Renovated in the 1980s as an outdoor concert venue, the facility has since garnered a national reputation among the music industry, said Sloss manager Robert Yarbrough. On July 18-19, thousands of people will fill the former metal works for the the first annual music festival, Sloss Fest.
Created by Red Mountain Entertainment, in partnership with Venue Management and AC Entertainment, the event will feature artists such as Birmingham’s own St. Paul and the Broken Bones, Cage the Elephant and the Avett Brothers. Yarbrough said they have been working on the festival for three years.
“I’m like a kid on Christmas morning,” he said. “The team has worked so hard and put so much sweat and equity into it, and to watch as the final site plan was printed out on Friday, and tomorrow staging and equipment start moving on site, I can’t wait to see the final package.”
Among the lineup is Washington-born folksinger Noah Gundersen, who is playing songs from his upcoming album “Carry the Ghost” live for the first time. The album was inspired by both personal moments from his own life and musical influences like Neil Young, Peter Gabriel and Strand of Oaks.
“I think there’s a personal inspiration that came from existentialism, and I think as with most of my writing, it’s trying to figure out how the hell I’m suppose to live or if there even is a suppose to, you know?” he said.
Gundersen, whose music has been featured on the television shows “Sons of Anarchy” and “The Vampire Diaries,” knew he wanted to play music from an early age, having taught himself how to play the guitar at 13.
Writing all his own songs, Gundersen said a lot of his creative process comes from years of playing and listening to music and noticing what he does and does not like. He said he believes everyone has a creative side they listen to that can come out in various ways such as drawing, photography or dance.
“Sometimes a melody comes to me. Sometimes, it’s me sitting down goofing off and a cool mistake happens, and I try to go down that rabbit hole,” he said. “The consistent thing in the process is going to a place of almost meditation where I try to clear my mind of other things and not have too many expectations and not try to force anything.”
Betsy Kiser of Red Mountain Entertainment said they wanted to produce a festival in downtown Birmingham in the image of similar festivals already happening in the Southeast. She said they felt Birmingham was the perfect place for a festival because of the city’s restaurants, craft beer scene and Railroad Park.
Anne Conway, one of the art vendors at Sloss Fest, sells jewelry made from refurnished and repurposed materials that she finds in thrift shops and flea markets in the Birmingham area. Conway said she’s inspired by ancient relics and seeks the story behind the material she finds such as bone, tribal coins and vintage chain.
“There’s so much beauty in the unexpected and the natural imperfections,” she said. “I find that the more I honor the natural imperfection of the material, the more the piece comes together real well.”
Wanting to explore the styling element of the music business, Conway said she interned with Red Mountain for a year in college and stayed in contact with them over the years. Having heard about Sloss Fest when she interned with them, she said it was really interesting to be a part of and see their vision come true years later. Conway, partnered with John Woolley of Little Forest, will also be styling a lounge area under the water tower.
“We’re playing off the Naztech City theme, creating a natural, very calming, meditative environment with natural neutral colors,” she said. “We’re styling the artists trailers. We’re bringing in pillows we made, art work we made. We’re going to be hanging drift wood. We went to the river and found our materials. It’s been fun to be able to apply a vision and aesthetics I have into a collaborative project like this.”
For the festival, Virginia-based brewery Starr Hill Brewery will be collaborating with locally-based brewery Trim Tab to introduce the Siren of Sloss, a Belgium whipped beer, at the festival. William Donaldson, Starr Hill’s Alabama and Tennessee market manager, said one of the favorite parts of his job is collaborating with these local breweries and learning about their cities.
“You can get real funny with the names and use a lot of puns, but I was telling the people at our brewery we got to make this one cool. I was really glad the Trim Tab guys came up with the name,” Donaldson said.
Donaldson, a Birmingham Southern graduate, said they were approached by Red Mountain Entertainment about being a craft beer sponsor along with Miller Lite, which coincided with them preparing to roll out in Alabama.
“There’s a lot for everybody to see. Personally, I didn’t see a band that I didn’t want to see,” he said. “Anyone who’s been around Birmingham area has seen Sloss. It’s a historic land mark, and it’s almost an honor to be a part of doing something like this at Sloss.”
In 12 states across the east coast, Donaldson said Starr Hill strives for innovation and quality and saw Sloss Fest as an opportunity to introduce themselves into the Alabama market.
“There’s these east coast festivals we’ve been a part of since the beginning, and this being the beginning of Sloss, we wanted to jump on board,” he said. “This is perfect for what we try to convey about our image. We’re all about live music. We want people to craft good times, and we want to be a part of that. Next week, we’re going to really blow the doors off.”
Sloss Fest should positively affect Birmingham because it has garnered national recognition, Yarbrough said. The USA Today listed them as one of the 10 must-see festivals of 2015, Yarbrough said, and people have told him they heard radio jocks talking about it on Sirius XM Radio. He said the Birmingham Convention and Business Bureau did an impact study on the festival and found the first year should have an economic impact of $2.5 billion on the city.
“We have a great event that’s renting hotel rooms, that’s filling restaurants and bars, and also, it has a great intangible benefit in that it has cast Birmingham in a positive light nationally,” he said. “What sort of economic benefit could you put on that to be called one of the must-see festivals by the nation’s largest circulation, daily newspaper. It’s a great benefit for the city. Every conversation we had, we talked about wanting to be behind something that’s good for the city and we could be proud of as a contributor to the city that’s been our life long home.”
Yarbrough said he hopes this festival will become an annual event that will still be happening 20 years from now.
