don’t remember it being a long conversation, but he detailed his plan to soon open an “indie” guitar shop in the Los Angeles area, and he’d gotten my name from a previous repair colleague at Westwood Music, Leland Jackness. Excited but somewhat skeptical, I agreed to meet him in Echo Park within the next few days. We met at the Downbeat Cafe in the building at 1200 N. Alvarado St. While I was expecting an interview focused on my repair experience, Roland essentially said, “if you think you can do this job, it’s yours.” With my “yes,” our fates were sealed for the next 8 years. Upon accepting the job, he’d walked me two doors down to the corner unit in the building which he had earlier signed the lease for. It was a large space with wooden flooring that had a raised octagonal display and retail counter in the center. An empty backroom would eventually become 3 lesson rooms with a staircase and loft storage space. The whole situation was surreal to me. I had graduated from luthier school less than 2 years prior, and had three separate guitar jobs fall through in that time.  Now, I was being handed my own set of keys to a shop that I would become a valued half of. The empty space before us represented the blank canvas onto which we would paint the next 8 years of our lives.

Experience

Previously, Roland had worked as a controller for an airline manufacturing firm in Europe. His employment with that company relocated his family to Irvine, California for a time.  Roland and his wife fell in love with the climate, while he also desired to be his own boss.  Having a passion for music and guitars, he started visiting all the known and less-known guitar shops of Southern California. Eventually relocating back to France, a twist of fate with his employment provided Roland an exit, and an opportunity to start his own business.  Recognizing difficulty with starting a business in France, Roland began scoping Los Angeles for a neighborhood that was a ‘guitar desert.’  In an immense stroke of luck, the Echo Park location that he’d settled on happened to be in the center of a musical renaissance that was taking place in East Los Angeles during that time. 

In addition to navigating immigration, business, and tax laws, Roland was educated in finance, accounting, and budgeting. Roland’s wife, Martine, though not always at the store, was also a crucial part of the accounting wizardry that took place throughout the life of the store. This was an exciting new chapter for their family, following a dream that became a reality. To date, the Belloir family are some of the nicest people that I’ve ever spent time with, and gotten to know. While my own family lived outside of LA, I always felt I had a family with them. It’s been a while, but I constantly look forward to visiting them in southern France sometime soon.

When I was hired as the repairman at the Fretted Frog, I was still pretty green in the field. At Westwood Music, I had gotten stuck with the instruments the other techs didn’t want to work on - mostly structural and finish repairs. My ability to perform a good setup and day-to-day work was still in need of fine tuning. Honestly, I wasn’t that great of a repairman when I first met Roland, but the Fretted Frog provided me an immense opportunity to grow. On April 1, 2010, we arrived at the new location to begin work - taking measurements, and planning how the store’s interior would be laid out. Up to that point, Roland was planning to hire an outside contractor to build the needs of the store: a repair bench and counter in the main part of the store, lesson rooms, storage, and a stage. Understanding that this would be my repair bench, I opted to spearhead the project, understanding the needs of a repair shop. Additionally, I offered to build the other fixtures for the store, and drew up plans for approval from Roland. After completing the interior fixtures at the Echo Park location, Roland would never require me to provide drawn plans for future projects. This introductory period of building a store brought us together in trust.

Shaping a store

One of the fixtures I was tasked to build into the original location was a stage. During shop hours, it was functional riser with power for the amplifiers we offered, and by night, it was frequently used as an open-mic and concert stage, hosting events sometimes as often as twice a week. The front window faced out onto the intersection of Sunset Blvd. and Alvarado St, and the enticingly lit performances caught the ears and eyes of both pedestrians and drivers passing by. Roland would usually put out snacks and drinks available by donation, and sometimes filmed the performances. There are quite a few early open-mic and concert performances accessible on youtube which display some wonderful and interesting performances. It was a great way to bring new people to the store, many of whom remained loyal customers from those early times onward.

Fretted Frog Open Mics on YouTube        Fretted Frog Concerts on YouTube

The shop also had three lesson rooms built into the back space. While these rooms were framed out by a local contractor and set-builder, he failed to complete the job, taking on other projects while Roland had returned to France to gather his family. As the contractor continually became absent, I feared the lack of progress would reflect poorly on me. Thus, I completed the remaining framework, drywalling, and roofing of the lesson rooms and storage space. Having the job complete when Roland returned was my top priority. The hired contractor accepted full pay for the work I completed, and then forgot his chop saw at the store - currently my chop saw. I’ve since framed out many projects and an additional two guitar shops with that very saw.

Echo Park

Prior to opening the store, Roland had visited over fifty guitar shops in California and the Los Angeles area. He saw an absence of guitar shops in the Echo Park neighborhood and it’s vicinity. Little did we know that the music scene in east Los Angeles at that moment in time was popping! Through onsite open-mics, concerts, and via word of mouth, news of the store’s opening spread. It also got featured in several of the local trades, including the “Best Un-Centric Guitar Store” in LA Weekly in 2010. As the store grew, it required constant changes to displays, and additions to accommodate an increasing stock of instruments.

In 2012, the shop was scouted as a filming location for the pilot episode of a TV show. Roland negotiated with the producers so that we would be hired and paid as the “guitar wranglers.” During the filming, the shop was closed for four days, but the film company compensated the store as a location rental, and paid us very, very well for our work. Several interviews and short films were also shot at the Echo Park location during those years.. A block away from the location, famed luthier, James Trussart has his private workshop, and paid frequent story-laden visits.

There were other times there that were not so great. We witnessed a bathtub’s worth of water come through our ceiling and pour onto several Lowden guitars, amounting in nearly $20,000 in insured loss. Other happenings we experienced pertained to drug abuse and legitimate mental-health issues that occasionally became scary. Sometimes, our safety felt compromised.

While Echo Park proved a solid launching ground to establish the store, profitability and sustainability waned, and in 2014 the lease on the space was up for renewal.  Roland decided to see what other spaces in northeast Los Angeles were available… 

Pasadena

A new location!  During May of 2014, Roland had rented a new location at 1414 W. Colorado Blvd, and the transition had begun. Roland manned the Echo Park location while I began construction work on the new location. We temporarily halted repair services during that month to help keep my work load manageable. The new store had a large back room - a blank slate ideal for case storage; along one wall, I built racks that could hold up to 160 hardshell cases. Into the opposite corner, I built a small room that would eventually be insulated and humidified, for the safe storage of overstock instruments. With the little bit of remaining space, a small backroom repair bench was installed so that I could complete dustier and noisier repairs with power sanders, routers, a bandsaw, and a drill press.

My primary repair bench resided in the rear right of the store, across from a large single room that we ideally wanted to utilize for lessons. Building a wall down the center of that room, we turned it into two lesson rooms, each completed with its own door. While I focused on designing and building the stockroom, lesson rooms, and repair areas, Roland designed the floorplan and flow of the show room. He situated his retail counter space in the front right corner of the shop, initially. He and friend, Ben installed 3 levels of slat-rails that ran the entire length of store’s inner walls, eventually filled with instruments.

Once the new location was prepared, Roland and I spent a weekend moving all of the store stock from Echo Park to Pasadena. He harnessed new potential afforded by the amount of space in the new location, and began to steadily increase the instrument stock. I learned a lot about operating a business from Roland; he did things with strong forethought. For example, at the Echo Park location, we stocked 3-4 single-brand mandolins. As a result, they couldn’t be compared to other brands or price levels, thus we rarely sold a mandolin. In Pasadena however, Roland invested in carrying several quality-levels and price-points for every instrument type that the store carried. As expected, we began selling more of everything! We now stocked over 20 mandolins, over 50 ukuleles, 10-15 banjos, as well as over 160 acoustic guitars. He even took us into the electric guitar game by 2016, stocking the more illusive G&L, Reverend, and Guild electric guitars and basses. 

While we’d lost some of our regular customers by relocating, we quickly gained new ones, more local to Pasadena, Eagle Rock, and Highland Park. The shop was situated next door to a cafe called The Little Flower Candy Co. It attracted a clientele that we often benefitted from. It was not abnormal to look out our window and see Van Dyke Parks or Leland Sklar eating lunch on their outdoor patio. The Pasadena location also afforded me the opportunity to work on Paul McCartney’s ukulele. Although we’d lost some of the ‘juice’ of Echo Park, the store was operating at a higher capacity.

My Departure

In March 2017, my partner, Amanda and myself announced that we had decided to move to Portland, Oregon. There were many reasons we had come to the decision. We were both natives to Los Angeles, and idealized life outside an increasingly hot and narcissistic ‘bubble.' Writing this six years later, I can say it was the right choice, as it afforded me opportunities I would have otherwise missed.

Closing

In August 2018, The Fretted Frog officially closed. I wasn’t present as the shop wound down, but in hind sight, I’m thankful that neither Roland nor myself had to operate a guitar and repair shop during the pandemic.  Roland has since moved back to France, and if I know him well enough, he and his wife are planning their next great adventure, and extracting enjoyment from life in new ways.