A gaping hole in Huntsville’s music venue mix will soon be filled. Finally.
For all the exciting additions in recent years — Mars Music Hall, Orion Amphitheater, the upcoming South Star Music Festival — since SideTracks Music Hall’s 2022 closing, Huntsville’s been devoid of a full-time, club-sized venue for touring-level bands.
The group that developed and runs Orion Amphitheater, tvg hospitality, originally planned to open a new 350-capacity downtown Huntsville music venue two summers ago.
Initially called Meridian Social Club, then changed to Meridian Arts Club, the project’s at 108 Cleveland Ave. N.W., just off Meridian Street on downtown’s outskirts. The space was formerly home to A.M. Booth’s Lumberyard, a bar, restaurant and event space.
A summer 2022 opening was pushed to spring 2023. Then again, to 2024.
Finally, tvg’s downtown venue has a firm grand opening date, Oct. 13., and a new name — well, actually a shortened version of an old name. Now called simply “The Lumberyard,” the venue will open with a homebrewed exclamation point, the 10th anniversary edition of Microwave Dave Day.
A daylong festival in honor of Huntsville’s signature musician, bluesman “Microwave” Dave Gallaher, since its 2015 launch at the old Lumberyard, Microwave Dave Day immediately became Huntsville’s can’t miss local music event.
In later years, MDD shifted to a street festival configuration on downtown’s Washington Street. More recently, the event moved to food, nightlife and retail development Stovehouse on Governors Drive in west Huntsville.
The new Lumberyard grand opening as the site of Microwave Dave Day 2024 was announced at Huntsville Music Office’s quarterly meetup, held Tuesday night at St. Stephens Music Hall.
The Microwave Dave Day Facebook page celebrated the news by posting “WE’RE COMING HOME!!!!” That post also indicated MDD would again be free to attend. (Donations have been welcomed at previous installments, to raise funds for the Microwave Dave Music Education Foundation.) The Facebook post said Microwave Dave Day 2024 would feature more than 50 local musicians across three stages.
St. Stephens (no apostrophe) opened this spring. With an 80-person capacity, that venue’s schedule focuses on touring roots-oriented solo acts, like Webb Wilder, and locals, like Snake Doctors and Amber Cavanaugh.
That’s a different lane from what Huntsville’s been missing since SideTracks.
During its five-year run, SideTracks hosted acts like Greta Van Fleet, Shovels + Rope and Southern Culture on the Skids. A fundraising, solo acoustic Jason Isbell performance too.
Since SideTracks’ closing, live music fans in Huntsville who love catching rising touring bands and veteran acts at the club level have mostly had to drive out of town to get those kicks.
Unfortunately, a long-in-the-works reopening of Tip Top Café, the locally legendary spot that in its late ‘80s/early ‘90s heyday brought in acts like Bo Diddley, Concrete Blonde and Widespread Panic, never got off the ground.
With their rebooted Lumberyard, tvg aims to do for club-level touring acts and top-drawing local bands what Orion has done for big-name artists. And tvg has a key person on their team for such an endeavor, senior operations manager Brian Teasley.
Teasley is drummer with notable surf-rock band Man or Astro-man? and founder of Saturn, the beloved Birmingham club-sized venue tvg acquired in early 2023. Saturn is known for hosting alternative rock acts like Soccer Mommy, Dinosaur Jr. and Ty Segall.
In addition to a reimagined 350-capacity interior space, tvg’s The Lumberyard will keep the building’s funky open-air space out back — which hosted the first Microwave Dave Day and soon this year’s — largely intact.
