This year’s Amplify Decatur Music Festival runs from April 27-30, but the big event happens on Saturday, April 29 with St. Paul & the Broken Bones, Patty Griffin, James McMurtry, and The Suffers on the main stage in Decatur Square.
The festival is the biggest fundraiser for Amplify My Community, the nonprofit founded in 2010 by Mike Killeen, a local musician who is currently president and CEO of the Decatur-based marketing company Lenz, Inc.
Credit: Paige Sara
Credit: Paige Sara
Amplify began modestly with a series of weekend events at Eddie’s Attic. The festival moved to Decatur Square in 2016. And it’s expanded every year since, with additional concerts around Georgia, and into North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.
“It started as a group of friends who were looking to listen to great music, and looking for something to do to help the community,” Killeen said. “Over the last 12 years it’s grown and grown, and now Amplify Decatur is our flagship event. It’s gone from a couple of singer-songwriters at Eddie’s Attic to a music festival that stretches over four days this year.”
Killeen credits his partners at Lenz for being the earliest supporters of Amplify Decatur. The company has continued to help fund the event, both financially and with marketing and communications support.
To date, Amplify has produced more than 100 concerts, and raised and donated more than $550,000 to anti-homelessness and poverty-focused organizations, including more than $335,000 in Decatur.
“We had a breakthrough in 2017, when Lucinda Williams played Amplify,” Killeen said. “It’s continued to grow, with quality of the musicians, and the community sponsors that step up, and certainly the crowds have grown. But we’ve tried to be good to the patrons, and good to the bands, and we give all the money away.”
Credit: Michael Wilson
Credit: Michael Wilson
The three organizations receiving funds this year are Decatur Cooperative Ministry, Giving Kitchen, and Decatur Education Foundation.
Lenz vice president Christine Mahin started working at Amplify in 2016, and in 2017 she took over as festival director.
“I’ve been doing it ever since,” Mahin said. ”We’re all taking this on along with our days jobs, so we’re growing incrementally. The hope is to keep adding events, and having shows on Thursday, Friday, and Sunday, too. But we don’t want to get too big. We want it to feel like it belongs in our little Decatur downtown.”
Along with well-known headline acts, there’s a sense of discovery, too, with the addition of up-and-coming singer-songwriters like Kentucky’s S.G. Goodman, who opened on the Square in 2022.
“We try to include acts that are a little less known,” Mahin said. “And it’s been really fun watching artists like S.G. Goodman, and Julien Baker, and Parker Millsap be sort of unique to our lineup and then blow up.”
While Amplify has often featured Americana artists, this year the Houston band the Suffers adds a blend of R&B, rock and roll, and reggae. And, of course, headliners St. Paul and the Broken Bones bring gospel-tinged soul to the mix.
“It’s exciting for us to expand that way, and then we always have our roots in Americana, so having Patty Griffin and James McMurtry is incredibly exciting for us,” Mahin said, adding, “They are legends in their own right.”
Credit: Mary Keating-Bruton
Credit: Mary Keating-Bruton
During a phone call, McMurtry reported that he’d moved away from Austin a while back, and was living in Lockhart, about 30 miles south of the Austin airport.
“I don’t recognize it,” he said, speaking of Austin as a place where musicians can’t afford housing anymore. “They’ve built so fast over the last few years, and it’s culturally changed so much. It’s a tech town now. But it’s a good place to work. I still go into town twice a week to play the Continental Club, so there’s money there if you can catch it.”
The good news is McMurtry will be bringing his band to Amplify, including guitarist and accordionist Tim Holt, drummer Daren Hess, and longtime bassist “Cornbread.”
And he’ll be playing songs from his entire back catalog, plus his most recent album, “The Horses and the Hounds,” which includes the Americana award-winning song, “Canola Fields.”
“Live shows are all about set flow,” McMurtry said. “I don’t really tour to promote records anymore. I put out records to promote tours.”
On a call with St. Paul frontman Paul Janeway, he talked about the title of the new album, “Angels in Science Fiction,” which was inspired by the band’s love of sci fi, and the birth of his daughter.
“We found out we were having our first child in January 2020, and as you can imagine, once it hit March 2020, things changed as far as life, so it inspired the record,” he said. “And then it was this idea of mixing faith with fantasy.”
“Angels in Science Fiction” was recorded at Sam Phillips Recording Studio in Memphis, Tennessee. And it was produced by Matt Ross-Spang, who has worked there with the likes of Jason Isbell, John Prine and Elvis Presley.
“The history in that place is awesome,” Janeway said. “There’s stains where Johnny Cash put his cigarettes out. It’s crazy, and it’s definitely haunted, no two ways about it.”
Even though it was made in Tennessee, Janeway calls “Angels in Science Fiction” a very Birmingham-centric and Alabama-centric record.
“This one is my love affair with all the things I find positive here,” he said. “But Atlanta has always been a great market for us, and I’m excited to get back. Our drummer lives about 10 minutes away. So we’re not going to get a bus. We’re all going to drive, which is rare nowadays.”
FESTIVAL PREVIEW
The 2023 Amplify Decatur Music Festival
With St. Paul & The Broken Bones, Patty Griffin, James McMurtry, The Suffers, Town Mountain, Jackson County Line, and The Sundogs. 2-11 p.m. April 29. $75-$275. Decatur Square, corner of Church Street and E. Ponce De Leon Avenue, Decatur. Other free and ticketed events take place at venues in downtown Decatur and at Waller’s Coffee Shop April 27-30. Check the website for details. AmplifyDecatur.org.
