Dallas Hudgens

Rachel Kline

Eric Muniec

Adam Neubauer

Jay Smith

Songs by Dallas Hudgens

Produced by Jay Smith

Art by Zach Dodson

Can a place inspire a song? For Dallas Hudgens, a childhood memory of visiting New York City’s St. Regis Hotel helped to bring an entire musical project to life -- with an assist from one of the 20th century’s most famous artists.  “I was on the elevator with my mother, and Salvador Dalí was on the elevator too,” Hudgens recalled. “I didn’t know who he was, but I was fascinated by his mustache, his hair, his suit.  After we got off the elevator, my mother told me he was a famous artist.”

It’s an image that recurs on the self-titled debut album from Regis Hotel, Hudgens’s solo project. While much of his creative output to date has come in the form of prose — Hudgens is the author of two novels and a short story collection — he’s also spent years writing music, both in the band Jean’s TV and now, with Regis Hotel.

It was through his Jean’s TV bandmate Fox Vernon that Hudgens first met Jay Smith, of Middle Distance Runner, who produced Regis Hotel. Smith also recommended several of the musicians who played on the album — including Adam Neubauer (Ghoti Hook, The Beanstalk Library) and Eric Muniec (Ritual Division).

Much of Regis Hotel taps into a brooding register, with memories, mortality and emotional unrest among the lyrical concerns. Musically speaking, the songs on this album occupy a textured space — a sound that wouldn’t have been out of place on 4AD Records in the early 90s. Relentless percussion figures prominently in “Words Like Ghosts” and “Alleyway,” while the introductory combination of “Opening in Darkness” and “Alleyway” meticulously draws the listener into Regis Hotel’s soundspace.

“I had read an article about researchers who played a specific piano chord to try to help people with chronic nightmares,” Hudgens said of the album’s opening songs. “I played the chord on a synthesizer and then tried to write a song about nightmares on top of it.”

“Can You Wait?” — which features vocals from Flowerbomb’s Rachel Kline — shifts the mood of the album via the interplay of the two vocalists. That element of the song takes on a more haunted tone when you consider the lyrics. “It’s about retreating from the world and people because of fear or depression,” Hudgens said, “and hoping the people you care most about don’t forget you.”

“Birthday Card,” whose lyrics give the project its title, isn’t the only song in which liminal spaces factor into the album. Hotel rooms fueled Regis Hotel in different ways.  “When I was younger, I saw hotels as a refuge,” Hudgens said. “Later, I realized a hotel room can be one of the loneliest and most self-reflective places in the world.  It can turn up all the losses in life.”

It’s the moving “Words Like Ghosts” —with lyrics like “words will die/ by the frozen sea” — that evokes the most complex emotions on the album.

“I was thinking about my mother when I wrote ‘Words Like Ghosts.’ She and I were always close like friends, but we never really had to speak to enjoy each other’s company,” he recalled. “And now she has dementia and rarely speaks, and that can be difficult, but it has reminded me that words were never that important in our relationship.”

It’s another way in which the St. Regis Hotel — and Regis Hotel — brings Hudgens’s life and art full circle.

by Tobias Carroll