Plugging in: Magic City music

As Brian Teasley, creator and owner of the Saturn Birmingham venue, said, “Birmingham is definitely a more viable place to have a band than, say, 15 years ago.” 

Across the board, the increasing number of concertgoers, local bands and dedicated booking agents and venue managers plugged into Birmingham share the same feeling — not only pride for how far the Magic City’s music scene has come in the last couple of decades, but also hope for its future growth.

In 1994, the original Five Points Music Hall was one of the first-ever major venues to open and consistently bring some of the first national and up-and-coming bands to Southside as part of their U.S. tours in the Southeast.

Mike Creager, a longtime musician and current technical director for both the Alabama Theatre and the Lyric Theatre, remembers “playing gigs” in houses and underground bars in the Birmingham music scene during that time, where the only shot at the Music Hall was if they won the annual Battle of the Bands.

“The people behind the scenes were in the trenches, so to speak. I think a lot of us just wanted and knew that Birmingham was bigger and capable of these greater things,” Creager said. 

When the original Five Points Music Hall closed in 2002, largely due to financial woes of the recession, WorkPlay opened in 2003 on a corner in Southside, and then the indie music venue Bottletree Cafe opened up inside a rickety old car garage in 2006 in Avondale, which was then a mostly abandoned, industrial neighborhood.

WorkPlay Chief Audio Engineer Tony Wachter said WorkPlay tried to set the groundwork as far as sound quality for Birmingham venues. The main theatre at WorkPlay is “designed for every piece in the room to be an acoustic compliment to the sound,” he said, which for the last 15 years has brought world-renowned bands to record and play shows for the Birmingham audience. 

At the same time, writers from Billboard, Esquire, Flavorwire, Pitchfork and other national publications wrote about how Bottletree Cafe, which closed in 2015, made Birmingham “an indie-rock destination” and a place where people didn’t have to travel hours to see the show of a lifetime.

Teasley, who booked shows at Bottletree, said the venue “was truly a magical place, and it sort of just came at the perfect time to push music in Birmingham forward.” At the time, there was a resurgence of fans looking for close, memorable venues to see shows, in addition to local bands looking to grow their names. Some even wanted to stay in the city to record their albums and play at some of the local hotspots.

David Smith, a local band photographer and contributor for Getty Images, moved back to Birmingham in 2013 right as the scene started picking up, especially, he said, “in terms of venues.”

Iron City opened up in 2013 and Saturn Birmingham opened in 2015, along with other, older venues adding more shows on weekends and even weeknights, allowing locals more opportunities to play. The variety of venues gave bands who were touring through the Southeast options to play in Birmingham.

“I think typically if bands are going to do the Southeast, they are going to do Atlanta and Nashville. They are always going to be on their list. And then now, they’re just figuring out there’s all these good venues in Birmingham,” Smith said. He thinks there’s a combination of reasons why the scene is growing, including that the city’s image has changed in the last decade. 

Tom Little began the Magic City Bands page in 2013 so he would be able to give a weekly round-up calendar of the music scene for those interested in checking out new shows. 

“We haven’t gotten too big for ourselves,” Little said. “We have so much good going on that we’re just so enthusiastic.”

Although the Birmingham music scene has molded over the years to fit a growing city and new kinds of fans, the small-town feel is still there. 

Teasley said a big factor in the “magic” behind Birmingham shows is that “people sincerely appreciate when bands come to town and play,” and the shows are often an intimate experience.

“The crowds may not be as large as Atlanta, but I think people are a much better audience to play for here,” he said. 

Not only does Birmingham have newer, medium-sized venues, it also has huge arenas like Oak Mountain Amphitheater and Legacy Arena at the BJCC, and as well at the historic Alabama Theatre, which has had several renovations over the years. 

As more positive anecdotes circulate from bands, Teasley said the amount of bands they book has been growing, though they also have a solid line-up of local bands or show-favorites that always come back through Birmingham to stop and play in their tour.

Little said previously, people were under the impression that to go somewhere in their career, they had to take that first step and go to Nashville. But now, some bands are making “their first big break here,” and even recording in some of the local studios.

Popular local venues also include Lyric Theatre, which reopened in 2016, and the Jemison Concert Hall at the Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center, in addition to smaller venues that operate as bars like Zydeco, Tin Roof, Mom’s Basement and others. Then there’s the late-night places for shows like Marty’s PM and the Nick, and the ever-popular Firehouse, the DIY venue located in Avondale that brings in touring bands from all over the country consistently every week. Although the other longtime Southside venue, Syndicate Lounge, closed earlier this year, the owner originally stated that it might only be a hiatus.

Lauren Elizabeth, who created Barbara Jean Sound Machine, a local booking and promoting agency in Birmingham, used to work at the Syndicate Lounge, as well as Saturn Birmingham. Even though she said the music scene has come a long way, she added, “there’s definitely still room to grow, and that’s what people in the music industry are trying to do and working hard to make happen.”

Often, it’s just time that fuels growth, she said, because even now as bands come through, some have to pass up on Birmingham because some venues don’t make sense for artists to stop at because they are too big, too small or already booked. 

When Elizabeth booked shows at the Syndicate, she said some of the best responses she got was when bands would love stopping in Birmingham so much that they would come back to perform a second time, sometimes at bigger venues. 

While she feels like Birmingham has a strong audience, she said there’s still a lot of people who might not know about how strong the local band scene is. Teasley also added the Birmingham scene was “really built on the shoulders of several dozen people who really believe in providing outlets for local bands to flourish,” and those beliefs are crucial elements to keeping the music scene alive and thriving.

“I don’t necessarily want to be a Nashville or Atlanta; I want to be in Birmingham,” Elizabeth said. “But really it takes more people being supportive of these shows and coming out, paying for the tickets, researching bands they haven’t seen. Some of my favorite shows were actually going to shows where I didn’t know who the band was, and I ended up falling in love with that band.”

If you look back when Bottletree first started, they were a “lone wolf out there,” she said, and “brought so many amazing bands in town.” But now, it’s a different story, with venues all over the area working to grow Birmingham’s music scene. 

“I think there are a lot of new things that are going to happen in the next five years,” Elizabeth said.