The Hotel Café is a live music venue located off an alley on the Cahuenga Boulevard strip in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California

Hollywood, Los Angeles, California

Hollywood is a famous district in Los Angeles, California, United States situated west-northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Due to its fame and cultural identity as the historical center of movie studios and movie stars, the word Hollywood is often used as a metonym of American cinema...

 that has become known for helping to establish the careers of new singer-songwriters in the 2000s. Opened by Max Mamikunian and Marko Shafer, two aspiring screenwriter

Screenwriter

Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...

s, the venue began as a coffee shop

Coffeehouse

A coffeehouse or coffee shop is an establishment which primarily serves prepared coffee or other hot beverages. It shares some of the characteristics of a bar, and some of the characteristics of a restaurant, but it is different from a cafeteria. As the name suggests, coffeehouses focus on...

, but has gained a reputation as an intimate performance space featuring acoustic-based female songwriters, such as Sara Bareilles

Sara Bareilles

Sara Beth Bareilles is an American singer-songwriter and pianist. She achieved mainstream success in 2007 with the hit single "Love Song", which brought her into the number one spot on the Billboard Pop 100 chart. She has sold over 1 million records in the United States alone and has been...

, Ingrid Michaelson

Ingrid Michaelson

Ingrid Ellen Egbert Michaelson is a New York-based indie-pop singer-songwriter. Her music has been featured in episodes of several popular television shows, including Scrubs, Bones, Grey's Anatomy The Big C and One Tree Hill, as well as in Old Navy's Fall 2007 Fair Isle and Opel's/Vauxhall's...

, Priscilla Ahn

Priscilla Ahn

Priscilla Ahn is an American singer-songwriter.-Early life and education:Ahn was born Priscilla Natalie Hartranft in Fort Stewart, Georgia to Kay and Harry Hartranft and spent her childhood living in the USA and South Korea. She lived in Berks County, Pennsylvania for several years and attended...

, Charlotte Martin

Charlotte Martin

Charlotte Ann Martin is an American singer-songwriter, who performs predominantly on the piano. She has written several studio albums, two of which have received mainstream commercial releases, 2004's On Your Shore and 2006's Stromata...

, Laura Jansen

Laura Jansen

Laura Jansen is a Dutch-American singer-songwriter based in Los Angeles. Jansen established herself as a regular at the Los Angeles live music venue the Hotel Cafe before gaining fame in her native country, The Netherlands...

 and Meiko. The venue has become its own brand

Brand

The American Marketing Association defines a brand as a "Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers."...

, with its Hotel Café Tour

Hotel Cafe Tour

The Hotel Cafe Tour is the brainchild of Cary Brothers , a North American singer-songwriter,who has been a regular performer at the Hotel Café venue in Hollywood.Having played in the Hotel Cafe for many years, and enjoyed its...

, a record label

Record label

In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...

, and two albums, Live From the Hotel Café, and The Hotel Café Presents...Winter Songs, that are downloadable via the iTunes Store

ITunes Store

The iTunes Store is a software-based online digital media store operated by Apple. Opening as the iTunes Music Store on April 28, 2003, with over 200,000 items to purchase, it is, as of April 2008, the number-one music vendor in the United States...

.

History

When The Hotel Café opened in 2000, it operated as a coffee shop where singer-songwriters came to perform their material for small audiences. Co-owner Maximillian Mamikunian has noted that in the venue's early days, turning a profit was challenging, as the cafe's steamers and blenders could only be run between songs so as not to drown them out. Today, the venue's main room still has its five original elevated bar tables running along a hallway linking the front and back of the club, as well as six dinner tables set immediately in front of the stage. In 2004, the club acquired space next door and underwent expansion for eight months.

Significant Activity

Since 2004, the club has curated an annual group musical tour. Past featured artists have include Meiko, Rachel Yamagata, and Brooke Fraser

Brooke Fraser

Brooke Gabrielle Fraser Ligertwood, better known as Brooke Fraser is a New Zealand award-winning folk-pop and Christian music artist...

. Most stops are in the United States, but past tours have also included performances in Norway and Switzerland.

In October 2008, Mamikunian and co-owner Marko Shafer concluded talks with iTunes

ITunes

iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....

 that paved the way for official Live from The Hotel Café downloads that debuted the following month. Also in October of the same year, an album of four Hotel Café regulars was featured and offered for sale at over 2,100 Starbucks

Starbucks

Starbucks Corporation is an international coffee and coffeehouse chain based in Seattle, Washington. Starbucks is the largest coffeehouse company in the world, with 17,009 stores in 55 countries, including over 11,000 in the United States, over 1,000 in Canada, over 700 in the United Kingdom, and...

 locations. The club's eponymous record label has seen success with The Hotel Café Presents...Winter Songs and Live From the Hotel Café Volume 1. Other artists, including Matt Hires

Matt Hires

Matt Hires is an American singer-songwriter from Tampa, Florida. Drawing inspiration from influences as disparate as The Band, Sufjan Stevens, Wilco and Ryan Adams, Matt became the first artist to sign with F-Stop Music, an imprint of Atlantic Records.- Biography :As a cabinet store worker by day...

, have recorded live albums at the club under other record labels. John Mayer has also played surprise shows at the cafe and has tried out new songs from his past two albums before their release.

The Hotel Café's website, like the venue itself, has served as a source for new artists to be tapped by music enthusiasts and industry professionals alike. Grey's Anatomy

Grey's Anatomy

Grey's Anatomy is an American medical drama television series created by Shonda Rhimes. The series premiered on March 27, 2005 on ABC; since then, seven seasons have aired. The series follows the lives of interns, residents and their mentors in the fictional Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital in...

 music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas has used both the website and club itself as sources for discovering artists and songs she uses on the show. Meiko, an artist who hit the No. 1 folk spot on iTunes in August 2008, was discovered by Patsavas via The Hotel Café, as was the English singer-songwriter Adele

Adele (singer)

Adele Laurie Blue Adkins , known professionally as Adele, is an English singer-songwriter. She was the first recipient of the Brit Awards Critics' Choice and was named the number-one predicted breakthrough act of 2008 in an annual BBC poll of music critics, Sound of 2008...

. Another artist favored by Patsavas for use on Grey's Anatomy, Greg Laswell

Greg Laswell

Greg Laswell is a musician, recording engineer, and producer from San Diego, California. He has released four studio albums: Good Movie in 2003, Through Toledo in 2006, and Three Flights from Alto Nido in 2008, and Take a Bow in 2010, as well as several EPs and special singles...

, has praised the club for its "rare" environment and has become one of its regulars.