Let me start by introducing myself, I am a local NC Restaurant owner. In 2015, I saw the booming market of Food Trucks and wanted to get involved but did not know exactly how to go about it. I knew I did not want hot dogs, BBQ, tacos or any ordinary truck. I wanted something premium and delicious. My wife and I had been to the North recently and fell in love with Maine style seafood rolls and we could not find them in the area with the typical southern charm of tons of mayo. So, I started my research and founded Lobster Dogs. We started the Lobster Dogs Food Truck with a simple idea and 1 trailer, to create a concept that focuses on a limited menu with premium ingredients and the ability to get premium prices for the product.

When guitarist Nathan Hallman and electric mandolin player Will Ruff met through Vampr, a local musician-finding app in 2017, the two knew right away they wanted their music to extend beyond a duo of college students playing in Ruff’s living room in Athens, Georgia. Recruiting Ruff’s music school classmates Quentin Smith to play the bass, drummer Josh Siar and saxophonist Jacob Selvaggi to expand their sound, the jazz band The Family Recipe was formed with a mission to focus on fun, friendship and funky music. 

With original songs, entitled “Mushroom for Improvement,” “Side Eyes” and “Uptown Down,” each of the five members in the group bring their own unique contribution to the process of creating the band’s blend of jazz, jam and blues. Starting with a simple suggestion then allowing each member to add their own creative spin to create the finished product, The Family Recipe’s lyrics are a completely collective process.

Made up almost entirely of Athens musicians who play in other bands around town (including former members of the Drive-By Truckers and the Glands), The Pink Stones match their frontman’s vast musical vocabulary while adding their own twists to spacey honkytonk, pedal-to-the-metal trucker anthems, and ecstatic gospel. Together, they have the range to be whatever they need to be at any given moment, embracing the spirit of musical freedom that has animated the local music scene for more than forty years. Yet, The Pink Stones sound like no other Athens band.

The success of their 2021 debut, Introducing…The Pink Stones, took them far away from home and kept them out on tour for long stretches. That album laid out the parameters of their sound, winning accolades from Rolling Stone, No Depression, and American Songwriter and comparisons to Gram Parsons, the Byrds, and the Grateful Dead. But when they took those songs on the road, they busted right through all of those parameters, pushing their music in new directions and coalescing into a tougher, tighter live act. Very quickly The Pink Stones developed a reputation for their raucous rock shows, and the intensity, ingenuity, and unpredictability they cultivated on stages across America informs their sophomore album.

We are Hotel Fiction, a band out of Athens GA! We’re just two gals, Jade and Jess, who are making our dreams come true one day at a time. After graduating college in May of 2021, we have been playing shows around the country with bands like flipturn, Adam Melchor, Beach Fossils, The Brook & The Bluff, and more!

Later that Summer we released our debut album “Soft Focus”, and are currently working on new music coming very soon. We feel very grateful to do this whole music thing, and we hope our music can make your bad days (and good days) even better.

Last Sunday of every month.