Episode 3: Hotels with Hunter Kelly

old cars to collecting baseball caps. Tell me what you love, why you love it, how you got into it, and what makes it awesome. Every episode is presented in three chapters. Chapter one, my guest and I talk about what they're obsessed with. Chapter two is a game I call Trade Joe, where my guest and I turn each other on to one thing that we've discovered. And chapter three closes the show with me talking about music that I'm currently geeking out on and why I believe that curiosity is can

tageous and the life is better with a soundtrack. So let's go Chapter one. Today's guest is the Amazing Hunter. Kelly Hunter is a country music journalist working for Rare Country. Hunter first interviewed me when sugar Land first released our song baby Girl way back in the day. I have never met anyone like this man. He is unforgettable and funny enough. He was the person who actually inspired the idea for this podcast. I caught up with him in Nashville, Tennessee,

one sunny afternoon over the summer. Why am I feeling so wrong? My head's in the game, but my haunts in this song she makes me feel so hm. Let's get your head in the game from high school music, Hunter Kelly, Welcome to my podcast. Welcome Christian. It's so good to be here being interviewed by you. It's usually the other way around. I know it's a turning of the tables, but I like it. I love the way that life work. Yes, tell me, tell me what you do,

who you are, Where are you from? Really quickly? Okay? I am Hunter Kelly. I am a country music journalist, reporter gad fly if you will, just about town in Nashville. I work with Rare Country and their senior correspondent. So I'm interviewing people like you who make the country and western music all the time and eight love the country music and grip in Birmingham, Alabama. Have lived in Nashville for eighteen years. So as a as a you're a journalist by trade, yes, And how long have you been

their journals? Twelve years? Twelve years? What did you do before that college? I mean Starbucks, sen A Starbucks. Yeah, No, I really found my niche with writing at when I was at Belmont. Started writing for the paper about music, music that I loved, and then worked into syndicated radio, worked with Clear Channel and then ABC News, ABC Radio

for a decade. Yeah, I interviewed, Yeah, so that was that was a hoot, you know, just covering country music for ABC News, so really being a point person for them on all things country. Got the job one four kind of crazy, kind of felt, yeah, I grew up there. Now here we are. What are you into? I'm into hotels across America that have dramatic architecture or that have historical significance. So it's really every trip I go on, I tried to stay at a hotel that includes that

falls into that or go visit them. So yeah, I mean it's really like I'm a hotel tourist. I guess how long has this been going on? Well? Picture it not teen ninety, not nine. Atlanta, Georgia, where you're from. UM. We stayed at the Hightt Regency in at downtown Atlanta, and UM it was a memorable trip because I loved just staying at I had expensive taste as a child growing up growing up in Alabama. Favorite TV show was Dallas loved like Robin Leach, lifestyle is rich and famous.

So the High Regency in Atlanta is a very dramatic hotel and it was very high end. Um it's still a very nice hotel, but in my mind it was like the Palace. So the atriums, Yeah, the atrium is twenty two stories, goes straight up. It was the first one um that John Portman, who's very important architect, designed. It goes all the way up, so it's just a very dramatic lobby, very tall, and then at the top it has a rotating bar and restaurant, which is the

hallmark of these Higher Regencies. This was the first one. So you go up into on the roof and have a three sixty degree with you with the city. So this was the first one that John Portman did. And now there are these old high some of them have been changed with the Higher Regency. That was a real calling card for them to have a dramatic atrium restaurant. It does. Yeah, the Marriott, the Marriott, graand Marquis and Downtindantly and across the street really looks like you're inside

a spaceship. It's kind of the same idea, except it goes up forty stories, but it really looks like some kind of alien ship that you're on, so much so that it was I think it was used in the Hunger Games. Yeah, everything in Atlanta. But this is really I mean, it's just really dramatic. So how many of these have you seen? I mean, do you make it a point to it? I do, make it a pen and how do you do you document it somehow? Well, there's actually a list on Wikipedia, which is my you know,

as a newsman, it's my official news source. I always say so trustworthy. Um, but they actually have a list of I mean the rotating the rotating restaurants and bars is really what we've started going across the country collecting. So there's actually one in um Florence, Alabama, UM at the Marriott property there. Yeah, and there's one in downtown Nashville.

They basically built the Sheraton used to open as a higher regency in downtown Nashville, and so it's got that really dramatic open atreya and that goes all the way up, so it's really stunning when you look up. But the there's a rotating restaurant at the top right here in our hometown, but it's been shut down because of health

code reasons. I've looked into it several times and was actually friends with the manager over there, who's moved to another hotel since here in Nashville, but he said that's why. But UM give her sneak up the no and always meant to. It's one of those things I've called about it. I've posted about it on YouTube, but I've never snuck up there. But I do understand that you can rent it out for private party. So everybody I know with money, I'm like, why don't you you have an anniversary coming up?

Why don't you write that out so I can go up and see this rotating um rotating restaurant. Motael dallas Um. That was a two for really the High Regency. They see Him awards were in dallas Um a few years ago. So went out there and the High Regency downtown is featured dramatically in the opening of my favorite television show Dallas, so I had to stay there. And there is a Wolfgang Puck restaurant that rotates. Um, there's the Reunion Tower ball next to the High Regency in downtown Dallas, and

that rotates a lovely experience. It's a Wolfgang Puck property. And UM. I was just watching a TV show UM this past weekend about the Erie Canal and they showed Rochester, New York, and I spotted what looked like a rotating restaurants and like, well, I gotta go to Rochester flying in and out of go to Tampa, Florida. Fly to Tampa, Florida every year for vacation, and the hotel at um the Tampa airport, well, it's shut down. I wonder why they shut down. I don't know. We don't want to

go rot It's one of those wonderful things. Yeah, we used to get dressed up to go. Yeah. Well that's that's the that's that's part of why I love these hotels like the Hyatt's that just seems so and that are that are maintained, but that it's like a portal into a past era. It's like you're on like a PanAm flight with like these fabulous outfits in a full meal and just we're like in a you know, a

fabulous Cadillac from the sixties or seventies. It's just really the higher regencies, what they were doing with those was really taking travel like up a notch from the Howard Johnson too luxury hotels in a new way beyond like the old school hotels like the Drake and UM, the Fairmont in San Francisco, the Drake and Chicago, which I got to stay at UM both of those last year as well. So it was like, well the hotel the Fairmont in Hotel was actually used in the TV show

Hotel Connie selicon James Brolin. It's an Aaron Spelling show on ABC. So every time I go into a night really nice hotel at home, or sing the theme song to hotel, so actually sing the theme song to hotel in Dona Na No, no, no, very dramatic. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah in the hot Springs. No, let's talk about a gem. Yeah. Well, and that that's like the Drake as well. It's really really well maintained, but the walls were so paper thin.

We were in a room and we were just quietly about eleven thirty four of us listening to a living Newton John like you do at eleven thirty at the Drake and the the hotel security was called upon us because they said we were too loud. But it was quiet. I mean, calm down. I think it might have been magic from the Zanna Do soundtrack. It wasn't crazy, you know,

it was. Yeah. So those walls are paper thin. And you know, when you get those hotels like that Regency that were built in the sixties and seventies, I mean they're a pretty good insulation. That hotel, the High Regency. The first time we stayed at it in eight nine, though, we were there for Atlanta Braves game, and so my dad freaked out because they were playing the Dodgers and the Dodgers were staying there. So we met Commula Sorda, Um,

Darryl Strawberry. I was probably seven or eight at the time and did not care at all, but Dad used me to go meet these people. So I was this guy. So yeah, So I mean my first time going in there, um, I just remember, you know that was a UNIX seen celebrities seeing famous people in this dramatic hotel. I mean it made a really dramatic impression, and um, yeah, just fascinated ever since. I went to Kansas City a few weeks ago and stated at what was the Higher Regency there?

It's now a Sheraton, but then they had a I believe it was a Western attached to it. So it's all this big complex and um, there was an indoor garden at the west end that it was like the sixties. I mean it had to be seventy two, I think early seventies, and it was just untouched. I mean you feel like you're on the set of Three Company or something. It's just it's just great. You know. So have you

traveled be on the cities? Have you going to like the Berkshire's or any of these places where you know there's going to be some preserved places like I know there's some places in Michigan, you know, and like a dirty dancing resort kind of like have you ever have you ever put your foot into that world? No? I haven't. And usually it's because when we go to a city, there's a reason, like an artist we want to see playing there, um, or a place that my boyfriend wants

to go, right. Yeah, So I'm piggybacking like, oh, what hotels can I see there? Um? Do you have any that are on your list right now that you haven't seen it? You're pretty excited? Well really Miami, I mean Miami. Um, yeah, I think the Fountain Blue just because, um, it's one of those places I've I keep looking at and I mean to go, but there hasn't been. Let's go to Miami, you know kind of thing. But you know the the whole thing. I mean in dream Girls they made their

debut at the Fountain Blue. Was it the Fountain Blue? We'll say it was for these purposes, but also in The Bodyguard, you know, Rachel Mayor and the Big Rachel when it explodes some you know, the Fountain bl I love that. It's somewhere there's the ven diagram of movies that you love and hotels that yeah, they overlap. That's a really that's a really big big part of it.

You had to if you had to, if they were going to film a movie of your life and there was gonna be an hotel in it, what were they, Oh, well, that would probably be the wind Free Hotel in Birmingham, Alabama, which is now a higher Regency incidentally, Uh, it's attached to the mall, the River Chase Galleria. So yeah, I just had a lot of memorable stuff go down in the wind Free Hotel. Um, it was really you know,

going to the mall, it was a big deal. But also this hotel was really nice and so uh several things are remember about the Winfrey Hotel growing up. When I was the Fox six Star Student of the Week for Gardener High School and the local Fox affiliate, they had the gala there at the Winfrey Hotel. This is

my senior year of high school. And there was a news anchor I always wanted to meet named Janet Hall still on Fox six, the affiliate, and so I finally got to meet her and that meant a lot to me for reasons that I don't want to get into because we'll never stop talking. Also, my meme all was in the Miss Alabama Nursing Home pageant representing Handsful Nursing Home about two thousand and so she was, I mean it's theme. It was at the Winfrey Hotel in the

ballroom and that so um. Also the first time I really connected with Nammi Judge from the Judds was in the lobby of the Free Hotel from the Nami Judd of the Judd Spain was in the lobby. She was speaking there at the at the hotel, and I met her in the lobby and have my first meaningful exchange with That was my first meaningful ex change with the jud What what would you mind? What was it? The

exchange that was some meaningful? Well, it was just really about connecting with her um a little bit and telling her about my love for the Juds and how much the I mean, the Juds are really foundational for me musically. So I had her signed the box set, sign a tour program and also signed a photograph I got in the year before at their fan club party here in Nashville. So I still you weren't talking at all in the lobby,

almost girming from dear life. And this was before I mean, did she did she make sure to sign your name love to hunt Her so that you can't sell it. I wouldn't want to know. I'm just saying, yeah, love to hunt her. Love to hunt her is how it went. I love it. Yeah. So the Winfrey Hotel and it's still there. I actually went there two weeks ago for the first time in a long time. And the thing about hotels when I'm going and exploring that can really rob them joys. Happened twice to me this year is

when there are weird ass comic book conventions going on. Well, I'll tell you what. Oh my gosh, well I'll tell you this. Um, I know that the all of the Atlanta hotels that you talk about, um, mostly I see them now when I go to weird ass comic So when I was there just completely full. They're they're full, and so I'm trying to enjoy the architecture and or the nostalgia and just live in this time period of the sixties and seventies. And then there are all these weirds.

What's not storm it's also furries, which has a whole sexual component that's weird. And yeah, you really do so I just really should start calling ahead and being like, Hi, I would like to create a fantasy for myself. Are there any weird ass furry conventions this weekend? So maybe

that's a thing. Is it a thing? Do you? Because I do this sometimes, but I wonder if you do it when you walk around these hotels and there's a convention and all that you're trying to guess what the convention is because usually it's not on the badge, you know, it's usually not broadcast because they're usually servicing two or three at a times. Yeah yeah, yeah radio like yeah, well you have phone with those. Um you know the a brilliant hotel which is massive here in Nashville. They

have conventions all the time. And in college we used to would would go crash like the parties, Like we crashed the radio check party, UM corporate party at the Opperland Hotel. And my friend Kelly, who I grew up with, who's just insane. She led them all inline dancing and it was just really fun. But I don't know why, just usually don't. I'm not I'm not as interested in what conventions are there. I want to go back in time.

So do you ever find yourself do you ever find yourself dressing of the period or or taking a suitcase from that period? Like like is that where it's coming from? No, No, you just want to stand in the middle of it. I just want to stay in there. Oh yeah, I mean they're well documented on the Instagram. And then I got this NASS Canon camera. We were this year that um I did we stayed at the Peabody earlier this year. It took a lot of great photos of the Peabody

in Memphis with the ducks. Ducks, they come out and they come out. Yeah, which you know, the Peabody is a grand, grand hotel. So are you a fan of the of the bellman and the concierge and all the people who work in these hotels? Yeah? I mean that's one of the things I've been meaning to get a recently, and I want to get a book on hotel management,

and I think that's so alluring. But then I realized, oh, but that would involve working with people, which takes all the sexy out of it, And so I don't want to get too far down that rabbit hole of actually working in a hotel, you know, but I do love vaguely the concept. So if you were someone's listening to this and then really never thought they were staying at and they wanted to dive into our Kelly land of

classic hotels, what would you start them on? I want, I guess just I think the higher regency chain and like looking at the hotels, um, if you go to a city and you notice a hotel, tall hotel with an atrium and a spaceship on the top. That was a Higher Regency. M I've seen them in Fort Lauderdale. They're out in California. They really took that design and ran with it. So I think, you know, it's one of those things. Just keep an eyeut when you're in

a city. There's one in Louisville. Like we pulled into Louisville a few years ago for a show and was on a tour bus and I called. I saw it and called, so find out the hotel. Call see if it's open. You know, go. It's just a fun thing and you'll you'll see them out there. It's still still do you do leave anything behind or take anything from each point? Like how do you have any picture? Well, one of the things with the higher regencies, it's very interesting.

A friend of mine just bought me. This will time to you being from the Knoxville area for the high it's now I think it's a Marriott, but it's the one downtown in Knoxville that was a Higher Regency and all of the highatt Regency hotels back when they actually had a key have the key ring and its um bronze and it has then imprint of the hotel structure on it, so I think high it's bringing it back.

The Higher Regency in Atlanta just had a remodel and the chicken desk the back of the back wall behind the check in desk is these keys just replicas of these keys, so they're those exist. So I think, really it would be that, But that's more of an eBay thing. I think with it with from these hotels, I just take my photos and my memories like National Park. Yes, well, thank you for beating here. Thanks, it's been weird. Yeah,

that's that's the whole idea. Chapter two. In every episode of Geeking Out, I see if I can trade one thing I've discovered with one thing that my guest has discovered, a friendly exchange. I call it trade you. I trade you one thing that I've discovered or I'm just into like a song or a Netflix show or something, and you you trade me back something small. Because you were just talking about hotel I'll go first, because you're just

talking about hotel rooms. Um, there's a thing that the band Queens and stone Age started that you might enjoy here in this and what it is is they are secret hotel wall art. So what they started doing because they travel around so much. My brother turned me on to this is they started taking tools with them and the tools were like a screwdriver and a bunch of paint pens and they will take down the art in a hotel room from the wall and draw new art

behind it and then put it back up. They started it an arts festival in Joshua Tree and they would do people's rooms. I'm showing. So they take off the painting off the wall and then they paint something behind it, and then they put the painting back on. So it says, if you're you're leaving a little secret for the next

person that stays in the room. And the reason that I think that this would be important to you is because I've always had this weird superstition that and I think it's just from too many Tom Waite's songs that, Um, when you sleep in a hotel room, you take on the dreams of the person before you, right, And that's a weird superstition. I've had my whole life as a songwriter. Um,

but this when my brother turned me onto it. We were we were leaving messages for each other because he was in the band Train and sugar Land was on tour and we were both doing amphitheaters, so backstage we were only two or three days away from each other. So we would leave things for each other behind the like the mirrors or under the desk and the production office or whatever, and Briannon would get him a couple

of days later and he would do the same for me. Well, pretty soon after that he called me and he said, man, I gotta get you some paint pens. And I said why, he goes, because I want you to look for my robot. And he started making this one particular robot that he would draw and put behind the the the pictures in the hotel room where train was vandalized. Hotel rooms, Well yeah, but I mean, you're never gonna be able to figure it out which ones, But Slash I gotta do is

pa go over it. But if you just go online and you and you it's hidden hotel wall art is what you go. Look. Have you ever found one of his world pots? I have, but he told me we're one okay, in the same hotel room. Uh yeah. I asked for a particular room and went to it because I didn't know if it was like for real and uh yeah, I think it's even cooler that in some of this research was you know, the lead singer from Quenton stone Age that started this. I love that. So

there you go. That's your treat. I love it. What I have for you is the classic TV series Roseanne. Okay, I am growing up identified with Roseanne a lot. I grew up in Alabama, but they were aggressively lower middle class, and so I love the humor of the show, but it was something like I just wanted to escape that. Hence I'm going to these nice hotels that I always loved to go to. I wanted the opulent lie. So now I think that we are living in Trump's America.

In um, ABC is actually bringing Roseanne back for ten episodes with the original cast, both Becky's I think. But they're gonna they're gonna weigh it towards Lessie Garranson, Garrison Garranson. I don't know anyway, So but going back and watching it, and especially I have the box set um a few years ago at a Walmart, I found for thirty dollars the entire series of Roseanne eight or nine. So it's a lot of DVDs have not really spent a kids

time with it. The kids grow up. But what's really illuminating is watching the episodes where Roseanne is sitting there explaining why certain storylines happened. So the one season is, um, they lose Dan, her husband loses his bike shop, and they're both out of a job, and so they were really tackling the recession that was happening in any one during the Bush years head on um and then talking about like the college fund going away, she was like,

I really that was happening. I wanted to address that. Also as a homosexual in Alabama, I um was like, there are a lot of gay people in Landford, Illinois. On Roseanne, you know, because you had Martin Mule's character who ran the ran the rod Bell's lunch counter, which I love a lunch counter. And uh, then Nancy played by Sandrew Bernhardt turned out to be a lesbian with Morgan Fairchild. And the reason that she had too she wanted two gay characters on the show because both her

brother and sister were gay. Roseanne's brother and sister are gay. Yeah, So it's just all this stuff that she was seeing from her life that she poured directly into the show. Like her daughter, Um was a vegetarian and they had these big drag outs about eating meat, and so she just made Darling a vegetarian and that played out over the course of the show. Roseanne bar write all those songs really really involved in how they went down, and

so it's just really, Um, I had no idea. Yeah, it's just a really solid show and I'm in binging it and how does it hold up? Three in a row, four and rows? It feels timely and if it feels timely, but also just really really funny and I feel like I know these people, you know in a way. Um, yeah, so the TV show rose Ane. Okay, start quoting Roseanne in my two weeks. It's totally your fault. All right, We'll get you some paint pens for Christmas. Thank you, alright,

thank you for being here. Chapter three me geeking out on music this week, Big Boy and bass drops. What is a bass drop? And why is it awesome? Have you ever heard the moment it where the band suddenly stops during the recording of your favorite song and when they break back in, the hair in your arm stands up and suddenly you feel like jumping up and down back in the day, we called it a breakdown now and as a new dame the drop in e d

M electronic dance music. One of the coolest conventions that the artists used to make people cry with the motion has been this majestic layering and adding of sounds and rhythms to build tension and then releasing the tension. The song and sounds build and build, going higher and higher until you can't help but feel the anticipation of the release when rhythm the vase finally come back in. So I am obsessed with Big boys new album, Boom Reverse,

and I've been wearing it out lately. Big Boys one half of the Atlanta hip hop band Outcast, and this is his second solo album. I love him solo, and I love his band because they've always seemed fearless to me. I love how they absorbed the influences from anywhere and everywhere around him. So one track in particular on Boomer Verse, called Chocolate, seems that it has absorbed some of this

a d M convention. Turns out, Big Boy had d JAY residency at the Wind Hotel in Vegas in sixteen, and so you can hear how he has built the drop into the perfect place in chocolate. I felt go pick up boomer Verse, downloaded by it, stream it turned someone else onto it, and next time you hear a dance song, listen for the job. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Geeking Out and we are already hard at work on the next one. Are you obsessed with

something amazing? I want to tell us a out. It right to us at Geeking Out with KB at gmail dot com and you might be a guest on an upcoming episode. Come find out more about me and this podcast at Christian Bush dot com, Christian with a K people follow me at Christian Bush on Twitter, Christian Bush on Instagram, Christian Bush on Facebook, and Christian M. Bush

on Snapchat. Thanks to Bobby Bones for the opportunity to make this podcast, Brian and Bush for making the soundtrack and assembling the pieces, Tom Tapley for audio wizardry, and Whitney Pastrick for being a great producer and making this whole thing possible. This is Christian Bush Geeking Out. Thank you for listening.