Alabamians kicked off Hangout Music Festival 2024 with two local acts that ran the gamut from folk-pop to soul-soaked rock n’ roll.
The first music to emit from the Hangout Main Stage Friday was The Stews, a band of four former Auburn classmates that formed during their time on campus. Now, Preston Hall (lead guitar/lead vocals), Blake Dobbs (rhythm guitar), Bennett Bagus (bass guitar) and Wyatt Griffith (drums/backing vocals) tour all over the country with over 120 shows a year.
Dobbs, Bagus and Griffith went to high school together, and Hall, a Dothan native, met Griffith while pledging at Auburn. Once they all got to college, it didn’t take long to realize their combined music was worth pursuing.
Their musical influences range from the Allman Brothers Band, Talking Heads and Dire Straights to reggae, jazz, AC/DC and the Grateful Dead.
They all said touring has made them appreciate the South as a way of life they miss when they travel.
“You wish you could hear a drawl,” Blake Dobbs said. “But that’s the beautiful thing about touring.”
Just a little bit over on a new beachfront stage was brenn!, a 20-year-old from Tuscaloosa whose guitar-heavy melodies and self-written lyrics are inspired by his real-life experiences like relationships, his commitment to Jesus Christ and nighttime drives through Alabama forests.
He broke both of his ankles doing a backflip to promote a song but has since come back humbled and ready to continue growing. He has hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok, and he performed today in front of a crowd for his 10th ever show, his first at a festival.
This year’s festival was marked by more special guests and surprise appearances than in recent years past, bringing even more state pride to beachside stages in front of tens of thousands of cheering, clapping fans.
Jessie Murph, who was born in Nashville, Tennessee, raised in Huntsville and gained popularity by uploading vlogs and putting music on TikTok, where she currently has over 10 million followers, notched her second Hangout performance. The 19-year-old took to the stage in 2023 following her first headlining tour with her pop that has r&b influence and recently a dip toward country. This year, she brought on a surprise guest, Maddox Batson, a 15-year-old from Birmingham whose “neo-traditional country music with a touch of Southern rock” amassed him 50 million TikTok views in under three months and over two million followers. Together the Alabama teens sang a rendition of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros’ “Home.”
