Plug “hotel music?” into Google and what you’ll get is selection of YouTube recordings like “2025 Instrumental Jazz Lounge from luxury hotels,” a one-hour-and-24-minute recording of lite jazz. It’s not as bad as Muzak, but it’s still cheesy as hell. Can’t the hotel experience offer more?
You don’t have to be a hotel guest
Hotel SLO (877 Palm St.) offers free live music in its lounge, S.Low Bar, Thursdays through Saturdays from 6 to 9 p.m. The public is welcome.
That’s the question Cal Poly graduate and Red Light Management executive Bruce Flohr set out to answer after he signed on as an investor in Hotel SLO. Now, Piazza Hospitality—which includes Hotel SLO—has started a national campaign to bring attention to how music is reshaping the hotel experience.
“I travel for a living,” Flohr explained over drinks in Hotel SLO’s lounge, “and there’re three things that drive me crazy about a hotel. Bad lighting, right? Shitty staff. And bad music. Drives me crazy. So, they said, ‘OK, well, what do you want to do?’ I said, ‘Let me take over the playlist for the hotel, so everything you hear overhead, I program.”
Flohr—who, full disclosure, was the music director of Cal Poly radio station KCPR in the ’80s when I was a DJ there—put together a Spotify play list that’s about 2,300 songs long and runs for 147 hours.
“The chances of you hearing the same song twice during your stay is minimal,” Flohr noted.
The music industry insider has been a heavy player for decades. Red Light Management represents more than 400 artists including Alabama Shakes, Allen Stone, The Strokes, Phish, The Black Keys, Sabrina Carpenter, and Chris Stapleton, who is coming to the Mid-State Fair this summer.
Anyone with access to Spotify can listen to the playlist, which is constantly developing and changing.
“I will tell you, there’s been times I’ve been sitting here [in the lobby], and something comes on, and I’m like, ‘What the fuck was I thinking? This is horrible. I gotta get it off,’” Flohr laughed. “There was a time I was down here Sunday morning, 9 a.m., having coffee, and the playlist is on, and all of a sudden, this drill-tap song—grr-grr-grr—came on, and I’m like, ‘What the hell?’ These two old ladies over the corner were freaking out. I ran over—the playlist is controlled back there—I said, ‘Turn it off! Turn it off!’ The playlist is always evolving. I’m just trying to give the hotel an energy vibe.”
His playlist is a mix of old and new. It’s a specific feeling he’s going for.
“I try to make it so that at least once you go, ‘I remember this.’ Or, ‘What is that?’” Flohr explained. “It’s all across the board. People tell me that when they come here, they hear stuff they’ve never heard before, that they fall in love with, and then a Rolling Stones song comes on. I try to avoid the cheese, you know, the sappy shit. I don’t want to name names, but stuff that your parents would like.
“Jeff Tweedy’s on the playlist, right? He’s got some killer stuff, but you wouldn’t necessarily put Jeff Tweedy [of Wilco] on a hotel playlist,” Flohr continued. “I really try to educate. It’s also helped me, as an executive, stay in touch, because it forces me to listen to new music.”
Hotel SLO has also upped its live music game. Thursdays to Saturdays from 6 to 9 p.m., it has a solo or duo act in the lounge, S.Low Bar. As Flohr noted, the idea of the music is not a concert so much as “a little ambient energy.”
“It takes a specific kind of artist to understand what the gig is, right? Nobody’s here to see you,” Flohr explained. “They’re background noise, OK, nice noise. It’s a paying gig, but if you’re gonna come in here and try to get everybody to listen to your new song that you’re so passionate about, wrong gig. You can mix that stuff in. But you’re here to kind of move the night along, and that requires somebody with less ego, right? You’re almost, in a way, a host of a party.
“So, I went to the hotel, and I said, ‘I think we need somebody to really curate this on a regular basis,’ and it just so happens that I know Liz was here,” Flohr continued, speaking about Liz Kay, a marketing and branding expert, among other talents. “I wanted somebody I could trust that had music and street knowledge and could do quality control.”
Kay, like Flohr, has long been in the music biz in LA, but after moving up here to “retire,” she started promoting up-and-coming local acts.
“You started talking to me about it last summer, and then I started [booking] in August,” Kay said. “When he asked me, he said, ‘I just don’t want to walk into my hotel and hear shitty music. Could you help me with that?’”
Kay only has 12 spots a month to fill, so she must be very selective. The artists are paid a flat rate, given a meal and two beverages, and are offered valet parking, which Kay felt was especially important for her female solo performers.
Singer-songwriter Jon Millsap of The Vibe Setters will use live looping technology to play soul, pop, hip-hop, and country on Thursday, Feb. 19.
On Friday, Feb. 20, Singer-songwriter Sami Rouissi, from Nice, France, will play his mix of folk, blues, soul, and pop-rock—think Ben Harper, Tracy Chapman, David Gray, Jimi Hendrix, and Marvin Gay.
Finally, on Saturday, Feb. 21, hear Central Coast native Jineanne Coderre play her smooth and nostalgic pop, R&B, soul, and jazz.
And next week there’ll be a different lineup. Visit hotel-slo.com to see who. ∆
Contact Arts Editor Glen Starkey at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Feb 19-26, 2026.