Alabama’s Orion Amphitheater Celebrates Grand Opening

Over three days, the new venue featured performances by Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit, Mavis Staples, Brittany Howard, Emmylou Harris, Drive-By Truckers, St. Paul & The Broken Bones, and Waxahatchee, plus local Huntsville talent such as Translee and Deqn Sue & Kelvin Wooten.

“The only way a venue like this happens is when you’ve got all the right cooks in the kitchen — people with their hearts in the right place,” White told Rolling Stone backstage. “It’s not about money. It’s not about capitalism. It’s about doing it for the right reasons.”

Huntsville has long been associated with its defense and aeronautics work at places like Redstone Arsenal and NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, hence the amphitheater’s stargazing name. More recently, the city has been going through a cultural renaissance and construction boom as Alabama’s fastest growing city. For every new hotel, restaurant, and retail store popping up, there’s a construction crane hovering over another development site. The Orion is a bonus on top of it all.

“Building the Orion may seem random to people who have never been to Huntsville before,” says Ben Lovett, co-founder and keyboardist for Mumford & Sons who also serves as CEO of London-based venue development group TVG Hospitality. “But, when my band traveled to places that a lot of people would consider ‘random,’ we found that the most beautiful people and amazing examples of humanity exist in those places.”

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Photo credit: Josh Weichman