Like camping and/or music? The BamaJam Music and Arts Festival, a new three-day festival, kicks off Thursday just north of Enterprise [map]. Its lineup eclipses the other music festivals in state and echoes June Jam, the Fort Payne event put on by country legends Alabama in the ’80s and ’90s.

Who’s on the lineup? An all-star roster of country, bluegrass and rock, including:

• Gov’t Mule
• Miranda Lambert
• Randy Owen
• ZZ Top
• Lynyrd Skynyrd
• Hank Williams Jr.
• Ricky Skaggs
• Old Crow Medicine Show
• Ralph Stanley
• Nanci Griffith
• Dan Tyminski
• Claire Lynch
• Marc Broussard

Up to 30,000 attendees are expected. Hotels have already begun to fill up.

One-day tickets start at $49.50 in advance and $59.50 at the gate, and three-day tickets are $129.50 in advance, $159.50 at the gate. Additional charge for on-site camping. Part of the proceeds go to charities targeting Coffee County.
• Official site

Video previews, after the jump …

(more…)

A pair of weekend festivals at historic locales, with, yes, music …

Pour it on: Get sloshed at Sloss, or at least, go for a multi-beer buzz. The Magic City Brewfest has returned for a second outing, with dozens of varieties available for sampling. The music lineup includes Blue Moon, Highwater and HoneyBaked. Tickets are $7 (everything a la carte), or $22 and $32 in advance, $30 and $40 at the gate. 7-11 p.m. Saturday and 3-7 p.m. Sunday at Sloss Furnaces.

Way over the hill: The city’s original Iron Man turns 104, and you can celebrate at the Vulcan Birthday Bash. Sarah Green will perform, and artist Lonnie Holley will help you make your own sandstone sculpture. Tickets are $3 for age 5 and older and includes free ice cream and Cokes and elevator rides to the observation platform (if you haven’t been since the remodeling, you are missing out). 1-4 p.m. Sunday at Vulcan Park.

• • •

More headlines | send us your news tips.

Birmingham mayor Larry Langford takes a few minutes to talk with WBHM’s Tanya Ott in an eye-opening interview about his SEC legal woes. The interview — 8 minutes, 27 seconds — is worth a listen [MP3], if only to document the city’s sad slide into oblivion. Anyone want to do a transcript?
• WBHM (90.3 FM): Langford Speaks

• • •

More headlines | send us your news tips.

Like a little pops in the park? Orchestral maneuvers in the dark? More music in May with the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, as it kicks off its four-week summer series tonight, just in time for Memorial Day weekend.

Head to Caldwell Park [map] for the 8 p.m. show featuring the Temptations, along with selections by George Gershwin, Aaron Copland and John Phillip Sousa. Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the gate.

Upcoming shows will feature Harry Potter and Abba themes. But not all at once — that would be too much dark magic.
• Official site

• • •

More headlines | send us your news tips.

Make it a smooth Sunday with the second annual Preserve Jazz Festival on June 1 in Hoover. The music will flow from 3 p.m. well into the night.

The lineup:

• Guitar and Saxes: Gerald Albright, Jeff Lorber, Peter White and Jeff Golub
• Bob Baldwin and Joey Sommerville
• Kelley O’Neal Band with Cece Phillips
• Mart Avant’s Night Flight Big Band

And you still have time to enter our We Jazz June contest to win free passes!

You must enter by noon Tuesday, so hop to it.

Video previews, after the jump …

(more…)

As season seven of “American Idol” ends (Team David!), we recall the last Birminghamian to face down Simon Cowell. Taylor Hicks, season five winner, will head to Broadway for a three-month run as Teen Angel in “Grease,” starting June 6.

The soul singer will perform “Beauty School Dropout,” with tickets starting at $71.50.

Hicks isn’t the only reality star in the show: Lead actors Max Crumm and Laura Osnes won their roles on NBC’s “You’re the One That I Want” in 2007. And he joins the long list of “Idol” finalists on the Great White Way, including Clay Aiken, Birmingham-born Diana DeGarmo, Constantine Maroulis and season three winner Fantasia Barrino.

And after being dropped by J Records, he’s planning on finishing his follow-up album this summer.
• Associated Press: “Taylor Hicks to play Teen Angel in Broadway’s ‘Grease’

• • •

More headlines | send us your news tips.

KBR, a Houston-based construction/engineering contractor and former Halliburton subsidiary, plans to buy BE&K for $550 million. The Birmingham-based construction/engineering firm, founded in 1972, employs 9,000 workers.

BE&K has earned a top reputation for its family-friendly policies along with $2 billion in annual revenues. And yet another Alabama company becomes part of some out-of-state empire. (It was just last year that Compass was sold to a Spanish bank for $9.6 billion.) Whither the home-grown corporations?
• Birmingham News: For Birmingham, this means

• • •

More headlines | send us your news tips.

More music in May with the return of two crowd-pleasers: Art on the Rocks tonight and Do Dah Day Saturday.

Art on the Rocks begins its first of four monthly gatherings at the Birmingham Museum of Art downtown. On tap tonight is funk pioneer band The Dynamites. Tickets are $20.

And after tonight’s Do Dah Eve celebration at Nana Funks in Lakeview ($5), the parade of canines, kitties and their humans begins at 11:01 a.m. Registration begins at 9:01 at the starting point of Highland and 33rd Street [map]. Free to watch, $5 to $20 to parade.

The free concerts begin at 11:21 on stages in Caldwell and Rhodes Parks on Southside, including headliners The Radiators (rock) and Anders Osborne (R&B/blues). The bands play until 6:11 p.m. Proceeds from Do Dah Day benefit the Greater Birmingham Humane Society and Friends of Cats and Dogs Foundation.
• Official sites: Art on the Rocks | Do Dah Day

Video previews, after the jump …

(more…)

Music in May continues Saturday with a first fest from WZZK (104.7 FM). The station will hold its Downtown Throw-Down from 4 to 10:30 p.m. The five country acts are:

• Whiskey Falls
• Bucky Covington
• Kellie Pickler
• Blake Shelton
• Sara Evans, aka the soon-to-be Mrs. Jay Barker

Like last weekend’s Crawfish Boil, the event takes place next to the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex [satellite view]. Tickets are $15 in advance (meaning today) and probably more at the gate.
• Official site

Video previews, after the jump …

(more…)

How bad is traffic in the Birmingham metro area? Forbes magazine says we have the worst commute among small cities, costing us 33 hours a year. Some 37 percent make it to work in less than 20 minutes.

The city ranked as having the best commute among small cities is Corpus Christi, Texas.

What’s being done to save us? Well, Mayor Langford proposed free rides on MAX buses to help combat rising gas costs, but both the Birmingham-Jefferson County Transit Authority and the city council have balked. So far, City Hall hasn’t provided promised cash to actually pay for the free rides. Not that the transit system hasn’t been broken for years.

Perhaps a more innovative solution comes from CommuteSmart Birmingham, which will pay you $2 a day (up to $120 in three months) for switching from driving alone to an alternate method: bike, walk, carpool, telecommute or even ride the bus.

Does Birmingham have what it takes to fix the transportation situation? Or are we all doomed to spend more time stuck in our cars and more money at the pump?
• Forbes: In Depth: Best And Worst Commutes In Small Cities

• • •

More headlines | send us your news tips.

May means more more more when it comes to fun events and fresh air.

If you’re going to eat local, this weekend’s a good time to start.

The ninth annual Pepper Place Saturday Market starts its five-month run on Saturday. Local crops, local flowers, local music and demonstrations by local chefs fill the mornings from 7 a.m. to noon.

And don’t forget: Tonight and Saturday, check out the Schaeffer Eye Center Crawfish Boil with Fergie, T-Pain, Gavin DeGraw, Flo Rida and 3 Doors Down. See and hear the lineup.

Will you be heading out to these local events this weekend? Tell us.
• Official site

• • •

More headlines | send us your news tips.

Jefferson County’s debt crisis could be the worst in U.S. history, thanks to bond swaps and other financial shenanigans. Who’s to blame? The government says Larry Langford, former head of the county commission and current head of Birmingham.

The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil complaint today against the mayor for taking more than $156,000 in cash and benefits, in exchange for helping his good buddy Bill Blount get in on the bond swap action worth more than $6 million in business. Also named is Al LaPierre, another Langford pal/lobbyist/former head of the state Democratic Party. The SEC accused LaPierre of receiving $219,500 from Blount to help win the county’s financial business.

Langford and LaPierre have denied any wrongdoing.

At the heart of the case, accusations of concealed payments, backroom deals and financial mismanagement of public funds of the worst kind. Meanwhile, the mayor continues to propose sketchily detailed projects and funding for the city. Where, and how, will it all end?

Also:

• The SEC press release
• How Langford’s $70,000 clothing crunch may have cost billions to county residents (PDF)
• Langford: “My whole life has been put out in the public. Name me another official that’s been put under that type of scrutiny.”
• WBHM interviews Glenn Gordon of the SEC (MP3)
• Fox 6 explains the complexities of municipal finance in Bond Deals 101

• Birmingham News: SEC files civil complaint against Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford, banker and lobbyist

• • •

More headlines | send us your news tips.

Paintings in the park: Swing by Linn Park for the 25th annual Magic City Art Connection. The free event runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. today, Saturday and Sunday, with artists from all over, plus Corks and Chefs, that sumptuous gathering of the Birmingham’s finest cuisine.
• Official site

Bargains in the Belk: The Junior League of Birmingham has its annual Bargain Carousel. Maybe you need clothes, or toys, or furniture, or about a hundred other things. See one of the largest “garage sales” over at the abandoned Belk at Century Plaza, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday. Admission from 8 a.m. to noon Saturday is $5. Proceeds from the event fund the organization’s year-round service projects.

Don’t forget: You can also dump your old electronics and computers Saturday at Century Plaza.
• Official site

God vs. gangstas: If you’re on hand this evening for the art festival, stick around, because some performance art is gonna blow your mind. Mayor Langford, having purchased thousands of sackcloths with personal funds, will have a prayer rally in Linn Park at 6 tonight. Like his predecessor Bernard Kincaid (who threw a “funeral” for crime), Langford wants the community to don the sackcloth and ashes, declaring “It’s time to pray.” LaLa meets dada. Excellent.
• Park drips with irony, intolerance [Birmingham News]

Also:

• Barons gear up for pointless season
• City’s surreal index dangerously high
• Segway plant considers moving to state, very slowly

• • •

More headlines | send us your news tips.

Hosts Tom Bergeron and Samantha Harris, left, boot
Marlee Matlin and Hoover’s Fabian Sanchez
from “Dancing With the Stars.”

On Tuesday’s episode of ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars,” actress Marlee Matlin and her professional partner, Fabian Sanchez of Hoover, were eliminated. Week 5 saw the pair perform the mambo, earning a score of 21 from the judges, the lowest among the seven competing couples.

Ironically, Sanchez won the 2006 national championship in … mambo.

Oh well, that’s the way the ballroom bounces. What’s the sign for “failure”?

Video of the messy mambo, after the jump …

(more…)

Greetings, fellow Earthlings,

As you idle your SUVs in rush hour traffic, sipping on gourmet coffee in disposable containers, please remember that today is Earth Day. (Next week: Up With Uranus Week.)

To mark the greening of society, Birmingham Weekly has a passel of articles on the event, including a look at Fresh Air Family, which wants you to go outside and play.

The Birmingham News marks the day with a feature on the soon-to-be first LEED-certified house in Alabama, over in Homewood. Take a look at it via satellite.

And finally, drop off your electronics and computers and unwanted gizmos from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at Century Plaza during Ecycling Day. Send all gently used iPods to our mailing address.

• • •

More headlines | send us your news tips.