Secret stages: Making the move to Avondale

For its eighth year as Birmingham’s premier discovery music festival, Secret Stages is moving to Avondale. 

This year’s lineup of 50-plus bands will be playing at Saturn, 41st Street Pub, the Hanger and the Avondale Brewing Company courtyard and upstairs tasting room.

“We loved being downtown, it was really great, but we are really excited about some of the opportunities that Avondale is going to present for us,” co-founder and Creative Director Sam George said.

Secret Stages has become an institution in the Birmingham festival and music scene. This year’s festival will be Aug. 3-4, with music from 5:30 p.m to midnight on both days.

George said they’re still doing what they’ve done every year, which is bringing in regional and national up-and-coming buzz bands and mixing them with top-notch local bands. Another goal is to put some bands in Birmingham that people might not have heard of before, he said.

“Every year, I am super excited about the bands, and every year, I feel like it’s the best yet,” co-founder and Event Director Jon Poor said. “This year is no exception. I’m really excited about the lineup.”

This year, he said, they were even able to grab a few bands with a little more notoriety, and he’s really excited to showcase Birmingham to them.

About 20 percent of the bands are local, with the rest being “all the way from New York to California,” said Rashid Qandil, one of the music curators who is stepping up to lead buyer. He said this year has bands from 15 states and more than 25 cities.

Qandil primarily has booked the hip-hop acts and said this year is filled with dynamic and pro-woman hip-hop artists and powerhouse duos. 

Poor said the bookers this year made a point to make it a female-driven festival — not to make a political statement, but to “give some respect to how many fantastic female artists are out there,” he said, and show that Secret Stages is an entity that supports women in music.

“The way the new layout is going to work [in Avondale] and the proximity to all the venues is going to be really positive for everything,” Qandil said. “I’m excited to get from the front door of any venue to any other venue in less than a minute. The accessibility is fantastic.”

Poor added another facet of Secret Stages is being able to offer great bands at an affordable price, as well as contributing to the positive image of Birmingham and its growing music scene.

All of the co-founders and curators, Poor said, have a passion for band discovery.

“You know that feeling when you discover that new band you’re obsessed with? We’re trying to deliver that feeling in a live event package, and we really hope at the end of the two days you have discovered that,” George said.

There are no “duds” in the lineup, George said, and every band booked has the potential to expand to a larger audience.

“People can come down and if they’ve never seen a hip-hop show, they can check that out, then run over to a punk rock show and see what that’s like. If they want to see some Americana or folk, there’s that, you can really sort of bounce around,” George said. 

Secret Stages will also offer an “off the hook” VIP area, he said, featuring local beer, food from new and old Birmingham favorites, a DJ lounge area and other perks. 

Additionally, after eight years of work with Secret Stages, lead musical curator Travis Morgan stepped down and “passed the baton,” as he said, to other curators so that he could go back to school full-time.

“As a co-founder of the festival, leaving has been a very difficult decision for me because of what the festival means to me,” he said in a statement sent out in May. “After the success of each festival, I felt like the bar was raised, and as a result we became a force to be reckoned with.”

The local bands and artists from Birmingham this year include Captain Kudzu, Me and My Knife, Phantom Limb, Seriously, Dommel Mosel, In Snow, Will Stewart, G.I. Magus, Shaun Judah, 729 and Roscoe.

“[Secret Stages] is a labor of love for everybody involved,” Poor said.

For more information or to buy tickets, go to secretstages.net.

This article has been updated to reflect the spelling of Rashid's last name as Qandil.