Birmingham is filled with entertainment around every corner, from record shops to antique stores. At Secret Stages Music Discovery Festival, the next new act is just a few steps away.
Secret Stages Music Discovery Festival is a two-day music festival in downtown Birmingham featuring 60 bands that are lesser-known. 2016 marks the event’s sixth year of operation. One of the main draws of Secret Stages is its sheer variety of genres.
“From the get-go, we said that we did not want to be a genre-specific festival,” Jon Poor, one of the founders of Secret Stages, said. “We even sort of try, when we can, not to have genre-specific stages. Without making people angry, we kind of want to challenge the audience a little bit to walk around, or even if they stay in one place, they’re gonna see something that they may not normally expose themselves to.”
Poor said that despite being called “a music discovery festival,” Secret Stages isn’t a venue just for up-and-coming acts. He said that the event was centered more on allowing Birmingham to see new acts that aren’t in the mainstream, regardless of their popularity.
Travis Morgan, the head music curator for Secret Stages, spends time throughout the year attending concerts and getting in touch with bands and other curators to gather a lineup for the festival.
“If we rewind back to 2011, or even before that, when we started talking about Secret Stages, I started going back to that network and adding to it,” Morgan said. “For about six years, I’ve just added on to the people I can call on for advice, for people like myself in other cities who have their finger on the pulse of their communities and know the kinds of bands that I’m looking for.”
The event covers a wide variety of music from shoegaze, country, hiphop and more. The bands have come from all over the world, from local acts to one from Seoul, South Korea.
Secret Stages averages 2500 people in attendance each year, with a vibe that Poor described as “relaxed joy.” With the venues being in downtown Birmingham, patrons aren’t required to pay concession-stand prices and can, at any time, enter a local bar or restaurant to get refreshments.
“I feel like people come to the festival with open minds and they’re open canvases for the artists to reach them,” Poor said. “If they give a good performance, there’s probably going to be someone there who’s into it.”
Throughout the years, the festival has evolved by tailoring its environment and atmosphere to the crowd to find the right mix and amount of bands to fill the space. Morgan said that through some trial-and-error, Secret Stages has defined itself with continued efforts.
“It’s very tightly curated, but it’s very diverse in that you can be in one venue and see several different styles of music,” Morgan said. “If you like that crazy iPod Shuffle type of thing, that’s great, but if you don’t, you can watch what you like and then walk back down the street and see something else.”
Secret Stages will take place in downtown Birmingham on August 5th-6th in the loft district of between 1st and 2nd Avenue north and 22nd and 24th Street north. Tickets are available now on secretstages.net for $35 for a weekend pass and $75 for a VIP pass to the event, but will also be sold at the event.
