With thousands of spectators singing and dancing in the Alabama summer sun, Sloss Music & Arts Festival brings attention to both main stage acts and smaller, local venues.
The two-day festival features bands from across the nation and around Birmingham along with local art vendors. This year’s festival will take place at Sloss Furnaces July 16 and 17 and will feature 34 acts including Ryan Adams and the Shining, The Burning Peppermints and Death Cab for Cutie. It will focus on indie and alternative rock music. This is the second year the festival will occur.
Aside from the main stage bands, Birmingham record shop Seasick Records is partnering with the Florence, Alabama–based Single Lock Records to put on a side stage featuring more local bands like Daniel Elias and the Exotic Dangers and Future Primitives.
“It’s obviously going to be really hot, because it’s Alabama in the middle of July, but hopefully it’ll be a fun atmosphere,” Seasick Records owner Daniel Drinkerd said. “You can kind of come chill out and hopefully get away from the bigger stages and check out some local music you may not have heard before, so I think it’ll be a really fun, chill atmosphere the whole weekend.”
Along with the side stage, Seasick Records will also have a mini pop-up store where spectators can buy records and T-shirts, a prize wheel and an autograph booth where some of the bigger artists will hold meet-and-greets throughout the day.
Drinkerd said the idea for the side stage came about after the store saw an increased number of customers during last year’s festival.
“We did a kind of pre-party on Friday before the festival last year, and it went really well,” he said. “So we have some friends who work at Red Mountain Entertainment who book Sloss Fest, so we approached them and told them we’d like to be involved, and they suggested we have a stage and have local bands play.”
This year the store will have an after party at midnight on Saturday featuring live music from The Seratones and Daniel Elias and the Exotic Dangers. Both groups who play at the festival earlier that day.
“We’ll probably have some free beer, and if you can stand to stay awake after being in the heat all day, it’ll be a fun thing to see the bands a little bit closer,” Drinkerd said.
The festival will also include local vendors like the Tuscaloosa-based Left Hand Soap Company. This will be the company’s first year at the festival, said owner Soapy Jones. Jones said they missed last year’s festival but are going this year after hearing good things from other vendors.
“I think it’s a really good festival,” she said. “I think it’s really important for local artists and local small business to support the local events that go on, and Sloss Fest is a really good example of a local event that a lot of people worked really hard to put on, and I think it’s important that we all support each other.”
The gates will open at 12:30 p.m. each day, and the music will go from 1:30 until 11:30 p.m. Single-day tickets at the gate will cost $95 for general admissions, $145 for an Iron Pass and $195 for VIP tickets.
