Photo by Alyx Chandler.
Hayley Grimes and Wess Gregg book most of the shows at their DIY Birmingham home base, the Firehouse, in downtown Birmingham.
For six years, DIY Birmingham has kept punk expression alive.
Committed to rejuvenating the creative performance in the downtown Birmingham community, DIY Birmingham exists as a fairly exclusive website resource and calendar for the younger alternative community. It targets creative performers and books weekly and multi-genre musician shows in small venues within the city. This allows Birmingham to pull in new, punk or experimental performers from across the world.
“I think that what we are doing is punk. Punk can be narrow or exclusion, but we are definitely coming from punk model,” said Hayley Grimes, original creator of DIY Birmingham.
Grimes, who is the core website updater and one of the show-booking managers, moved to downtown Birmingham when she was 18. When she came across a ’zine collection on a trip to Chicago, she was particularly interested in one about creating a local-show calendar. She said she didn’t wait for pay or permission to spread the word about the growing alternative scene.
Saturn bartender Wess Gregg, also a key show-booking manager and DIY Birmingham leader, met Grimes at Cave 9, a now-closed music venue and do-it-yourself establishment. The DIY scene aims to provide outlets for a creative community, he said.
“It came from punk rock culture in the ’80s where you didn’t want to wait around for someone to give you the opportunity to make art or play music or be creative; you just did it,” Gregg said.
After Cave 9 closed in 2004, Grimes and Gregg said they decided to continue dedicating time to expanding a niche music scene in Birmingham.
Arron Hamilton, the owner of Cave 9, taught them how to book shows and then let them try their hand at it. By the time his teaching was done, they knew how to put a show together, take care of the people performing and maintain peace the night of the show. They learned that if someone had something they cared about, there was always a space for them.
Grimes began to design handwritten calendars she would copy and display around town, and it evolved into a blog where people were free to click around and see details about upcoming bands and shows.
Now, with a newly updated website and several people being recruited for official DIY Birmingham volunteers, the organization continues to expand, and people contact Grimes and Gregg year-round to book shows.
“Above anything else, it’s about a community expression, about creating a space for folks who have something to say but not necessarily any other community to say it,” Gregg said.
The types of music they book ranges anywhere from experimental to punk rock to hip-hop. There aren’t certain criteria for booking. Grimes said touring bands and artists are from all over Alabama and the country and identify as all sorts of genres.
“It’s not a clique here, and if there’s a hip-hop artist on the list instead of a punk band, people are still going to come,” Grimes said. “They’re open minded.”
That’s what makes it punk, Gregg and Grimes said: People will crowd in for almost every show.
DIY Birmingham books shows and awareness events all around town, but for the past six years, the Firehouse on 41st Street South has become their home base and most-booked venue, one they make an effort to ensure that it’s accessible to all age groups, especially the younger kids who want to be part of a cool but safe community.
“It was frustrating when I was a kid because I didn’t have somewhere to be,” Grimes said, especially after Cave 9 closed.
They said they’ve seen parents drop their kids off and pick them up, or sometimes the parents come in to check out the Firehouse.
Gregg said everyone is, generally, not younger than 16. On most nights, they ask for a donation, but they both agreed they “never set a hard line,” so as not to limit people who don’t have money but want to enjoy a show.
With about a dozen other people directly volunteering a fair amount of time to keep the organization strong, they said they hope to keep getting the word out to community members in downtown Birmingham.
“Birmingham is a huge city, but we’ve affected a microcosm of it,” Gregg said
Each year they throw a couple of bigger parties for special events such as prom or birthdays. This raises enough money to pay for the website and sustain DIY Birmingham to a certain degree. They both work at other day jobs.
Gregg, 31, said he remembers how difficult it was to be young and considered a “weirdo.” A big part of DIY Birmingham for him is the ability to talk to the people who come to the shows about their struggles and how he’s been there before.
“We’ve been getting older and young people continue to show up to the shows,” Gregg said. “They are just now discovering who they are as young people, and they have challenging issues as how they identify and fit in,” he said.
Gregg said he likes to be there to reassure them they should be confident about how they express themselves. After all, that’s what punk is all about.
