Before Beck hung up his guitar for the season, he sat down at a 100-year-old piano and played one final solo show. On a tiny stage. In front of 150 people. Atop a gourmet vegan restaurant in Healdsburg.

Over the course of two hours, his 21-song setlist included some of the all-time classics: “The Golden Age” and “One Foot in the Grave.” In between he waxed poetic about the beauty of Sonoma County, bantered with the audience about hot summer nights, and compared the venue to a living room and a tree house.

It had been a busy summer for the Grammy-winning artist, touring several cities with an 80-piece orchestra. The night before, he headlined the Outside Lands music festival in San Francisco. The intimate show at Little Saint offered a change of pace from the crowded open-air festival atmosphere of the other shows.

It also offered fans a chance to see one of their idols up close.

Little Saint has worked hard to cultivate an eclectic music program since it opened on Earth Day in 2022. Already, it has attracted artists such as Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus of the indie supergroup boygenius; child actress turned feminist singer-songwriter Jenny Lewis; ethereal harmonizing duo Lucius; rock band Dawes; and more.

The intimate venue has generated so much buzz in the broader music community that artists reportedly are going out of their way to see if they can swing tours through Sonoma County to stop and experience it for themselves.

“We’re becoming a place that everyone wants to book when they come through San Francisco,” said Jonny Fritz, Little Saint’s music director. “Like the [now closed] Bottletree in Birmingham, or the 9:30 Club in [Washington], D.C. If you got booked at those places, you looked forward to it all tour.”

For this reason, it’s no exaggeration to say the place might be the hottest music venue in the country right now.

There isn’t any singular feature that makes Little Saint special. It’s the room. It’s the acoustics. It’s the intimacy. The crowd. The food. The hospitality. The overall experience of being part of a show at this one-of-a-kind venue seems to transcend what fans — and musicians — have come to expect from typical music experiences.

As singer-songwriter Aaron Lee Tasjan says, “You can count on magic at Little Saint.”

The woman behind this magic is Laurie Ubben, a lifelong music lover, animal activist, and patron of the arts.

Ubben owns the restaurant with her husband, Jeff Ubben, and she runs the music program with her sister Jenny Hess and Fritz. When she’s not traveling, Ubben is right there at every single show, fangirling like everyone else in the crowd.

From the very beginning, Ubben’s goal with the venue has been simple: To curate a program that educates and uplifts those who come.

“So many of us go through our days and our lives without really connecting to each other or the community, or even the world around us,” said Ubben. “We wanted to create an uplifting gathering place where every interaction is good for the soul, the earth, and our community.”

It’s no surprise that Ubben has created such a buzzy music destination; in many ways, she’s been preparing for the job for more than two decades.

Back in 2005, when Ubben and her husband lived in San Francisco, she and friend Lane Murchison started the Bird School of Music to share a love of music with kids, teenagers, and just about anyone who was interested. The school offered a variety of programs including music lessons and summer camps, but chief among them were the eight-week band-training sessions that culminated with a concert in Jeff Ubben’s office garage.

“We didn’t require any experience, we just let kids play together — like soccer but more fun,” Laurie Ubben says. “More often than not, they chose their bandmates and instruments.”

As time went on, as many students started to graduate from the Bird, Ubben found herself in a position to serve as an old-school patron of the arts. She seized the opportunity to provide financial assistance to several artists who were struggling to make ends meet or in search of an investor to help make the record of their dreams.

Eventually, the Ubbens relocated to Healdsburg. Years later, after they purchased Little Saint, Laurie sat down and began brainstorming about what she’d need to build the perfect music venue. With a concept in place, she set out to find a partner to help her make it come to life. She found one in Jonny Fritz.

Ubben had known Fritz since 2009 — they met for the first time when Fritz was touring with singer/songwriter Tim Easton, and Easton and Fritz spent several tour dates at the Ubben residence. Ubben and Fritz reconnected in 2012 in Rhode Island at the Newport Folk Festival, which draws music aficionados from all over the world. As Fritz remembers it, Ubben approached him after he had tackled his bass player into the mud and was nearly kicked out of the event, but that impression aside, Ubben was undeterred and the two remained friends.

On the surface, Fritz might have seemed like a curious choice — he has a career as a musician himself, and lives in Los Angeles. But Ubben knew Fritz had good taste in music and that he was well-connected in the music industry. Prior to the founding of Little Saint, the duo had previously teamed up in 2016 to curate a series of shows during which Fritz played alongside the likes of Hozier, Lukas Nelson, the Promise of the Real, and Honey Honey.

In early 2022, as Ubben and Fritz began to map out their grand plan for Little Saint’s music program, they started an email thread listing all the artists they wanted to book.  The list — Hozier, boygenius, Samantha Crain, Wet Leg, Mitski, Conor Oberst, Joy Oladokun, Jamestown Revival, Madison Cunningham, Julia Jacklin, Mon.Rovia, Katie Pruitt — reads like a festival lineup: headliners, up-and-comers, and some seemingly plucked from obscurity — and that’s precisely the point. Ubben and Fritz try to book the calendar in such a way that even the most ardent fans of live music are learning something every once in a while.

The first show Fritz booked for Little Saint was Molly Lewis, a professional whistler who performs in front of a 12-piece band. Later in those early days, Fritz booked another show with Lavender Country, for what would be one of the 78-year-old musician’s final performances (the self-proclaimed queer Marxist cowboy died just weeks later). The first set of the Lavender Country show did not go well, as the artist was verbose and opinionated.

“I thought, ‘I might have to send in my resignation after this,’” Fritz remembers.

Mercifully, the crowd settled in for the second set and the show became a full-on dance party by the end of the night.

“That show was a great lesson for me that you don’t have to please everyone all of the time,” Fritz said. “If we’re not ruffling some feathers, what are we doing on this planet anyway?”

Due in part to this slow start, Fritz thought it would take five years to get the program running smoothly. It took two.

For Ubben, this success was not a surprise.

“Our philosophy is, ‘Come and trust us,’” Ubben says. “I like the idea of discovery. If we can normalize this way of simultaneously nourishing our minds and our souls, I think it can be a wonderful way to get people to think differently about art.”

Fritz agrees.

“We’re not just booking cover bands — nothing against cover bands or anybody,” explains Fritz, who comes to Healdsburg from Los Angeles roughly every other month. “There are other places that host those kinds of shows. They’re great. Go there. Here, we’re putting together something different. The idea is that you can’t get this somewhere else. That there’s nothing else like it anywhere right now. That’s what makes it special.”

Little Saint is something special from the artists’ perspective, too. It offers them something other venues often can’t: a clean and relaxing respite from a seemingly endless stream of anonymous hotel rooms and meals filled with fast food or plucked from plastic catering trays backstage — hallmarks of life on the road.

For many artists, the Little Saint experience starts on the Little Saint Farm, an 8-acre property about a seven-minute drive from the Healdsburg Plaza on Westside Road. Here, amid vineyards that stretch across the hills like corduroy, the Ubbens welcome artists to stay at a red farmhouse when they come to play.

The two-story farmhouse is sprawling — the kind of place where a band of six or seven could stay comfortably without getting on each other’s nerves. Decor inside is boho chic — think board-and-batten walls, comfy couches, and rugs over wooden floors. A wraparound porch rings most of the structure; there’s a pool and sauna out back.

Before a recent show on a rainy late fall day, members of the New Orleans-based band The Deslondes spent two nights at the farmhouse — a nice change during a stretch of 11 shows in 13 days. They read. They came together for casual jam sessions in the living room. Some band members strolled through the vineyards to take phone calls or just decompress with uninterrupted quiet time.

Different artists use the house in different ways. Beck gravitated toward that old Hamilton wood piano. Other artists unplug entirely. The farmhouse is comfortable enough that some musicians extend their visits for several weeks, such as when the three members of the indie rock band, boygenius, visited the property for a writing retreat in 2021. On that stay, over the course of about 10 days, Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker spent time on the farm writing songs and drawing inspiration from the coast, the redwoods, and different parts of Sonoma County. (Bridgers spent part of her childhood in Ukiah, and when the band returned on tour in 2023, she says the Little Saint show, which members of her family attended, was their first acoustic performance from their new album.)

Many of the songs they wrote on that earlier visit have lyrics with direct references to Sonoma County and were on that 2024 Grammy-winning album, “The Record” (see sidebar below).  It’s safe to say the album might not have turned out the way it did if not for Little Saint Farm.

The farm is a working farm, with a team of six farmers tending to the land year-round, supplying the restaurant with more than 80% of the produce Little Saint’s chefs use in the kitchen every day. Before each performance, artists sit down to a freshly prepared vegan meal that many say is a welcome change from the heavy, processed foods they usually eat while on tour. Typically, the artists dine in the back of the restaurant, behind the bar. Lucky fans might catch a glimpse of this pre-show meal on their way to the restrooms.

The meals themselves differ from week to week. Some favorites include a trio of dips with farm-fresh veggies, fried lion’s mane mushrooms, and the harvest cheeseburger.

“I’ve been a vegetarian since I was a child and there’s no other place I’m aware of that offers the food experience they do,” says Sean Scolnick, aka Langhorne Slim.

Healdsburg on ‘The Record’

Many of the songs that would eventually end up on indie band boygenius’ Grammy Award-winning album, “The Record,” were written during their 2021 visit to the farmhouse at Little Saint Farm.

Two of the songs —“Leonard Cohen” and “We’re in Love” — feature lyrics
with direct references to Sonoma County.

From “Leonard Cohen”:

“On the on-ramp, you said / ‘If you love me,
you will listen to this song.”

Bridgers and Baker both say that the on-ramp in question
is the Central Healdsburg on-ramp to 101, heading south out of town.

From “We’re in Love”:

 “And the walk we took in the redwoods.”

Dacus reveals this is a reference to Armstrong Redwoods
State Natural Reserve in Guerneville.

The venue itself is a singular experience for the artists, too. During his August concert, Beck repeatedly referred to it as a “tree house,” an apt comparison for the airy, second floor space perched above downtown, where the view is the canopy of nearby trees.

The high-ceilinged space is lined on two sides by glass garage doors. In warm weather, the doors roll up and expand the footprint onto two separate open-air patios — one facing North Street, the other facing the new Foley Family Community Pavilion.

When concerts sell out, Little Saint employees encourage fans without tickets to pitch blankets and congregate in the park across the street so they can hear music as it floats out the open garage doors into the night sky.

The small stage — no bigger than a large area rug — sits in front of a giant tapestry hanging on the back wall, a patchwork quilt of a curtain composed of recycled fabric, including old rock band T-shirts that, when illuminated, has a gossamer-like quality (see sidebar, below article). The stage-left wall is lined with framed lineup posters from past shows.

The audience’s domain in the middle of the room is chameleon-like, adapting to the different feel each artist brings to the stage. For some shows, the space is lined with couches and comfy chairs facing the performers. For others, there are tables and bistro chairs, kind of like an old-school cabaret. For bigger crowds, the floor is clear and guests are invited to stand. But there are outliers: when Lucius came to town in 2023, singers Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig left their band onstage for three encores, invited the crowd to sit in a circle, and waltzed out to perform in the center.

“The great thing about our space is that it’s versatile so we can change it up every night depending on the artist,” said Ubben. “You could come see four shows in one month and never see the room set up the same.”

The acoustics in the music venue are state-of-the-art, too — Jeff Ubben is a self-proclaimed nerd about that. The custom system uses separate amplifiers to optimize sound clarity, power, and dynamics and to produce louder and deeper bass.

Devin Feiertag, owner of Blackline Engineering, which set up the system, noted that a large amount of the room has been treated with recycled jeans packed in the walls, ceiling roof slats, and sound-dampening furniture, but these acoustical upgrades would be nothing without the acts themselves.

Musicians love playing small, intimate venues, and many of the artists who have come through Healdsburg to play at Little Saint can’t say enough good things about it.

The Seattle-based duo and married couple Anne Tong and Bryce Barsten, who go by the name Chinese American Bear, performed at Little Saint in April 2025. Tong said the show remains one of their most memorable experiences anywhere in the world.

“The setup of the stage and audience area provided a very intimate and supportive atmosphere, [and] it felt like we were performing in someone’s open and inviting living room,” Tong wrote in a recent email. “Everyone was attentive, no one was on their phones or chatting with each other. It made us feel very special and seen as musicians.”

Ben Jaffe, who has played the venue several times, agrees. Jaffe says it’s clear to him that Little Saint is made and run by people who love art and likens the venue to a big piece of art itself.

“The beauty of the interior design and the level of the visual art always revs me up as a musician, [and] I feel kind of egged-on by all the color and expressiveness in the building to give a vibrant performance,” he says. “The stage has a lot of humility to it. It’s not some big grand thing; it’s a simple stage that doesn’t put the artists on some overbearing pedestal,” Jaffe adds, noting it makes it easier for artists like him to connect with the crowd through the music.

The intimacy at Little Saint breaks down barriers between artist and audience not found at other venues. Artists here seem naturally more approachable, and it’s not uncommon for fans to actually meet their favorite artists at some point in the night.

Sometimes these meetings occur before the show, when the artists are playing tourist in Healdsburg before sound check, or as band members are settling into one of several cottages the Ubbens recently purchased behind the venue. There’s also a small sitting area behind the stage that acts as a greenroom that patrons must pass on their way to the restroom. Other times the exciting encounters happen afterward; band managers usually set up merchandise tables toward the back of the venue, and most artists will come out after the final set and work the merch booth themselves.

As it enters its fifth year, the music program at Little Saint continues to evolve. Ubben and Fritz are in constant contact with each other, firing texts and emails back and forth about up-and-coming artists and established stars they’d like to book. They still have the original list they put together and add and subtract names almost weekly. Some, like Billie Eilish and Maggie Rogers, are still among their dream performers.

Little Saint also is getting more involved in the local and regional music scenes. The restaurant has sponsored The Ramble, an annual event put on by Noah and Kelly Dorrance of BloodRoot and Reeve Wines to raise money for the Giffords foundation. There has been other crossover with the Dorrances, too — the couple and their kids hosted Beck on a pontoon boat at Lake Sonoma after his show.

Ubben’s team has even dabbled on the national stage. Members of the Little Saint team provided free food and free music at the 2024 Americana Music Association’s AMERICANAFEST in Nashville, and a different contingent from Little Saint went to South by Southwest in Austin last year to scout new bands and spread the word about Healdsburg’s hidden gem of a performance venue.

Despite all these strides, despite the Becks and Rufus Wainwrights going out of their way to play at Little Saint, Fritz said there’s a long way to go.

“We’re still developing relationships with booking agents. I’m still writing emails saying, ‘I know you’ve never heard of us, I know our venue only holds 270,’ but trust me, those relationships are getting stronger. As they get stronger, people take more of a chance on us. We’re here to establish ourselves as the spot that can do these types of events,” he says.  “I have every confidence in it happening more and more. We are moving in the right direction.”

Ubben sees the future as an opportunity; she aims to innovate, no matter what.

“We don’t really feel confined by boundaries as to what we can or cannot do; we’re going to just keep pushing the envelope,” she said. “That attitude is what this place was built on. It will always be a part of who we are. It’s one of the things that makes Little Saint so special.”

Experience Little Saint

Thursday evening shows at Little Saint are free, ticketed events.

The 2026 season kicked off at 6 p.m., Jan. 15, with Grammy Award-nominated artist Leslie Mendelson. A recently announced addition to this year’s lineup is Grammy Award-winning musician St. Vincent, performing an intimate show at 7 p.m., March 3, at Little Saint. (Tickets for this show go on sale at 10 a.m., Feb. 6.)

See the rest of the lineup at littlesainthealdsburg.com/lineup.

Little Saint, 25 North St., Healdsburg, 707-433-8207, littlesainthealdsburg.com