Clay Avenue Guitar Company was started when Jesse Hopkins along with his father Larry, outgrew Jesse's basement workshop where they'd been building guitars under the name J & L since 2010.  After settling on a space in downtown Detroit, a name change was in order to acknowledge where the new guitars would be made. Circa 2020 their standard model was "The Boxer" named after the Paul Simon song, The Boxer is a solid body electric built from mahogany with a stripped down/back to basics approach and a double cut-away body and set neck,