Hunter Raymond

Hunter is a broke aspiring musician with a small budget, an enormous dream, and one absolute requirement: nobody, ever, telling him to keep it down. Atlanta has a whole grungy, glorious neighborhood built for exactly that guy.

Hunter Raymond is a deep cut, best known as Jan’s young assistant and the author of a heartfelt, deeply awkward song about the one night the two of them spent together. But underneath the punchline is a genuine type this guide knows well: the young, broke, sincere artist who moves to a city to chase the dream, with more talent adjacent ambition than money and an unshakeable belief that the big break is one open mic away. Placing Hunter is about honoring the hustle. He doesn’t need much. He needs cheap, he needs a scene, and he needs to be able to plug in an amp at eleven at night without a neighbor calling anyone.

Who we’re working with

Hunter is an aspiring musician who was, in the meantime, an executive assistant, which is the most common day job in the history of aspiring musicians. He is an ambitious dreamer, earnest and a little naive, whose entire value system reduces to his music career and getting noticed. He wrote and performed an original song about Jan, which tells you everything about both his sincerity and his judgment. He wants to make it, he believes he will, and he needs a home that supports the grind rather than getting in its way.

His housing profile is the classic starving artist brief. An artist loft or studio apartment, urban, in an artistic and musical neighborhood. His deal breaker, perfectly, is noise restrictions, because a musician who can’t make noise is just a guy with an expensive hobby he can’t practice. His budget is $150,000 to $200,000, one of the smallest on the site, which means we’re talking about a cheap little place or a rental in a scrappy scene, not a loft with a view. Hunter isn’t buying a lifestyle. He’s buying proximity to a stage.

The match: East Atlanta Village

Hunter belongs in East Atlanta Village, the beating grungy heart of Atlanta’s DIY music scene.

It beats his own headline pick for a simple reason. East Atlanta Village is the city’s scrappy, indie, live music neighborhood, all dive bars and small venues and working musicians, the kind of place where the whole culture is built around people making noise and everyone else being into it. It’s affordable in a way the trendier arts neighborhoods no longer are, it’s genuinely musical rather than just artsy, and it’s about as far from a noise complaint as you can get in the city limits. For a broke kid who needs a cheap place, a music scene, and permission to be loud, EAV is the dream. He can afford to live near the stages, he can play out, and he can grind toward the break surrounded by people doing exactly the same thing.

His stated primary was Little Five Points, and the instinct is right, since L5P is the alternative arts and music soul of the city. But it runs pricier and tighter than his budget really allows, and it leans a little more punk retail than live music DIY. For where Hunter actually is, young, broke, and needing to play, East Atlanta Village is the smarter room. It’s cheaper, it’s louder, and it’s the neighborhood where the actual working musician dream gets chased on a working musician budget.

The alternatives

Little Five Points. His headline pick, and a great music and arts neighborhood with real countercultural energy. It loses to EAV on price and on being more about the scene’s storefront than its stages, but Hunter would be happy here if he could swing it.

Old Fourth Ward. On the BeltLine with real creative energy and some music in the mix, but it gentrified into prices well past Hunter’s budget. The dream, five years and one record deal too early.

Edgewood. The nightlife and bars strip right by East Atlanta, cheapish and lively and close to the action. A legitimate budget friendly option for a young guy who wants to be near the noise.

The verdict

Hunter rents a cheap little place in or around East Atlanta Village, plugs in, plays out, and chases the dream in the one part of town that will never once ask him to turn it down.

He’s the young hopeful of the whole roster, and Atlanta is genuinely a good city to be one in, with EAV as the right first landing spot: affordable, musical, and gloriously tolerant of a loud amp and a big dream. He won’t have much, but he’ll have a stage within walking distance and a scene that gets it, which for Hunter is the entire point. Whether the break comes is up to Hunter and the music. The neighborhood, at least, is exactly right.

Carol Stills is next, and Carol is a realtor, so she is going to have thoughts about all of this.