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THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8BIRMINGHAM SONGWRITER NIGHTS AT TRUE STORY BREWING
🍺🌿✨ EIGHT ARTISTS. FOUR HOURS. ONE LITTLE ROOM FULL OF ORIGINAL MUSIC. ✨🌿🍺
If somebody asked me what I want Birmingham Songwriter Nights to become, I might just hand them the October 8 lineup.
Because look at it.
Nobody is coming from exactly the same musical place.
Nobody needs to.
That is the whole idea.
Thursday, October 8, we return to True Story Brewing for four hours of original songs, stories, quiet things, loud things, beautiful things, strange things, old friends, new faces and eight different answers to one ancient question:
What happens when somebody has something inside them that needs somewhere to go?
And True Story feels like exactly the right room for that question.
TRUE STORY BREWING
True Story has the feeling I love in a neighborhood music room.
It is a brewery, but on music nights it becomes something more.
A Crestwood gathering place where different corners of Birmingham’s music community can occupy the same room.
A place where jazz, rock, experimental music, songwriters and all sorts of other sounds have been allowed to take up space.
Cities need big stages.
But cities desperately need rooms where things can begin too.
Places where musicians meet.
Where somebody hears a new artist from ten feet away.
Where a collaboration starts over a drink after a set.
Where somebody who came because their friend is playing accidentally discovers music they carry home with them.
Where the line between “the performers” and “the audience” gets pleasantly blurry.
That is what I love about True Story.
The person beside you might be playing forty minutes later.
The artist who just finished might be standing beside you during the next set.
Someone might watch somebody else and think:
Maybe I could do that.
That little thought matters.
That is how art keeps multiplying.
I’ll start things off with a few songs and welcome everybody into the night.
Then we pass the room around.
GUNTRAM ANDERLIK
I’ll begin in my usual little corner of the universe.
Atmospheric folk.
Fingerpicked guitar.
Dreamlike songs.
Poetry.
Psychedelic edges.
Memory.
Time.
Loss.
Hope.
Love.
And the strange comedy of being alive.
I love opening the True Story nights because it feels less like walking onto a stage and more like starting a conversation.
Then seven other voices get to answer.
ED POWELL
Ed Powell brings something direct and human into a song.
His work feels lived in.
There is rhythm underneath it, but the center is the story.
The feeling that somebody did not sit down because they wanted to impress you with songwriting.
They sat down because something happened.
Something mattered.
Eventually the only reasonable thing left to do was turn it into a song.
That kind of writing has fingerprints on it.
Dirt underneath the nails.
Life left around the edges.
ANNA GRACE BEATTY
Then Anna Grace Beatty opens another door.
There is intimacy in her singer songwriter world, but enough openness around it for folk, indie, country and pop instincts to live beside each other naturally.
What excites me about having Anna on this bill is exactly what excites me about these nights in general.
Artists do not have to arrive fully packaged.
Songs do not have to be frozen in place.
New work is allowed to still be becoming itself.
There is something special about hearing an artist during that part of the journey.
Before the next chapter is already history.
MARY McGUINNESS
Then Mary McGuinness changes the weather.
There is something timeless in her musical world.
Folk.
Country.
Laurel Canyon warmth.
Melody.
Story.
Ache.
Grace.
A voice and songwriting approach that understand the value of leaving a little air around the words.
Some performers grab a room by the collar.
Others make the room slowly lean toward them.
Mary belongs to that second tradition.
A song does not have to shout to feel enormous.
Sometimes restraint is the thing that makes you listen harder.
NICK T
Then Nick T brings another kind of intimacy.
I love songwriters who can make the stage disappear.
People who make you feel less like somebody is performing at you and more like somebody pulled up a chair and said:
Hey. Something happened. Let me tell you about it.
That conversational quality has its own kind of magic.
Songs do not always need mythology wrapped around them.
Sometimes they simply need somebody willing to mean what they are saying.
KRISTIN WILKS
Then Kristin Wilks gives the whole evening room to breathe.
In a lineup this large, quiet becomes its own kind of power.
Not every artist needs to kick the door down.
Some of the strongest songs are the ones that gradually make a room get still.
People stop talking without realizing they stopped.
Everybody leans a little closer.
The smallest line suddenly has enough space around it to land.
That changes the pace of the night.
It asks something different from us as listeners.
FIRE CAMINO
And then Fire Camino walks in carrying gasoline.
The musical world of Josh Williams lives somewhere around Southern storytelling, folk rock, rock & roll, punk instinct, dark humor, tenderness, outsiders, faith, doubt, empathy, strange characters and Birmingham grit.
It feels familiar and crooked at the same time.
Like an old Southern story somebody accidentally left too close to an amplifier.
There is humor.
There is heart.
There are sharp edges.
And underneath it all is a writer who understands that even the strangest character in a song deserves to be treated like a human being.
Some songs invite you closer.
Fire Camino occasionally feels like the chair has been pulled out from underneath you.
Both approaches have their place.
LADY LUCK
Then Lady Luck helps push the night into another gear with rock & roll energy.
Because some music needs an actual room.
Moving air.
Drums.
Amplifiers.
Bodies.
The feeling of something happening three feet in front of you instead of being compressed into a tiny phone speaker.
There is a reason people keep gathering around live music after every technological change that supposedly makes gathering unnecessary.
A recording can preserve a song.
A room can transform one.
EIGHT VOICES, ONE ROOM
Eight artists.
Eight different musical lives.
Eight different reasons for writing.
Nobody has to become anybody else.
That might be what I am proudest of about these nights.
We are not trying to manufacture one sound.
We are trying to make room for voices.
Maybe two musicians meet and eventually make something together.
Maybe somebody watching decides they are finally ready to play one of their own songs publicly.
Maybe somebody comes because one artist is their friend and leaves following three more.
Maybe nothing dramatic happens at all and we simply spend four hours surrounded by people making something honest.
That is enough too.
Creative communities rarely begin because somebody makes a giant announcement that a scene now exists.
They happen more quietly.
Somebody opens a door.
Somebody else walks through it.
Then they hold it open.
📅 Thursday, October 8
⏰ 7 to 11 PM
📍 True Story Brewing
5510 Crestwood Blvd
Birmingham, AL 35212
🎟️ $10 at the door
UPDATED LINEUP
Guntram Anderlik
Ed Powell
Anna Grace Beatty
Mary McGuinness
Nick T
Kristin Wilks
Fire Camino
Lady Luck
Come early.
Stay late.
Drink something good.
Tip the people taking care of us.
Talk to somebody you do not know.
Stay for the quiet artist.
Stay for the loud artist.
Stay for the strange artist.
Stay for the person whose name you had never seen before.
If something moves you, tell them.
Artists carry those moments home.
I promise.
I hope you come because one person on this flyer is your friend.
Then accidentally fall in love with somebody else’s song.
Follow them.
See them somewhere else.
Tell somebody about them.
Bring another friend next time.
That sounds tiny.
It isn’t.
That is how music communities happen.
Eight original artists.
Four hours.
One little Birmingham room.
Come for one artist.
Discover seven more.
#TrueStoryBrewing #BirminghamSongwriterNights #BirminghamMusic #LiveLocalMusic #CrestwoodBirmingham
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Event venue
True Story Brewing Company, 5510 crestwood blvd,Birmingham, Alabama, United States
Tickets
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.