CONVERSATIONS
27 January/February 2019 StPeteLifeMag.com
John Kelly
Petersburg’s live music
venues. You can get
wine and beer, but
it isn’t a bar, exactly.
There’s a kitchen, which
turns out pretty tasty
food, but it’s not really
a restaurant. First and
foremost, the Hideaway
10th anniversary – is a
“listening room.”
Essential to the culture
of music-centric cities
like Nashville, Austin
and even New York, a
listening room puts the
performers onstage, with
a top-notch, hear-the-pin-drop sound system and lights that don’t
do anything but make the musicians easier to see.
And that’s just what John Kelly, the Hideaway’s owner/operator,
intended.
“No one’s sitting facing the bar,” he explains. “The whole place is
set up to look at the stage. So even the biggest, heaviest nights
in here, for the most part you tend to watch the show. It’s not
just background, no matter where you are in the room. And what
about when there’s a hundred people in there, and it’s totally
A native of Teaneck, New Jersey, Kelly got the acoustic,
audiophile bug during the near-decade he spent in Nashville,
working as a graphic designer, mortgage broker, bartender, chef
and whatever else it took to keep food on the table while he
pursued his passion for music.
“I moved to Nashville with zero plan,” he says. “I was 23 or 24, and
at that point.” He played guitar in a band called Left Field Jackson,
which always seemed to be teetering on the edge of success
Kelly’s part. Piece by piece, he created a recording studio in the
basement of the band’s communal house.
Kelly arrived in St. Pete
with crates of mics,
mixers, guitars and
best of the best, testrun
over his years in
Recording Studio Inc.,
in the carriage house
behind the home he
rented.
The current Hideaway
began as a studio. Since
he was leasing more
space than he needed,
Kelly reckoned, why not
build a stage, so when
a band, or an acoustic
artist, was ready to
release their record,
they could celebrate with a party and performance?
“comfy and cozy” vibe. The public was allowed in on Thursdays,
for Open Mic Night. Then Kelly got a license to sell beer and
wine, which led to Fridays and Saturdays, and booking local
and regional performers for the stage. Over time, the schedule
expanded.
it out with a commercial kitchen. And so the Hideaway became
From the start, the idea was to enforce the direct connection
between artist and audience, by not being a bar with its attendant
noise and bustle.
“From a band standpoint, that’s loud and it works,” Kelly
you get someone just telling a story, you can’t do that in a bar. If
they’re a really good writer, you miss it all.”
This story has been edited; to read the entire story go to Catalyst,
St. Pete’s daily business platform, at StPeteCatalyst.com. Hideaway
Café is located at 1756 Central Avenue, St. Petersburg.
St. Pete’s Hideaway Cafe
BY BILL DEYOUNG
ST. PETE
/StPeteLifeMag.com
/StPeteCatalyst.com