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Tuning In to Birmingham
On a recent weekend, the events listings for Birmingham filled pages and pages in the local papers. Part of the problem, if you can call too many options a problem, is that many venues multi-task.
The Safari Cup, for example, doesn't just serve coffee and sandwiches; it also sells African objects, displays art and hosts jazz-jam nights. The sushi restaurant Sakura in Five Points South adds some edge to its raw fish with live punk bands. WorkPlay, which opened in 2001, also has multiple personalities: Besides housing media businesses, it packs in the people at its low-key bar and cavernous club.
  At WorkPlay, patrons can grab a cocktail at the bar before checking out a show in the multimedia facility's club. (Hugh Hunter) 
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Despite the plethora of diversions, it took some sharp navigation to find them. Birmingham streets follow a grid system, but there are few tall buildings to orient you. Whenever I got turned around, I headed for the railroad tracks that divide the city. But there was an upside to getting lost -- finding attractions I might otherwise have bypassed. Though clean and well preserved, downtown is a bit forlorn, with little sidewalk traffic and many empty storefronts. However, cranes and "Coming Soon" placards dot the landscape, and signs of life are everywhere: a newly opened bar, a renovated theater, an old-school barbershop with more bantering than trimming.
When it was time to head out for the night, I was torn. Should I sway to R&B performer b-Haskins at a front-row table at WorkPlay, or slum with sub-radar bands performing outside at Sloss Furnaces, a 19th-century ironmaking facility (and national historic landmark) that doubles as a concert hall? Lightning was slicing across the sky, delaying the Sloss show, so I started off at WorkPlay. There I caught the first half of b-Haskins, a buff and bald latter-day Marvin Gaye whose silken melodies had a hypnotic grip on the females in the house.
The trance was broken, though, with the last clap of thunder. Word traveled via text message (from a guy I'd met earlier at WorkPlay's bar) that the show at Sloss Furnaces was on: The musicians were setting up their instruments beneath an ominous boiler that provided a wisp of protection from the bad weather.
Seven local bands were performing, surrounded by peachy-cheeked kids drinking soda and sitting respectfully -- nay, reverentially -- in folding chairs before the slipshod stage. I climbed up to a nook in a piece of machinery and steadied myself between giant metal knobs.
Most of the music was of the soft-alt-rock variety, and I couldn't help comparing the bands to other established performers: Kiss Me at the Gate was a cross between the Sundays and Juliana Hatfield; Preston Lovinggood of Wild Street Orange was John Mayer with a backbone. But overall, the groups were original, not derivative, and so earnest and pure. I wanted to go out and buy (not download) all of their CDs. And, hey, at least they weren't singing covers like you-know-Hicks.
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The following morning, the music continued at Pepper Place, where a couple called Fiddlin' in th' Parlor livened up the Saturday market with Scottish and Irish ditties performed on accordion, fiddle and whistles. Later, a female guitarist was setting up a stool and microphone stand at the Grape, a wine bar in Five Points South. And on Sunday morning outside Starbucks, a guy with bed-head hair and a beat-up guitar was pounding out classic rock tunes while his friend banged drum sticks against the chair and table.
Across town and over the tracks at the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, veteran musician Frank Adams started his tales with, "When I played with Duke Ellington . . ." and "I was talking to Sun Ra . . ." Openers like that can silence a jazz fan pretty quickly.
Adams, 78, is the museum's director of education who leads tours through the two floors of exhibits. The collection is pretty spare, with some quick blurbs on the artists and a smattering of artifacts spanning a half-century (my favorite: the gold Neiman Marcus credit card, including charge number, of honorary Alabamian Ella Fitzgerald).
Back at the front desk, Adams, dressed in a pinstriped suit with a turquoise bolero tie and an unfailing smile, talked a streak:
