How did Huntsville's Orion Amphitheater do in 2023, and what lies ahead in 2024?

Initially, Snoop Dogg wasn’t going to do a show in Huntsville this year. But after tickets for a concert in another city on the rap great’s latest tour weren’t selling well, he switched the date to Huntsville’s Orion Amphitheater, according to Ben Lovett, cofounder of tvg hospitality, the all-lowercase-spelled London venture Huntsville contracted to develop and operate Orion.

“He [Snoop Dogg] puts the show on here and it sells,” said Lovett, also a multi-instrumentalist with Grammy winning U.K. band Mumford & Sons. “So I just think it’s really important to take pride in that.”

Lovett recounted that Snoop story and other Orion year-two highlights, during a recent event for media and community leaders, held at Jeff & Blues, a faux-barn type bar and event space located within a football post-route throw of the amphitheater.

The event also featured Huntsville mayor Tommy Battle and Orion managing director Ryan Murphy, discussing the impact the 8,000-capacity amphitheater, which opened spring 2022, has had on Huntsville and beyond.

YEAR TWO TICKET SALES, OUT-OF-STATE DRAW

Let’s get right to the numbers. According to Orion officials, the amphitheater hosted 32 concerts in 2023, up from 25 during their 2022 debut year. Nearly 188,000 tickets were sold for Orion concerts this year. Lovett said, “We’re on track to be in the top 10 most booked and attended theaters in the world.”

Some 46 percent of Orion’s ‘23 tickets were purchased out-of-state. According to Orion, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida accounted for the biggest numbers of out-of-state buyers. Noir-pop superstar Lana Del Rey and two shows by jam-band legends Phish accounted for the most out-of-state sales among ‘23 Orion shows.

“This is people being exposed to this great city and what it has to offer,” Lovett said.

AL.com broke the news of Huntsville’s amphitheater ambitions in April 2018. Orion cost around $40 million to build, funded through the City of Huntsville’s capital plan and a percentage of future lodging taxes.

Battle isn’t just mayor of Alabama’s most populous city. He’s a lifelong music fan who as a kid growing up would tape Simon & Garfunkel songs off the radio.

During Orion’s first two years, Battle’s attended more than a few concerts there, including Stevie Nicks’ magical Halloween 2022 show. His top Orion concerts this year include shows by Willie Nelson and Robert Plant & Alison Krauss.

“When you look across the board,” Battle said, “this is exactly what we wanted to do, to change the perception on what Huntsville is. It’s giving you a new look at city that was a Rocket City, a smart place, but now it’s more than that. It’s a music place.”

According to Battle, one of city leaders’ biggest concern with launching Orion Amphitheater was “that we didn’t cannibalize” the business of either Von Braun Center — which has brought stars like Prince, Metallica and Dolly Parton to Huntsville since opening in 1975 — or Orion’s.

Battle said those concerns were soothed quickly, when the same night there was a packed house for Orion’s May 13 opening-weekend concert headlined by Jason Isbell, country stars Brooks & Dunn sold-out the VBC’s Propst Arena.

RIPPLE EFFECT OF CONCERTS

Big concerts have a local impact before and after the show.

According to info Orion says came from data analytics company Pacer.ai, about 9 percent of Orion concert attendees stay at hotels afterwards. Nearly 20 percent of all Orion guests guest arrive at the venue after first stopping at a local restaurant. The amphitheater’s reps also say seasonal staff employment at Orion this year increased 16 percent.

Managing director Ryan Murphy told AL.com that six or so Orion concerts sold-out in ‘23, including shows by Del Rey, Phish, Snoop Dogg, Weezer and Jelly Roll. “It’s hard to gauge,” Murphy explained, “because if there’s last minute ticket holds that get released and don’t sell it doesn’t count as a sell-out.”

When both year one and two are consider, more than 312,000 tickets have been sold for Orion events since the venue opened. Ticketed events have averaged 87 percent capacity, according to Orion reps.

MORE THAN CONCERTS, COMMUNITY IMPACT

In addition to concerts, Orion hosted 83 community and cultural events this year, zooming up from 14 last year. (There were 114 days of operating in year one and 205 in year, according to venue reps.)

This year’s best-attended community events included a Halloween haunted house, Rocket City Pride event and Hispanic-themed celebrating Cultura Festival.

Before helping guide Orion’s launch, Murphy previously helped Florida’s St. Augustine Amphitheater overachieve in a tertiary market. He moved his family to Huntsville five years ago, well before Orion was open, built or even a done deal.

From the outset, Murphy made hosting community events, as he’d done in St. Augustine, a key element of Orion’s concept and pitch. The intention? Weave Orion into Huntsville’s fabric quicker, as well as making it a place locals make memories at — beyond just people who go to big concerts.

“The community events,” Murphy says, “it took a decade to achieve in St. Augustine and here we’ve only been open 18 months which is pretty wild. And I don’t think anyone in Huntsville takes it for granted. which is pretty amazing.”

This year, 238 local and musicians performed at community events held at Orion. Many of those occurred elsewhere on the amphitheater grounds, including the nearby dome structure underneath which rising local underground music festival Sluice Fest was held.

But there were also a few opportunities for locals to perform on the same amphitheater stage rock legends have graced, including Huntsville’s Women in Music finale concert.

“It’s pretty incredible to see we’re able to fulfill that,” Murphy said. “A lot of times a facility like this it’s really hard to figure out how to get a local musician in front of 8,000 people, because a lot of money to turn that stage on.”

Recycling and sustainability may not be as fun as a concert or local festival, but Orion’s efforts are notable there, too. According to numbers released by the venue, this year Orion’s water refilling stations and reusable cups saved more than 87,000 plastic water bottles. Orion recycling efforts included around 17,000 pounds of aluminum, 31,000 of glass and 18,000 of paper/cardboard.

GROWING INDUSTRY REP

During Orion’s 2022 debut year, the venue received coverage by notable outlets, including a feature story in Rolling Stone magazine. The amphitheater brought in legends like Nicks and Jack White who’d never performed in Huntsville before.

In ‘23, two major bands rehearsed at Orion before kicking off their tours in Huntsville, Weezer and Phish. As part of artist hospitality, amphitheater staff has put together spreads featuring cookies decorated with themes from that artist’s career and excursions to NASA facilities at Huntsville’s Redstone Arsenal.

Orion performers took something away with them besides memories. According to Lovett, the venue has given a couple hundred carry-on suitcases emblazoned with the amphitheater’s interlocking-rings logo and the initials of that particular band member.

YEAR THREE

For Orion’s third year, the venue aims to host more than 40 concerts and 75 or more community/cultural events. Already announced shows for 2024 including rising country-star Lainey Wilson, the world’s biggest young hard-rock band, Greta Van Fleet.

“This year was a great year,” Murphy said, “but next year is going to be even more phenomenal. Having a more diverse and robust season, that’s what we’re dedicated to. I couldn’t feel more committed and proud to be aligned with the city of Huntsville and leadership and the trust they’ve given us.”

WHERE TVG’S OTHER HUNTSVILLE PROJECTS STAND

In addition to their flagship, Orion Amphitheater, tvg hospitality (and their local arm, Huntsville Venue Group) are connected to two other much smaller but crucial projects.

For a while now, HVG/tvg been inching towards opening their own 350-capacitym club-sized venue, Meridian Arts Club. Housed in a space formerly home to defunct A.M. Booth’s Lumberyard, a summer 2022 opening was originally targeted. That opening was later pushed to spring 2023. Then pushed again, this time to spring 2024.

Asked last week for Meridian’s current status, an Orion rep told AL.com there is “nothing new to share.”

The 2022 closing of Huntsville’s SideTracks Music Hall left a void for an original-music-focused, club-sized venue. Since opening early 2020, Von Braun Center’s Mars Music Hall has booked notables like Wolfgang Van Halen, Gary Clark Jr. and Lindsey Buckingham.

But Mars is a 1,600-cap room. That’s far too big for many baby bands, cult-fave artists or top-drawing/original-music local acts. Meridian’s size would be ideal fit for all of those.

Huntsville’s most legendary small venue is, of course, Tip Top Café. Located at 123 Maple Ave. in Huntsville’s Lincoln Mill area, during its late ‘80s/early ‘90s prime Tip Top hosted bands like Widespread Panic on their way up. Legends like Bo Diddley too. The original Tip Top closed in 1995. Subsequent attempts to revive the place never really worked.

Around 2014, local real estate broker Bill Chapman purchased the property. In 2016, Chapman told AL.com he hoped to reopen Tip Top that fall.

More than 7 years later, that reopening has yet to come to fruition. Chapman has attributed the long gestation to challenges including the pandemic and Huntsville’s booming real estate market.

“And I just didn’t have the time and didn’t have a true vision yet,” Chapman told AL.com this spring. “All I knew is I want to save it [Tip Top].”

In more recent years, Chapman brought tvg hospitality in as a consultant on the Tip Top Café reboot. As Chapman put it during our chat this spring, “Sometimes you need a couple extra hands to paddle the boat.”

Compelling smaller venues are important so touring baby bands can seed fanbase in a market like Huntsville. Ideally, over the years, some of those baby bands will develop stronger followings and move up to the next-size-up venue here. Then the next-size-up from that.

A rare few will bloom into bands/brands big enough to headline Mars Music Hall, Von Braun Center Propst Arena and eventually Orion Amphitheater. Greta Van Fleet’s seven year journey from 300-ish capacity SideTracks to 8,000-cap Orion would be an example of that.

This spring, Chapman took AL.com on a walk-through Tip Top to see the progress made. A polished concrete was in place, most of the HVAC and electrical had been done. A new bar and stage were being built. Fresh coats of red and white paint on Tip Top’s familiar cinderblock exterior.

At that time, Chapman said a water line for the sprinkler system — which would allow Tip Top to double capacity from 115 to about 225 — was the major hold-up. “Too big of a job for the small guys and too small of a job for the big guys,” he explained.

The second hold-up for the Tip Top reboot is Chapman’s personally funding the project. This April, Chapman became part of new ownership at downtown’s Humphrey’s Bar and The Bottle restaurant, as well as historic-home-turned event space Oak Place.

This fall, Chapman sold his stake in Humphrey’s, which has been “closed for remodeling,” according to the venue’s website, since early October.

Chapman’s real estate career has included projects at Cummings Research Park. And back when he was a young man, he attended many hot shows at Tip Top.

“This project is special to me,” Chapman told AL.com earlier this year, “and it will get done. I want to respect what Tip Top was and will be, not just throw something together just to say its open.”

Although there hadn’t been a specific new target date announced, those involved with Tip Top planned to open by end of this year.

With 2023 about to give way to 2024, AL.com recently asked the always quotable Chapman via email about Tip Top’s status.

“She is still there,” Chapman replied, punctuating that sentence with an “LOL.”

He continued, “I am getting Oak Place up and running now and looks like I will be able to focus back on Tip Top this spring. In the last 18 months I spread myself so thin, I just couldn’t get to everything. Lessons were learned.”

Then he added, “Been a crazy year.”