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We're chatting about the people, places, events, and flavors that make Johnson City, Tennessee a lovely place to live. An interview show hosted by Colin Johnson.
Proud member of the Maypop Media family of podcasts.
0:00:00 - (Colin Johnson): It is a gorgeous fall day here at Johnson City. The leaves are falling, the air is a little crisper. We are recovering from Helene, and it's just been awesome to see the volunteers stay. Not just be a name, but it's, like, amazing how our community is coming together to help out all the people who are suffering from flooding, and we're going to be rebuilding for years. And so you guys can pray for us as we're redoing that. But enough of the down stuff. I am excited, excited to bring these new guests to the podcast for you guys to meet. Welcome to the podcast, Adrian and Dendal Rogers.
0:00:35 - (Adrien Rogers): Thank you very much.
0:00:36 - (Colin Johnson): You guys own. You're starting a new business called the Feisty Pigeon, right?
0:00:41 - (Adrien Rogers): That is correct.
0:00:42 - (Colin Johnson): And that's going to be in Johnson City.
0:00:43 - (Adrien Rogers): It is right in downtown.
0:00:44 - (Colin Johnson): Okay, well, you guys are podcast listeners, so you probably know what the first question is. What most do you love about Johnson?
0:00:53 - (Ddendyl Rogers): Oh, there's a lot. First and foremost, the people. We love the people. It's just been such a pleasure getting to know the community, and everyone's been so warm and receptive. And if you're just born raised and never left Tennessee, you don't know that other places are not like that. We love the people. It's just such a beautiful area. Every time I'm driving pretty much anywhere, I'm just in awe of how gorgeous this area is. I told him last week, if you want me to ever leave, I will be dead.
0:01:37 - (Colin Johnson): You have to carry me out if he doesn't get any prison.
0:01:41 - (Ddendyl Rogers): That's right. I like it.
0:01:43 - (Colin Johnson): Or you have some sort of contest where you try and find someplace prettier and you just see the whole world. Yeah, probably not. Go. I don't think you're gonna find it.
0:01:51 - (Ddendyl Rogers): I don't think so either. I've lived in a lot of places, and this is by far the prettiest I've ever lived in.
0:01:55 - (Adrien Rogers): Yep. Yeah.
0:01:56 - (Colin Johnson): It's a great community.
0:01:58 - (Adrien Rogers): Great community. You know, the art scene, you know, it just. It's a really cool place. The foundation that is built on is really cool. And we enjoy, you know, the downtown area, especially all the local business owners. And everybody has been super helpful with us getting this up and going. So it's been, um. It's been a refreshing change of pace, I think.
0:02:20 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, I like it. I like it. Okay, so no traffic. No traffic.
0:02:24 - (Ddendyl Rogers): No traffic.
0:02:25 - (Colin Johnson): Sorta ish. Maybe we get mad when we can't get through one light. You know, you're like, seriously, I gotta wait here twice. Yeah.
0:02:33 - (Adrien Rogers): I don't know.
0:02:33 - (Colin Johnson): Where did you guys come from? Where'd you move from?
0:02:35 - (Adrien Rogers): We moved here from Charlotte, North Carolina.
0:02:37 - (Colin Johnson): So you got a little traffic over there?
0:02:38 - (Adrien Rogers): A little bit, yeah.
0:02:39 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah. And then you said you lived lots of places. Where? All over.
0:02:42 - (Ddendyl Rogers): You live how? Well, before Charlotte I was in Las Vegas. I had a performing residency on the Strip. And before Vegas I was. Where was I? I was in DC, DC, Baltimore area. I've lived in Traverse City, Michigan, Miami, Florida, Los Angeles. Pretty sure I'm forgetting places. But we grew up in western New York. That's how we known each other.
0:03:13 - (Colin Johnson): Well, that's cool.
0:03:13 - (Ddendyl Rogers): Friends for a long time.
0:03:14 - (Colin Johnson): You met when you were six, you said earlier, and now you're married.
0:03:19 - (Ddendyl Rogers): Yes.
0:03:19 - (Adrien Rogers): Yes, we are.
0:03:19 - (Colin Johnson): Just took a little while.
0:03:21 - (Adrien Rogers): It did take a while.
0:03:21 - (Colin Johnson): Did you guys, like, talk the whole time?
0:03:24 - (Adrien Rogers): Yeah, we've always been friends. We've always maintained that relationship. So, yeah, it was a little bit longer than I'm sure she would have preferred, but we got there eventually.
0:03:32 - (Ddendyl Rogers): He broke up with me in the 7th grade. Sometimes he came back around.
0:03:37 - (Colin Johnson): We just don't know what we're doing. Not very well.
0:03:39 - (Adrien Rogers): We can't rely on.
0:03:40 - (Colin Johnson): If you haven't figured that out, rely.
0:03:42 - (Adrien Rogers): On the good decision making skills of a teenage boy. You know?
0:03:45 - (Colin Johnson): This is true. One of my friends who runs a coalition for kids, he tells me often that the brain for guys is definitely not fully formed until we're like 28. And I'm still not sure major life decisions before then. So you were just waiting?
0:03:59 - (Adrien Rogers): Just waiting on the right time and.
0:04:01 - (Colin Johnson): You knew, like, maybe, but I want to make sure.
0:04:03 - (Adrien Rogers): Yes. Yep.
0:04:05 - (Colin Johnson): I like it. So were you downtown and you got in a fight with a pigeon or like, did one just poke you in the foot or something?
0:04:13 - (Adrien Rogers): Close to that. My wife is a big fan of pigeons.
0:04:18 - (Ddendyl Rogers): I love pigeons.
0:04:18 - (Adrien Rogers): We happened to be out seeing a friend of mine play music at a distillery in Charlotte. And on the wall was a picture that had pigeons on.
0:04:26 - (Colin Johnson): It.
0:04:27 - (Adrien Rogers): Happened to be her birthday. I bought that picture for her and the name of that photo was feisty pigeons, which eventually snowballed into the feisty pigeon. As a little tip of the hat to that.
0:04:39 - (Colin Johnson): I love it. I love it. That's great. That's a neat story to that. Yeah. I don't know if, like, you got accosted by some pigeon. Most people aren't pigeon fans, so that's pretty exciting.
0:04:48 - (Adrien Rogers): She's a bigger fan than I, you know, but, you know, it's about compromise, right?
0:04:53 - (Colin Johnson): Right.
0:04:54 - (Adrien Rogers): Yeah.
0:04:55 - (Ddendyl Rogers): He's coming around.
0:04:56 - (Colin Johnson): You might need a feisty pigeon to guard your front doorstep whenever you're downtown.
0:05:01 - (Adrien Rogers): We're working on training a guard pigeon.
0:05:03 - (Colin Johnson): That means fly to all the other ones, I think, pooping here, right? Don't be running off our people, sir. Feisty pigeon is what. What is this thing that you're.
0:05:13 - (Adrien Rogers): Firstly, we are a wine bar, and we will be Johnson City's, as I'm aware, first wine bar. So we will be the first, newest, and oldest wine bar in Johnson City.
0:05:24 - (Colin Johnson): I like it. And only.
0:05:26 - (Adrien Rogers): Yep, yep. But we will also have a cocktail program with that as well. And then we'll do some beer, some seasonal kind of rotation stuff there. We'll be offering some small plate kind of items as far as food goes. So we'll have charcuterie, some spreads, things like that, little desserts. And then we'll also have an artwork kind of component to it. So we'll have artwork for sale throughout the space, as well as kind of a retail area up front. And then we'll be doing some live music there, provided by my wife, who's an amazingly talented musician as well.
0:05:57 - (Colin Johnson): Well, and she alluded to the fact she was a resident on the Strip.
0:06:01 - (Adrien Rogers): It doesn't come easy.
0:06:03 - (Colin Johnson): Tell us more about that.
0:06:05 - (Ddendyl Rogers): So I did eight years in Las Vegas. Six of those was working almost exclusively for an MGM casino right on the boulevard. And it was my show three days a week. It was a lot of fun. I guess how I got there was I did the voice a long time ago. And did you get picked? I was on Team Shakira for a few months.
0:06:33 - (Colin Johnson): That's awesome.
0:06:34 - (Ddendyl Rogers): So that kind of catapulted me, being able to be a full time musician, and I've played all over the country, and I do primarily now I actually do dueling piano shows and corporate and private events. So the idea of not just combining what we do together was we wanted to spend a little more time together, since we're a little late to the marriage party, but we wanted to spend some more time together, and we figured a place that houses both our passions would be the best way to do that.
0:07:08 - (Colin Johnson): Gotcha. Now, Adrian, do you play the piano? Are you gonna be the other dueling piano?
0:07:11 - (Adrien Rogers): No, that would be just mean to everybody involved.
0:07:16 - (Colin Johnson): Gotcha. Alley. To her. Yeah. That'd be like.
0:07:18 - (Ddendyl Rogers): He's been. Plays guitar, though. Don't let him fool you. He's very talented as well.
0:07:23 - (Colin Johnson): Okay. I like it. I like it. That's cool. Thanks for sharing about that. I bet that was a pretty cool ride.
0:07:30 - (Ddendyl Rogers): It was very cool.
0:07:31 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah. Okay, so where are you guys gonna be located? Where's this spicy pigeon?
0:07:36 - (Adrien Rogers): We are at 109 Cherry street, suite 20. So we are located in the Cherry Street Commons shopping center with southern craft is the one on the end. We're in the shops there beside that, between made beauty and into the fire, where we're located.
0:07:52 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, that's. That's a good spot.
0:07:55 - (Adrien Rogers): We think so as well.
0:07:56 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, southern craft is just fantastic. We tip our hat to those guys.
0:08:01 - (Adrien Rogers): All the time, so we eat there a lot.
0:08:05 - (Colin Johnson): Their wings are unbelievable. So tell me about, like, wine and how you got into that, right? There's a million businesses you could start. How did you get an affinity for wine? Where did you learn how to curate? Take us through the whole stuff, the whole process. So wounds farm forward.
0:08:22 - (Adrien Rogers): Yeah. So where we grew up is just right beside the finger lakes in New York. Had absolutely no bearing on my wine career. We had no idea that we were in the backyard of a world class wine region until way later in life. But which I think it's too cold.
0:08:43 - (Colin Johnson): I think maybe in my mind, I'm like, if you're outside Buffalo, very. We're most notably, every day in the winter.
0:08:50 - (Adrien Rogers): Most notably, that region is known for their ice wine, which is where you let the grapes freeze on the vines, and so you get a little bit of sweeter wine because you just press them while they're still frozen. Get that nice, sweet juice. That's what they're known for. But as with, you know, all the other growing regions, things are warming up a little bit, and so therefore, you're starting to see a lot more different grape varietals pop up in that region, and even some, like, pinot noirs and chardonnays, the ones that people are familiar with. That's cool. Yeah.
0:09:20 - (Adrien Rogers): But other than that, I've just. I've been in the restaurant industry pretty much my whole entire life. My parents owned a diner when I was born, so just worked my way up and eventually found myself on the bar side of things and fell in love with wine. Not the traditional wine bug, I will say. For me, I was working cocktails and doing wine, but I gravitated towards wine specifically for the money. So it was easier to sell expensive bottles of wine than it was to sell ten cocktails for the same price.
0:09:51 - (Adrien Rogers): So that's what drove me into wine, and from there, it was basically just being a big nerd, and it gave me the opportunity to just dive into something that you can never learn all about. And so that's where I kind of found my love for wine was the technical side of things. Yeah, that's cool.
0:10:08 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah. And now, have you studied it and you've gone to different vineyards all over the country? I mean, how do you find these wines that, like. Yeah, how does one open a wine bar? And it's like, okay, these are the wines we're gonna serve.
0:10:21 - (Adrien Rogers): So, you know, there is the fun part about it, which is that you get to drink a bunch of wine. Right. I have been to many, many different vineyards and wine regions and things like that all over the country. And really, the best part about wine is that you can open a book in a bottle and you can go anywhere in the world. Right. Which I like about that. You can. You can travel just from the comfort of your couch while you're learning something.
0:10:51 - (Adrien Rogers): And that was probably my favorite aspect of it. So I just. Yeah, that was pretty much it. Just bottles and books is how I got to where I am and then decided one day I thought I knew enough, so I took the sommelier certification exam and passed that, which opened a lot of doors for me career wise, and then pretty much done everything in the industry besides owning my own place. So that's how I got here.
0:11:12 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:11:12 - (Adrien Rogers): You know, just checking that box set.
0:11:14 - (Colin Johnson): Pretty awesome.
0:11:15 - (Adrien Rogers): Yeah.
0:11:15 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah. Now, did you like wine as well?
0:11:18 - (Ddendyl Rogers): I love wine. I love how much he loves wine, but, I mean, I did not have the extensive knowledge that he did. I bartended in my earlier days, and that was a lot of fun. But I was more the nightclub bartender. Not really the super fancy, knowledgeable type of bartender and waiter and all that. I was more volume, but I enjoy wine a lot. But he's definitely. He's upgraded my palette. I feel like I can taste better wines than I did before, though.
0:12:04 - (Ddendyl Rogers): There was a bottle last week that was turned, and he was like, oh, don't drink that. And I thought it was delicious, but, you know. So I guess we're not there yet. But don't worry, he's handling the wine selection, and I'm just handling. Helping him.
0:12:21 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, I love it. That's fine. You said you also had culinary experience. Both. You both have culinary experience, too, because you're going to be serving small plates and that kind of stuff.
0:12:32 - (Adrien Rogers): I have worked every facet of the restaurant industry. I started back a house, or in the kitchen, if you will. Back house is an industry term for that. But I started, quite literally, flipping burgers at a racetrack and worked my way up. I worked steakhouse, sushi, pretty much all the cuisines in between. So I do have that experience that I can bring to the table as well.
0:12:56 - (Colin Johnson): That's cool. Yeah. Are you gonna have a kitchen there, or.
0:12:59 - (Adrien Rogers): We do, yep.
0:13:00 - (Colin Johnson): So this is gonna be a big deal.
0:13:02 - (Adrien Rogers): We hope so. Yeah.
0:13:04 - (Ddendyl Rogers): And eventually, we'd like to. We're gonna, you know, one of our focuses, menu wise, is gonna be our charcuterie offerings, and we're gonna. We're trying not to just offer, you know, cheddar and grapes. We're trying to offer cheeses that people haven't heard before and, you know, finer meats and stuff like that. I don't have as much culinary experience as he does. Like I said, I bartended. I'd worked in restaurants, but as far as making food and recipes, that was just kind of home taught for me. But we eventually would like to do weddings and private parties and stuff like that and do the grazing tables and whatnot. So that's going to be something that we're hoping to get to pretty quickly as well.
0:13:47 - (Colin Johnson): So, yeah, those are cool. I like that. It's a great idea. Tell me about, like, the atmosphere in there. What's it gonna feel like? What do you hope the guest is gonna enjoy most about it?
0:13:59 - (Adrien Rogers): So, I think aesthetically and as far as the vibe, if you will, that we're going for is we want it to be a little refined, but still fun, so. And comfortable. You know, we don't want it to come across as a stuffy place where you might not feel comfortable or you may not feel like, you know, it's. You're underdressed, things like that. So, you know, we'll be bright, colorful. It'll be fun, you know, and that's because being the first wine bar here, we want it to be accessible to everyone, and we want it to be a fun experience. So it can be your, you know, date night spot where you can come and dress up a little bit.
0:14:39 - (Adrien Rogers): It can be your after work spot where you come in and grab a glass with your friends and everything in between.
0:14:45 - (Colin Johnson): So, yeah. And then are you gonna be open every day, or how often are you gonna be?
0:14:51 - (Adrien Rogers): We will be closed on Mondays and Tuesdays so that we can recuperate and have some time for ourselves, and that lets us provide a better experience, you know, if we're well rested. So we'll be closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, and then we'll be opening the afternoons, Wednesday, Thursday, and then all day Friday Saturday brunch on Sunday.
0:15:09 - (Colin Johnson): Cool.
0:15:10 - (Adrien Rogers): Yes.
0:15:11 - (Colin Johnson): We love brunch.
0:15:12 - (Ddendyl Rogers): We're also hoping at some point to do well. It's not beer church, because it's one church. But I've always loved how House of Blues does their gospel brunch. And so we are going to do praise and pinot. Pinot and praise.
0:15:28 - (Adrien Rogers): We'll workshop it.
0:15:30 - (Colin Johnson): Tell me about House of Blues. I didn't know they did this. So what do they do?
0:15:34 - (Ddendyl Rogers): So they do a gospel branch on Sundays and where they just bring in a big old choir and they praise the Lord and eat a lot of food. We kind of want to do a very similar thing someplace that's very comfortable. Our faith means a lot to us, so we want everybody to feel very welcome. And it's not. It's like the sign. The place we like y'all means all.
0:16:01 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:16:02 - (Ddendyl Rogers): And we just want everybody to have a place that if they wouldn't necessarily step in a traditional church, that they feel like they have a place that they can just come and worship. Come and worship and get a little word in. We're gonna try to find some pastors to do like a mini message and rotate and stuff like that. A little bit down the line. We need to open up first and get our.
0:16:27 - (Colin Johnson): Get your feet.
0:16:28 - (Ddendyl Rogers): Get our feet in the water and everything.
0:16:30 - (Adrien Rogers): With the younger crowd, with the university so close, and then, of course, the downtown residents being younger crowd at our age, you know, we thought that there may be a call for something like that. You know, come down, grab a glass of wine, listen to a little message, you know, be out by football.
0:16:47 - (Colin Johnson): I think that's super cool. Yeah, I bet. I hope that takes off. I think if the Lord put it on your heart to do that, then it's gonna thrive and go well. Yeah. What do you guys like to do for fun when you're not trying to.
0:17:00 - (Adrien Rogers): Open a restaurant, be outside as much as we can. That's, you know, that's why we love the area. She asked me where I might want to be to retire. And I've always heard, you know, the western part of the Appalachian Mountains is just beautiful, you know, and having access to the lakes and the, you know, the being able to go paddle and kayak, go hike, things like that are huge to us. We love the area for that.
0:17:24 - (Colin Johnson): It is so beautiful here. Even with the craziness going on, it's still.
0:17:28 - (Adrien Rogers): You can't.
0:17:28 - (Colin Johnson): You look up and you're like, I didn't even. And from a distance, it just looks amazing still. Yes, it's beauty. And then just the raw power of it all was just unbelievable. To see the different thing driving through now. It's crazy.
0:17:41 - (Ddendyl Rogers): Yeah.
0:17:42 - (Colin Johnson): So what are some things that have led. How did you choose Johnson City? Let's talk about that, because there are a lot of places in the world, and you guys, you lived in, like, 30 different places. So how'd you choose little Johnson City off the map?
0:17:58 - (Adrien Rogers): So we were looking to go on our anniversary honeymoon trip, and we had, at that point, settled on Savannah. She had never been told her it's a cool little vacation spot, but she also included in that same statement that she had never been on a winter mountain vacation. So I took a look on Airbnb just to kind of see what might be through the mountains here, and we found a little spot in gray, beautiful little hobbit house.
0:18:26 - (Ddendyl Rogers): I'm a huge lord of the Rings fan, so this was a win.
0:18:29 - (Colin Johnson): Is it actually the one, like, off the interstate? Like, you can see it a little bit?
0:18:33 - (Adrien Rogers): No, this one's kind of tucked back in a little bit. It's actually a wedding venue back there, but they have a few houses on the property that they rent.
0:18:40 - (Colin Johnson): Water slop.
0:18:41 - (Ddendyl Rogers): Yes.
0:18:42 - (Adrien Rogers): Yes.
0:18:42 - (Colin Johnson): I watched a video about it.
0:18:43 - (Adrien Rogers): Yes. And it was beautiful. But one of the reasons we liked it was no Wi Fi, no tvs. We could kind of come in and completely unplug. So that's what we did on our third day. We decided to go out and explore Johnson City a little bit and, you know, not cook at the Airbnb that night. And I told her, you know, it's easy. We'll just stop by the local wine bar, and we'll bar hop from there and find something to do tonight.
0:19:08 - (Adrien Rogers): And so we. We left Gray. We came to downtown here and got out of the car, and I googled, you know, wine bar and thought that Google must be broken.
0:19:19 - (Colin Johnson): You have to go far for the wine bar.
0:19:21 - (Adrien Rogers): It has to be a wine bar in downtown. And we asked around to a couple of the other bars, and everyone told us there was not. And so we were actually in the process of signing on a different location in North Carolina. And we loved Johnson city so much, we went back and ran the numbers to see if we could make it work here, and we thought we could. And so just a few short weeks later, we came back and explored around for some venues and found the venue that we are currently in. And it's a. It's all been in motion since then.
0:19:49 - (Colin Johnson): That's cool.
0:19:49 - (Ddendyl Rogers): Said I had one more crazy move in me. That's it.
0:19:53 - (Colin Johnson): One more.
0:19:53 - (Ddendyl Rogers): One more.
0:19:54 - (Adrien Rogers): Because we only got to Charlotte. We only got to Charlotte about a year prior to that. And so it was a long, hard conversation of, do we really want to uproot ourselves and move again? And we liked this area enough to do so.
0:20:10 - (Colin Johnson): Isn't that cool? I think it's neat to feel peace about it. And you're like, all right, we're going to.
0:20:16 - (Adrien Rogers): It felt right.
0:20:17 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah. And like you said, the people here are fantastic. They welcomed you and they'll support you.
0:20:21 - (Adrien Rogers): Just got lucky there, you know?
0:20:22 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah. Yeah, it's a. It's a great spot. I'm sure you're gonna do great. So you're not serving food now. So where do you guys like to go eat curry? You said southern craft. Where's. Where's, like a date night for you? Talk to our listeners about what. What, you guys, being from out of the area, it's kind of neat to get a different perspective.
0:20:42 - (Ddendyl Rogers): Well, we haven't had a ton of date nights since we started. I mean, opening a bar is like a full time job. And we're so tired at the end of the day that we're not really.
0:20:50 - (Colin Johnson): Just drive through McDonald's, get the dollar, need be fine.
0:20:54 - (Ddendyl Rogers): So. Well, southern craft, I think we've eaten there probably the most since we've easily been here. Yee ha. Tacos.
0:21:01 - (Colin Johnson): Oh, yeah.
0:21:01 - (Ddendyl Rogers): I'm a big fan of those. And where else have we.
0:21:06 - (Colin Johnson): What's your favorite taco?
0:21:07 - (Adrien Rogers): I've been to a few other spots. Cause I came out and did some kind of research on the market and what are, you know, competition looks like what our other. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. What the marketplace was like and what we would kind of expect. So, you know, I love juniper, obviously, as far as, like, a nice spot. I haven't had opportunity to take her yet.
0:21:27 - (Colin Johnson): She's, like, holding her hands. I like. What's the deal?
0:21:29 - (Ddendyl Rogers): He's. Apparently. He's been to all the date night spots.
0:21:31 - (Colin Johnson): Hey, guess what? You can put him on the spot right now we need. Technically.
0:21:35 - (Ddendyl Rogers): Yeah.
0:21:35 - (Colin Johnson): So Juniper tomorrow.
0:21:37 - (Adrien Rogers): Juniper is going to be. Yeah, I think she's in town tomorrow night, so that's probably sounds like a good plan. I should probably get on that.
0:21:44 - (Colin Johnson): You might want to get on the. Serve a table right now.
0:21:48 - (Ddendyl Rogers): Yeah. I can't give him too much grief because I do travel a lot for work.
0:21:51 - (Colin Johnson): So you're traveling a lot. Still singing and.
0:21:54 - (Ddendyl Rogers): Yeah. So, I mean, in a couple days, I'm in Atlanta and then Charleston, and then back to Georgia, then Florida, Vegas. Florida. Vegas again. Florida again. So he's not gonna see me.
0:22:07 - (Adrien Rogers): So I get a lot of date nights by myself, as you see.
0:22:09 - (Colin Johnson): So now we know. Please. Opening the wild.
0:22:15 - (Adrien Rogers): So I've learned somebody's gotta do it.
0:22:17 - (Colin Johnson): Exactly. She just filed in.
0:22:18 - (Adrien Rogers): Is it done yet? Yeah.
0:22:20 - (Colin Johnson): Okay. I'll be back.
0:22:22 - (Adrien Rogers): Change the color and I'll be back.
0:22:25 - (Ddendyl Rogers): This is gonna be the longest run I've had in a while. And that was honestly, unfortunately. Cause when the floods came in, my company had to reschedule everybody and whatnot. So I was supposed to be more localized, but. Yeah.
0:22:40 - (Colin Johnson): Well, that's cool that you can pivot and still go make money.
0:22:44 - (Ddendyl Rogers): Yeah. So, juniper, when is that gonna be?
0:22:47 - (Colin Johnson): Sounds like Thursday night.
0:22:48 - (Adrien Rogers): Sounds like.
0:22:49 - (Colin Johnson): What time is that, Adrian?
0:22:51 - (Adrien Rogers): I think 730 is what I made the reservation for.
0:22:54 - (Colin Johnson): Sounds good. Yeah. So you like to hang out outside, you try and get. And then tell me more about, like, some other businesses that you think that maybe you haven't seen here, that you're like, oh, we could maybe open this. And, you know, did you see anything that, like, we don't have, like, a wine bar that Johnson city, somebody listening might go, oh, I could go open a crystal store. I don't know. I'm just looking at a crystal ball over here.
0:23:25 - (Adrien Rogers): Yeah, I think that part of it is you don't find what you're not looking for. And we. We hadn't had necessarily thought about any other businesses at the time. We do have, you know, expansion in mind, obviously, as she pointed out, we want to get to doing private events and offsite caterings and things like that, wedding bars as soon as we can, which would be an extension of this business. But as far as what is missing, I think that's one of the things we liked about Johnson City was that it does have a lot for the size of the city that it is. And we couldn't believe that there wasn't a wine bar, because in the small town that we were living in just outside of Charlotte, there was three. And it's about the same size as Johnson City. So, you know, that that was the one that stood out glaringly to us.
0:24:15 - (Adrien Rogers): I'm sure the longer that we're here, we may find some more of those niche kind of things to bring to the community. But we want to start with wine and give everybody that experience first, and then we'll plan down the road.
0:24:25 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, that'll be awesome. I'm looking forward to checking it out for sure. Tell me something about some people in your lives that helped you get to where you are that you might want to give a shout out to. Who's been inspirational for you.
0:24:40 - (Ddendyl Rogers): Oh, I was inspirational to you?
0:24:42 - (Adrien Rogers): Yes, baby.
0:24:43 - (Ddendyl Rogers): That's what I thought you were gonna say. Good to answer it, man. I mean, most of my family's been super supportive of me and what I do. My grandfather passed a couple years ago. He was very proud of me and always encouraged. He would love this. He would love that we're doing this. And both my parents have always been very encouraging, specifically my mom. My mom's been very encouraging.
0:25:15 - (Adrien Rogers): And, yeah, yeah, I think for me, family wise, my grandmother is obviously my rock. She's the best, and we can't wait to get her down here, show her all the things that we've worked towards. She's rooting us on. She's our biggest cheerleader, but she's also just awesome. She'll get in there and throw back some glasses of wine with everybody else, so. Can't wait to have her down. But we've also been fortunate enough to have some really cool people in our lives from the small area that we come from, one of which was our elementary school PE coach, who also was a football and basketball coach with my father for 25 years.
0:25:59 - (Adrien Rogers): So if coach Tim McMullen does find this podcast, I want to make sure that we say what a big part of our lives that he was, because just always uplifting, always just hardworking. Guy just never wavered. He was another kind of rock in our community growing up, so he also married us. He was also the officiant for our wedding.
0:26:21 - (Colin Johnson): That's super cool.
0:26:22 - (Adrien Rogers): Yes. So, yeah, so he's been a huge part of both of our lives.
0:26:25 - (Colin Johnson): That's super cool.
0:26:26 - (Adrien Rogers): Yeah.
0:26:27 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah. Like, some teachers, you always look back and you're like, some teachers really made a big impact.
0:26:32 - (Adrien Rogers): Yes.
0:26:33 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:26:33 - (Ddendyl Rogers): As far as support, though, also, I'd like to maybe mention that we wouldn't have been able to open up this spot the way we did without the help of.
0:26:41 - (Adrien Rogers): With my family.
0:26:42 - (Ddendyl Rogers): Both of our families. Both of our families. Both of our families. Like, his. His parents and his sisters. And they've all been down here to help clean and paint and do all the things.
0:26:54 - (Adrien Rogers): My parents just left 2 hours ago. They were helping us clean the space. Yeah.
0:26:57 - (Ddendyl Rogers): And my dad, who, he gave us pretty much every tool you could think of so that we could build the bar ourselves. And we did. And once you see it, Adrian did a great job on the facade, and. And we did the bar top together. So we've literally built the bar with our bare hands.
0:27:19 - (Colin Johnson): How cool is that?
0:27:20 - (Ddendyl Rogers): The wood we sourced was from both his family and mine.
0:27:23 - (Adrien Rogers): Oh, that's Nate.
0:27:25 - (Ddendyl Rogers): Yeah.
0:27:26 - (Adrien Rogers): So it's all reclaimed wood. All the wood for the bar top came from my parents, and then her father used to build instruments, so he gave us a bunch of decorative hardwoods that we incorporated into the front of the bar as a little tip of the hat to him.
0:27:39 - (Colin Johnson): That's super cool.
0:27:40 - (Ddendyl Rogers): Yep.
0:27:40 - (Colin Johnson): Were you a carpenter? Did you both have carpentry skills back?
0:27:44 - (Adrien Rogers): I mean, my grandfather was a woodworker, and, you know, I've just kind of been around, you know, handyman, and people like that a lot in my life. So it was a little bit of what I had learned along the way coupled with, you know, blind confidence that I could pull it off.
0:28:01 - (Colin Johnson): So watch a YouTube video here and there.
0:28:04 - (Adrien Rogers): Yes.
0:28:04 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:28:04 - (Adrien Rogers): Yeah. So, biggest project that both of us had done to date, but we think we did a really good job.
0:28:11 - (Ddendyl Rogers): And I knew it was gonna be great because I've seen him build things before. He built mushy back, but skeptical, but not. I was blown away with how well it's turned out. And then the top of it, we did kind of a river run. We did pebbles with resin, and that was my expertise.
0:28:30 - (Adrien Rogers): It's gonna look very nice.
0:28:31 - (Colin Johnson): That's beautiful.
0:28:33 - (Adrien Rogers): Yeah.
0:28:33 - (Colin Johnson): I've got friend Chris Shay. He does the resin stuff, and he can do, like, the river through the. It's just cool. But he practiced for, like, months to do one big table. Yeah, you got to get it just right and get hazy or whatever. It's definitely an art, for sure. So how can our listeners find out more about the feisty pigeon or connect with you guys online?
0:28:55 - (Adrien Rogers): Yeah, we do have our social media pages up and going that we will be posting to more frequently as we come online and as we have a firm opening date and things like that. And then we'll also be utilizing some digital marketing to get the word out. We're working with a company right now in order to broaden our reach online through Google searches and things like that.
0:29:20 - (Colin Johnson): Sounds like it doesn't have to be hard. I mean, just type in wine bar.
0:29:23 - (Adrien Rogers): We should be the first one to pop up when you google this. Yes.
0:29:27 - (Colin Johnson): Not a lot of competition, which is great. That's great. Being first to the market is always a win, for sure. Yes, sir. What's something that I didn't ask you that if you were hosting the podcast, you would have asked anything.
0:29:43 - (Adrien Rogers): That's a great question.
0:29:44 - (Ddendyl Rogers): That's a really good question.
0:29:47 - (Colin Johnson): Basically, just to get you thinking about, like, where did we forget touch on that. You want to share? Make sure we share.
0:29:55 - (Adrien Rogers): What do you think?
0:29:56 - (Ddendyl Rogers): I don't know.
0:29:57 - (Colin Johnson): They're looking positive. They're like.
0:30:00 - (Ddendyl Rogers): And I guess when we're gonna be open?
0:30:04 - (Colin Johnson): We're opening at the end of the month, right?
0:30:06 - (Ddendyl Rogers): We are. We're opening at the end of the month.
0:30:07 - (Adrien Rogers): We are shooting for the end of the month. Yes.
0:30:09 - (Ddendyl Rogers): I think we'll do a soft opening, and then our grand opening should be, like, mid November. Right before thanksgiving.
0:30:17 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:30:18 - (Adrien Rogers): Yeah.
0:30:19 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah. What's a good wine you pair with turkey?
0:30:22 - (Adrien Rogers): Wine with turkey.
0:30:23 - (Colin Johnson): Address it. I mean, we're gonna be Thanksgiving. Oh, you're right.
0:30:26 - (Adrien Rogers): Yeah. So one of my favorite just food friendly wines always goes well with whatever you've got on the table is gamay or beaujolais.
0:30:35 - (Colin Johnson): Beaujolais. Gamay. Okay.
0:30:37 - (Adrien Rogers): So nice. Nice soft red. That. That's just really friendly with any food that you got with it. So nice.
0:30:43 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, I like it.
0:30:45 - (Ddendyl Rogers): Have you heard of those wines before?
0:30:46 - (Colin Johnson): I've heard of the Beaujolais. Yeah. Beaujolais. Beaujolais.
0:30:49 - (Adrien Rogers): It normally hits this week. So gome is the grape Beaujolais, the region that made it famous. But now you'll see gamay grown a couple other places as well, but usually hits its stride around February for Valentine's Day.
0:31:06 - (Colin Johnson): That's the one that comes out, like, once a year kind of deal.
0:31:08 - (Adrien Rogers): So that's Beaujolais nouveau, which is. Yeah. So that is usually released around this time of year, November. And that's kind of a little teaser for how the wine is going to turn out later down the road. So they, they pull a little bit off, let, you know, release it as kind of a. A little light, you know, fall rose almost. And then the beaujolais will come out later on. Gotcha. Yeah.
0:31:32 - (Colin Johnson): Does it come in boxes? Because that. Hey, don't get a question. What's your favorite? Maybe it's splitting on the spot too much, but what's your favorite under dollar five bottle? Is there even a dollar five bottle that you can.
0:31:46 - (Adrien Rogers): They are. They're still out there. I gotta admit, it's been a while since I've tasted a lot of them. You know, back in the day, Chili's. But, you know, but I always joke that, you know, even though I'm a sommelier, I'm not past drinking out of a box, you know, so, you know, I'm not past it. I just don't know if I have a particular favorite at the moment.
0:32:07 - (Colin Johnson): Okay. Yeah, you can.
0:32:09 - (Ddendyl Rogers): I will say that box wine brings back some of my favorite memories living in Michigan. So I will never knock box wine.
0:32:16 - (Colin Johnson): There you go.
0:32:17 - (Ddendyl Rogers): Never, ever.
0:32:18 - (Colin Johnson): Okay. I like it. Like, if you said, all right, you gotta go buy one bottle of wine this week and try it. What would it be?
0:32:28 - (Adrien Rogers): Hmm?
0:32:30 - (Ddendyl Rogers): The pipe dream.
0:32:32 - (Adrien Rogers): Yeah. Yeah, that's you. That's what you're dealing with.
0:32:34 - (Colin Johnson): So you say pipe dream.
0:32:36 - (Ddendyl Rogers): Yeah. It's delicious.
0:32:38 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:32:39 - (Ddendyl Rogers): Yeah. What kind of one was it?
0:32:42 - (Adrien Rogers): That one was the Nero diavola from Australia.
0:32:45 - (Ddendyl Rogers): That one?
0:32:48 - (Colin Johnson): Yes, that's the one. All right, Adrian, what's your favorite?
0:32:52 - (Adrien Rogers): You know, it's gonna sound cliche, but if I had to recommend anybody go out and grab a bottle that they're gonna have, grab a bottle of bubbles and celebrate with your friends and your family. Nice. Yeah. There's no occasion that bubbles can't fix. And, you know, that's. That's, I think, the one drink that just brings everybody together in. Anybody that enjoys wine can enjoy bubbles. So that's. That would be my answer for that.
0:33:18 - (Colin Johnson): What's your favorite cocktail to make?
0:33:20 - (Adrien Rogers): Ooh, whiskey neat.
0:33:23 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah. Whiskey neat. Yeah.
0:33:25 - (Adrien Rogers): Where's your glass? Yes. Yes. It's. It's really easy on me. Everybody seems to enjoy it.
0:33:31 - (Colin Johnson): You never hear anybody really complain, right, right.
0:33:34 - (Adrien Rogers): No, as far as mixing cocktails, I I truly believe that there's an arc to the martini.
0:33:45 - (Colin Johnson): Sure.
0:33:45 - (Adrien Rogers): You know, and it's. It's kind of one of those laid bare kind of skill sets, you know, that if you can make a proper martini, and it's. It takes a little bit of method to it, which makes it fun, but it's not overly involved. You're not smoking stuff and doing all this. But a properly made martini, I think, is one of my favorite things to make and drink.
0:34:06 - (Colin Johnson): Gotcha. Got another one. Because my wife doesn't drink much at all, and so do you guys are gonna make some mocktails or some.
0:34:12 - (Ddendyl Rogers): Absolutely.
0:34:14 - (Adrien Rogers): That's an undeniable part of the industry as a whole. You've seen it come up a long way in the last decade or so, and I think, especially with the younger generation not drinking as much as some of the older generations have, that's a critical part of the modern hospitality scene. And so we will have mocktails, alcohol free options, things like that, and then, of course, some kombuchas and some other alternative non alcoholic stuff. Outside of mock.
0:34:46 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, we've been drinking a lot of kombucha for gut health.
0:34:49 - (Adrien Rogers): Yeah.
0:34:50 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, I love it. Well, I'll have to bring her over there for sure. Carly will love seeing it. All right, the last question. What gets you, like, fired up where.
0:34:59 - (Adrien Rogers): You'Re just like, let's go.
0:35:04 - (Ddendyl Rogers): Um, like, just personally? Yeah, personally. What gets. What gets me fired up.
0:35:09 - (Adrien Rogers): I can go ask some San Francisco 49 ers. Football.
0:35:12 - (Ddendyl Rogers): No, I know football. Well, football's one. But I'm a new football fan, not an old football fan. So I would say, I mean, honestly, I love a good gospel concert.
0:35:31 - (Colin Johnson): Sounds awesome.
0:35:32 - (Ddendyl Rogers): So I think that probably gets me the most fired up. And then good hike. We love to hike. So, yeah, getting to the top of the mountain and whatever mountain we're at and seeing the view, that's. That gets me pretty fired up.
0:35:45 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:35:46 - (Ddendyl Rogers): What about you?
0:35:48 - (Adrien Rogers): Well, I mean, I love building stuff, obviously. Building the barn and having a project like that and being able to pour yourself into it gets me fired up. I've spent far too much time, you know, over here at the feisty pigeon, getting everything built and put together because it's easy to just get into it and work for 1215 hours a day, which I love. But also the opposite side of work hard, play hard is love, going out, experiencing other people in the restaurant industry and what they do.
0:36:20 - (Adrien Rogers): And also my family gatherings are always a really good time. And so spending time with friends and family and experiencing the play hard part of work hard, play hard is one of my favorite things.
0:36:34 - (Colin Johnson): That's cool.
0:36:35 - (Adrien Rogers): Yeah, that's cool.
0:36:36 - (Colin Johnson): Anything else you want to share before we jump off?
0:36:40 - (Adrien Rogers): I would say that one of the biggest things is that we are newcomers to the community and that we are open, willing, and pursuing some collaborations with other local businesses, whether it be other restaurants or, you know, creators, artists, things like that. We want to really ingrain ourselves in the community and get involved with the other local business owners around here. And so we will be doing some of those collaborative events and things down the road that we'll promote as well.
0:37:10 - (Adrien Rogers): Social media or as standalone events, pop ups and things like that. Yeah.
0:37:16 - (Colin Johnson): One more time on how we find you on social media.
0:37:18 - (Adrien Rogers): The feisty pigeon.
0:37:19 - (Colin Johnson): The feisty pigeon.
0:37:20 - (Adrien Rogers): Just like that.
0:37:21 - (Colin Johnson): Watch out.
0:37:22 - (Adrien Rogers): Yep. So you can find us on Instagram, Facebook. We will have our landing page and everything set up on thefiestypigeon.com momentarily.
0:37:31 - (Colin Johnson): Gotcha.
0:37:31 - (Adrien Rogers): And so we'll be making sure to shout it from the rooftops when we are looking at the firm opening date.
0:37:37 - (Colin Johnson): I love it. If we want to hear your music, why are we there for that?
0:37:40 - (Ddendyl Rogers): Oh, man. Well, I mean, I'm on Spotify, YouTube, all that. But right now mostly, like I said, dueling piano events and whatnot. So. So once we're open, I'll be starting to do performances probably on Wednesday for wind down Wednesday and. Yeah, but they can look me up online right now.
0:37:59 - (Colin Johnson): Cool. Super. Well, thank you guys so much for being on the podcast.
0:38:03 - (Adrien Rogers): Thank you for having me.
0:38:04 - (Ddendyl Rogers): Thank you for having us.
0:38:04 - (Colin Johnson): I love getting to do this because I get to meet new people and I just love that that gets me fired up and the people bringing new things and new ideas and new businesses to the area. It's just great because it's only going to continue to make our area better, bring more people in, and we get to love more people and hopefully share the gospel with them. And if you guys are wanting to come meet them, come on. And if you want to buy a house here, I would love to help you. If you guys haven't bought a house, let's go.
0:38:29 - (Adrien Rogers): You're still looking, so that would be great.
0:38:32 - (Colin Johnson): Until next time, I'm Colin Jocelyn with a Colin and Carly group of Keller Williams Realty. Thank you so much for listening. Thanks for all your support for our area. Continue to help out, send funds and labor, send water, whatever it might be. We're just. We're looking forward to just getting our area back on its feet from the storm. So thanks so much and have a great day.