Furnace Fest 2025

From October 3-5, over 60 hardcore, emo, indie rock, and punk bands will converge on the stages of Sloss Furnaces to enthrall Birmingham music lovers for the 2025 Furnace Fest. The brainchild of music veteran and founder Chad Johnson, Furnace Fest has featured some of the biggest bands in the scene (some bands like headliner Jimmy Eat World have gained international mainstream recognition) since its humble DIY beginnings in 2000.

We spoke with Johnson about his time in the music industry, building a festival in Birmingham, and the lessons he’s learned along the way.

Magic City Bands: How did you get into music?

Chad Johnson: It’s a long story, but the long story short: I always had a passion for music and being able to listen to it. I never was able to play it. I never had any kind of musical creative gifts, so to speak.

I had moved to Birmingham and got married. My first year in Birmingham, I worked for Two Men and a Truck, and I absolutely hated it. Worst and hardest job ever. But my side hustle back then was to go to shows and set up a booth featuring different bands. I would buy records in small quantities and patches from labels and mark them up a little to sell at local concerts.

That grew into a business called Slacker66 that did more of that in a slightly more formal capacity. Slacker eventually grew into a music venue, which is where I found bands like Underoath and Anberlin and a bunch of others. That venue turned into Takehold Records, which spawned Furnace Festival.

I was in about $120,000 worth of debt, and Tooth & Nail Records out of Seattle ended up buying me out of my debt and essentially giving me a new job. That was pretty remarkable. Got to move up to Seattle, which is why Furnace Fest ended for a while.

Militarie Gun by @noxjustic.

MCB: Talk about the first couple of Furnace Fests. When did that start?

CJ: That would have been the year 2000. There’s a series of four Furnace Fests back then. The original era was 2000-2003. It became pretty obvious when I moved to Seattle that I would not be able to manage a music festival from a distance. At the time, I thought I could totally do it, but obviously not.

MCB: What was the inspiration for having it at Sloss?

CJ: At the time, it was just a location. I didn’t really even think of Sloss as a venue, but I heard you could do festivals there. I drove over there one random day and walked around and thought ‘Man, you can do concerts here? Sign me up.’ I talked to the owners, and it was reasonably priced, so I decided to try it.

MCB: Next, talk about the growth of the festival, and some of the original bands who played.

CJ: Back then, we probably drew around 1500-2000 people a day, so very small, local DIY punk/hardcore/emo/indie rock. Bands back then are fairly well-known today. Bands like the Dillinger Escape Plan, Converge, The Juliana Theory. A lot of bands back then who were $1,000-5,000 to book, which would not be even remotely possible today. They’ve come a long way.

MCB: I remember the first time I heard of the festival was a Tooth & Nail music video DVD, and it featured Squad 5-0 playing “I Don’t Want to Change The World, I Just Want to Change Your Mind” live at Furnace Fest.

CJ: That’s funny. That’s a great memory.

ZULU by @jamescoffmanmedia.

MCB: So what brought it back?

CJ: That is a good question.

I still have family on my wife’s side in Birmingham. When I was in town visiting one time, I ran into Johnny Grimes at Octane Coffee in Homewood. That was always the go-to spot for our family on the way down. He was just working on his laptop at Octane and just asked me what I thought about doing Furnace Fest again. I wasn’t sure at first, thought it was a little crazy. But that was the start of it. It was basically all his fault.

MCB: When did the festival start up again?

CJ: That conversation was 2019. And in 2020, we got postponed twice because of COVID. Then, we came back in 2021.

MCB: Talk about this year’s festival and some of the things you’re doing differently. Who are the headliners, and who are some of the best-kept secrets that people should check out?

CJ: Friday night is Jimmy Eat World headlining the main stage, Saturday night is Dropkick Murphys, and Sunday is Knocked Loose. It’s going to be three completely different styles and days on the Main Stage. Shed Stage is mainly hardcore, Pond Stage is mainly shoegaze, emo, indie rock, and a few heavy bands.

Secret World is a band from Sydney, Australia that I’m really into. I can’t stop listening to Petey USA. Glare is great. I was just listening to Spanish Love Songs. I feel like there are so many bands on the lineup this year that are absolutely stunning to me. Hopefully, I’m not the only one uncovering a bunch of bands I’ve never heard of prior to this.

MCB: That’s awesome. Any Birmingham bands that are playing this year? I know Meadows has played before.

CJ: There’s quite a few. My Reply is playing. Not Birmingham, but Gum from Chattanooga is close. Path of Destruction, Meadows, Delta Sleep, Day Job. I think all of those are Birmingham bands. A bunch of them are playing Friday.

MCB: What are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned from running a festival like this?

CJ: Probably the greatest lesson I’ve learned is how not to do this. That is still a lesson that I’m learning, and how to live with the decisions that you make that oftentimes, in hindsight, you should not have made them or you should have done things differently. It’s almost comically obvious once you look at it objectively and once you have all the data in front of you. Like, oh yeah, that band did not translate the way that we thought. Or maybe there was something cool that did work. It’s a constant evolution in personal and professional growth.

Photo by @jamescoffmanmedia.

MCB: How do you think the scene in Birmingham has changed over the years?

CJ: From the outside looking in, I think Birmingham has become a really strong contender with other, much larger cities with what you would assume to be stronger scenes. But I think in some ways, because of Furnace Fest and because of all the events surrounding Furnace Fest, it’s helped from my biased perspective to bring credibility to Birmingham that may have already been there, but it showcased that this city is amazing. Here’s all these great bands. Here’s all this cool stuff happening.

So many people even to this day will tell me that they never thought they would go to Birmingham. And when they came to Furnace Fest, they discovered it was such a sick city. I think it’s shown what people in Birmingham have already known, in that it’s such a great place.

According to Chad Johnson, all onsite parking and some early bird passes have sold out, but parking is available across the street from the venue. For more information, visit the festival website.

Photos courtesy of Furnace Fest. Chris K. Davidson is a writer and musician in Birmingham.