There is an incredibly fine line between a packed, bustling dining room that’s too loud and a packed, bustling dining room that’s just loud enough. One will make you cranky; the other will make you feel like you’re an extra in one of those TV shows where the main characters regularly have meaningful, plot-driving conversations at their city’s hippest new restaurants.

Charlie Reyes understands this distinction. He is the man behind the playlists at Charlie Bird and Pasquale Jones, two restaurants in downtown Manhattan that could easily appear on those aforementioned shows. Charlie Bird came first, a restaurant for hot people who had a thing for really good wine and ‘90s New York hip-hop. Reyes was working as a server when the restaurant’s owners, Robert Bohr and Ryan Hardy, asked him to take over the playlist.

Since then, he has started his own company, Audio Culture LLC, through which he curates music for a number of restaurants. He’ll be doing the same for Henry Hall, a newly opened residential building that will soon include a bar and restaurant from the Delicious Hospitality team (which owns both Charlie Bird and Pasquale Jones). GQ talked to him about how he goes about shaping a soundtrack for a space, and how to make your next dinner party playlist a little cooler.

GQ: How did you start managing the music at Charlie Bird?
Reyes: About 6 months into me working here I was asked to put a playlist together. Robert and Ryan are really big, lifelong hip-hop fans. The more we talked, I think they felt the energy or the passion that I have for hip-hop specifically—it’s a big part of what I perceive to be important. And they didn’t necessarily have a time to put together all the music that was out there that fitted into what they wanted to do. The concept of Charlie Bird was old-school New York hip-hop—but that’s at least a decade of music. We just weren’t hearing enough of it.

How did that music affect the other aspects of the restaurant?
If you’re a hip-hop fan, that ‘90s era—especially if you grew up in New York—is super influential. This generation now grew up listening to the same stuff—so if felt like the right time to open up this place that created super positive nostalgia, which food and wine do too. There’s either a new memory being made or a new memory being reflected on, and music has that same power. I think Charlie Bird wanted to have all these things bounce off of each other. I’ve worked there four years, and I can’t tell you how many times I hear people say, “Oh man, do you remember this song? I haven’t heard this song in forever!” It makes people not want to leave.


When you start making a playlist for a new place, what sorts of things do you take into consideration?
Music is very similar to food and drink—when someone asks you to create something for them you have to get a sense of what they are looking for and who they are. What energy are they trying to put into the space?

So that’s kind of the approach I take: What energy are you looking for? What style do you want to play? Some genres, though heavy in nostalgia, won’t produce the energy you’re looking for in a dining room in New York—the music may not have the BPMs behind it to make the room want to turn. If it’s a casual setting, you might want to hear things that are nostalgia-heavy and not necessarily high energy. But in a restaurant, you want to have peaks and valleys that reflect the average time that a guest dines—every 2 1/2 to 3 hours you want to turn that energy up. If they’re having dessert, you want the music to be something where they’re like, “Dude, let’s go do something, let’s go drink something, let’s go be somewhere.” By 10:30, the music can come down massively to a super chill, relaxed state. At that time at night, chill music makes people want to leave—it’s like, “Hey honey, let’s get out of here.”

I spent a good amount of time working in nightclubs, and in those spaces you learn that depending on the time of the night there are songs that you will play or won’t play because there are certain emotions you can’t get back once they’re released. If you play the hot shit at 9:30 P.M., you’re never gonna get that song back. When you can understand music from that perspective, it’s a lot easier to apply it to what you’re doing to business spaces. It’s another tool to sell things.

Are there any songs that you know will always be a hit?
Any space that I’ve been in, if you ever play Spottieottiedopaliscious by Outkast—those horns drop and everyone’s like, “Holy shit dude, I haven’t heard this song in forever.” In a space like Pasquale [Jones], which is more R&B driven, anything we play by Michael gets an immediate response. Probably Off the Wall in particular. It’s a little more of a Motown song, or a Michael fan song, but after the first time you hear Off the Wall, I would dare say it becomes your favorite Michael song. It’s that song that everyone forgets about because Rock with You and PYT are on that album. But that song makes me dance.

Do you have any advice for making a dinner party playlist?
I think that what’s really cool about putting a playlist together at home is you already know your guest list—it’s different from trying to anticipate the clientele on any night. That in itself is very liberating—it not only allows you to play whatever you want, but also whenever you want, because it’s such a personal and informal setting.

But you’re also not wrong if you’re setting it up the same way [as you would in a restaurant]: the first hour and a half people are arriving, maybe you play some cool, chill, old-school hip-hop. If I were throwing a party I would play a some old-school Tribe, maybe some Earth, Wind & Fire—but not like September; you want Sun Goddess Earth, Wind & Fire—intimate, chill music you can have in the background that’s not intrusive. In the second or third hour, if you’re trying to get a dance party going, you drop some Travis Scott, you play some Goosebumps—if you want to go a different route, that’s when you play PYT. You can play anything by Prince, you can play 1999—everyone is up on their feet. And if you get to the point of the night where you want to indirectly ask your friends to leave, play more mellow stuff. I would play anything from Anderson Paak’s Malibu—what I love about that album in particular is that it has songs that fit all three of those time slots. There’s a different energy, but it’s still a smooth vibe.

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