First Look: A Historic Texas Hotel Debuts Its Own Recording Studio

The first place that legendary bluesman Robert Johnson ever recorded music was a hotel room—specifically suite 414—at San Antonio’s Gunter Hotel. The three-day session would canonize sixteen songs, including “Sweet Home Chicago,” “Rambling on My Mind,” and “Cross Road Blues.” It would also cement the Gunter’s reputation as a hub for music—one that just got a little more official with the opening of an on-site recording studio.

The hotel’s history actually began a full century before Johnson checked in, when an inn called the Frontier opened in the heart of town in 1837. (The Battle of the Alamo, about a five-minute walk away, had taken place just the year before.) Over the next few decades, the building would change hands and names—and serve a stint as barracks for soldiers during the Mexican-American War—before opening its doors as the Gunter, an eight-story, 301-room hotel, in 1909.

Music has long been a throughline of the historic building. Alphonse Trent headed up the Gunter’s resident band from 1916 to 1918 before going on to become a celebrated jazz pianist and bandleader. The hotel has housed multiple music venues, from a nightclub in the basement to a rooftop space, over the years. WOAI radio, San Antonio’s oldest station, regularly aired programs and broadcasted live shows from the Gunter. And in the 1930s, on its mission to document the distinctive sounds of American music, the American Record Corporation recorded the Chuck Wagon Gang and signed Lydia Mendoza, a Mexican American singer, at the Gunter.

“How do you make all that into something people can experience, not just as history?” asks Elizabeth Fauerso, the Gunter’s lead music consultant. Her answer just opened this month.

Though the new recording studio, tucked into a former storage room on the second floor, will be available to students and nonprofits, it will also operate as a commercial space for professional musicians. Grammy Award–winning producer and songwriter Michael Ramos teamed up with acoustician Steve Derr to design the intimate studio, starting with the addition of a Neve Genesys Black forty-eight-channel hybrid mixing console. There’s a live room where bands play, a separate control room with the mixing board and acoustic-panel-lined walls, and an adjacent lounge. Ramos and Derr also wired up Johnson’s famed suite 414, and recordings there can be piped down into the studio.

Beyond the studio, the Gunter has undergone a full facelift while retaining the original facade, vaulted ceilings, and grand lobby staircase. The refurbishment includes plenty of nods to music. There’s a record player in every room, a 1,000-strong collection of vinyl albums in the lobby awaiting guests’ perusal, and a staff on hand to provide recommendations.

The team at the Gunter—plus a special council that includes blues artist Nicky Diamonds, musician and producer Adrian Quesada of the Black Pumas, and San Antonio guitarist Joe Reyes—have big plans for the future of music at the hotel. Already, a singer-songwriter performance series is underway, Fauerso is fielding booking requests for the studio, and, come November, Robert Johnson’s grandson, Steven, will arrive for a special celebration commemorating the ninetieth anniversary of Johnson’s seminal recording. “You think about these studios throughout history that have their own identity, like Muscle Shoals and Abbey Road and Jimi Hendrix’s studio in New York, where there’s magic in the walls,” Fauerso says. “I think a lot of people feel that way about the Gunter.”