The Blueprint for How Alabama’s Largest City Became a Live Music Destination
Let’s get this out of the way - 2020 - 2022 were not especially bountiful years for cities and their cultural apparatuses. Live music venues closed for a long time until local governments and venues could figure out how to keep the party going while keeping bands and attendees safe.
And while this was disruptive to some of the US’s marquee music cities, it was especially disheartening for Huntsville, Alabama’s largest city and home to a brand-new strategy to become a must-visit live music destination.
Having broken ground on The Mars Music Hall in 2019, which was built in the multipurpose Von Braun Center (VBC), the city conducted a music audit in 2018 to assess the current live music economy, what it could improve and whether those improvements would make a material difference on the local economy.
The city has a historically low unemployment rate and was trying to fill 10,000+ jobs. While the city has many things going for it, the arts and nightlife scene has left much to be desired, especially compared to relatively close destinations like Austin and Nashville.
Working with consultancy Sound Diplomacy, the audit called for more venues, so the Venue Group, co-owned by Mumford and Sons’ Ben Lovett, conceptualized and started building The Orion Amphitheatre, and the creation of a music office. Everything was in full bloom in early 2020.
The Mars Music Hall opened in March 2020 to a sold-out Jason Isbell show. Then promptly shut down as the pandemic spread. Construction on Orion slowed, so did the budget allocation and the search for the head of the music office.
Temporary headwinds, sure; but perhaps the stars were aligning. Because the path of Huntsville eventual head of the music office was coming into focus.
A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
Early in his career, Matt Mandrella had some moderate success as an artist - playing in a couple of bands and touring, but quickly assessed upon arriving in Austin he might want to pursue another career if he wanted to stay in the music scene.
Fortunately, Austin offers a wide variety of opportunities, especially if you’re lucky enough to get a gig at SXSW.
“I was 27 or 28 when I jumped into a behind the scenes role and did everything in Austin for about 12 years everything from seasonal position at South by Southwest, seasonal positions at different festivals that led to full-time venue management and full-time festival promoter positions,” Mandrella says. That led him to Graceland and Memphis, where he focused on building up all the non-Elvis experiences.
Mandrella saw a video about the building of The Orion Amphitheater in 2022 and came away impressed. As fate had it, he soon came across the music officer job listing, which he applied for after some encouragement from his partner.
“I grew up in Southern Alabama, but Huntsville was not on my radar at all. I hadn't been to Huntsville in 20 years,” Mandrella says. “The city’s reputation was… awesome place to raise a family and awesome schools, but there's just not a lot else to do here.”
Upon arriving for an in-person interview, he was “blown away” by the advancements the city made since his last time there.
“By the time the second interview came around I was honestly kind of in a mindset of gonna figure out how to get to Huntsville whether or not we land this job or not,” Mandrella says. Fortunately, he didn’t need to look for another job.
When Mandrella showed up in January 2022, The Orion was gearing up for its first show, but the music office didn't have any allocated city funds, which forced him to get out in the community, have a lot of meetings and dive in and try to get my head around the culture.
That gap proved pivotal as Mandrella quickly realized that his role was to understand and follow the culture of the city, not dictate it from a centralized position.
“It was helpful and listening to people in the community, forming bonds with the music board members, local musicians, regional and national promoters kind of figuring out what the city wants to see out of this,” Mandrella says.
The city offers music bookers a wide array of options: including The Mars Music Hall, which was built in 2020 and can host 1,500, the Mark C. Smith Concert Hall, and The Propst Arena, the hockey arena that can also host shows around 8,000.
Photo by Megan Lee on Unsplash
A loaded set of responsibilities
Mandrella is focused on the economic development potential of the live music scene, bringing in income from tourists and making the city more appealing to workers. But another component of his job is to create a burgeoning local artist scene and support those who live in Huntsville and play locally or tour.
“We want to develop tools and programs to make them want to make a living doing music in Huntsville, " Mandrella says, adding that it also requires him to work with local bars and restaurants.
Local bars and restaurants are hiring singer/songwriters/acoustic performers to play during busy times, and breweries are launching concert series. The city is also seeing entrepreneurs opening up live music venues.
“We're seeing local business people starting to invest and start smaller music venues and some of those folks are working on starting a second one,” Mandrella says.
For example, Tangled String Studios and Gold Sprint Coffee each have carved out a performance space to participate in the burgeoning scene.
The Orion’s ascendancy
For all its momentum, Huntsville still had to face the stark reality that it was building a music scene competing with more well-known regional hubs Austin, Nashville, and other more established scenes.
“When planning the amphitheater, they realized if they just put a traditional amphitheater here, it might be a challenge getting shows [from the competition,” Mandrella says. “If we invest more money and make it a destination space, similar to a Red Rocks," the city can attract the bands everyone wants to see.
That meant putting a lot of time, resources, and thought into the artists’ spaces.
Both the Orion and VBC are city-owned, whereby the city receives “profits from amphitheater operation, including renting the venue to promoters and bands, bar revenue, sponsorship revenue, etc.” Therefore, it is investing in its future by continuing to update its venues.
“A lot of venues treat their artists great, but we try to go above the industry standard in what we do,” Mandrella says.
Rather than just a standard green room, they created a cozy space with NASA furniture from the 70s and built an “artist meadow,” a fenced-in backyard where these artists can relax with their families and guests. That space can also hold 1,500 for a separate show if needed.
Photo credit: Josh Weichman
The Orion Amphitheater also doesn’t take a cut of artist merchandise sold on property, staying on the positive side of what is increasingly a contentious situation between bands and the venues they play at.
And, when all else fails, it has a strong advocate who knows touring.
“[Lovett] can directly talk to a lot of artists and vouch for that experience and say, ‘Hey, this might not be the size venue you normally play, but you got to play this spot once, it's that awesome,” Mandrella says.
Fast forward to 2025, and The Orion Amphitheater has hosted sold out shows by Stevie Nicks, Snoop Dogg, Lana Del Rey, and more.
A city transformed
Huntsville continues to achieve exciting new milestones. A big corporation called to complain that they couldn’t find a hotel for 60 miles. Why? BecausePhish was in town.
“When these shows happen, every restaurant downtown is crowded at lunch and dinner,” Mandrella says about the trickle down effect on the economy. So his team has taken to updating local businesses about big upcoming shows and recommending they stay open later (if they want the business) and open their drive-thrus.
“We've had nights where we had our arena at the Von Braun Center, the Orion, our minor league baseball and minor league soccer teams all have sold out venues on the same night,” he says.
The Orion Amphitheater has opened more conversations with agents who are now putting in artists into all forums because even those with big acts also have others they’re trying to develop into the next big thing.
“It's always going to be an arms race,” Mandrella says. “There's always going to be the next big venue in Nashville, the next big venue in Birmingham.”
“At the end of the day you're always trying to put your artist in front of a full audience and the way our community has responded to buying tickets and attending shows at the end of the day, that's the magic sauce that's going to keep the thing going or not,” Mandrella says.
The next big thing
Emboldened by success, the city launched the two-day South Star Festival in 2024, a long-awaited replacement for the beloved 30,000-capacity Big Spring Jam that ended about 15 years ago. On the billboard: Gwen Steffani, Blink 182, Beck and more.
The festival was originally supposed to start in 2025, but promoter C3 and the city were confident they could launch in time for last year.
“Landing like the biggest festival producer in North America to do that for you was like a huge win,” Mandrella says of C3. ““On paper, it might make sense to do a big festival in 2028 or 2029, but I think it says a lot about us that the largest concert promoter says let's start one in 2024.”
They held it in John Hunt Park, an area 100 acres larger than Grant Park in Chicago, where Lollapalooza happens. They were successful, attracting 20,000 people on the first day.
However, torrential rain forced a cancellation on the second day.
“There was a never-ending dump truck line of mulch and gravel and warning track material starting the day before doors opened,” Mandrella says. “It just never stopped raining.”
Also, that same weekend, Alabama hosted Georgia in arguably the biggest regular season game of the year and Auburn hosted Oklahoma.
“The fact we had two major over 100,000 person events in our state within three hours of a Festival the same weekend, a hurricane, and we still got that attendance, we are excited about that,” Mandrella says.
Onwards and upwards
In its quest to attract the biggest and best global talent, it’s staying true to its commitment to local artists.
“We have some really innovative artist development programs that the music office is especially proud of,” Mandrella says.
A North Alabama artist that has booked at least four tour dates one hundred miles or more outside the Huntsville radius can qualify for a $750 to $1,500 payment to help alleviate some tour expenses. “We were inspired by Memphis, and now Tulsa is doing something like our program,” Mandrella says.
Huntsville also just launched a program called Live Night with the Universal Music Group - effectively an artist exchange between Nashville and the city, where artists from each will play the other’s city. It’s a point of pride for Mandrella and the city that Universal Music Group and East Iris Studios are actively looking at the local bands, bringing home the message that there is a strong stable of local talent.
Next on his radar - trying to launch an international program, like SXSW did so effectively.
“I think we’re doing a great job of accommodating local musicians and touring acts," Mandrella says. “We don't want to be the same as Austin or Nashville or Chicago, but we want to be in the same conversation,” when people are talking about music cities.