Birmingham’s sound board

For the Creager family, the city of Mountain Brook and the Birmingham area have always been a special kind of home, tied together with the music scene. From memories of B.B. King serenading Laurel Creager when she was pregnant with her first child to helping The Flaming Lips sew their costumes together to Mike Creager mixing Sturgill Simpson’s first big album in a sold-out show at Iron City, Birmingham was a city they never pictured leaving.

Yet, the family found themselves packing up in October 2017, heading to a new life in Burlington, Vermont.

Close family friend Chesley Suttles, who also grew up in Mountain Brook with Mike and Laurel Creager, said she was surprised to hear they were moving — until she learned why.

“I know how much they both love Birmingham, and it’s been their home for so long,” she said. “But because it was an opportunity in music, that’s what didn’t surprise me. I don’t think anything else could have taken them away.”

When Mike Creager was offered a job as production manager at the legendary Higher Ground music venue, he and his family decided to take the “dream job” and continue to grow his impact in the music industry. That impact has included touring the nation with his band, owning his own Birmingham-based recording studio and, most notably, being a part of the team to open the venue Iron City. He even designed its entire world-renowned sound system.

“It’s amazing to think that some guy from Mountain Brook, Birmingham, had enough of a name to be sought after like that,” Laurel Creager said.

Only a year later, around the same time his father developed health complications, the Alabama Theatre reached out to him about a sudden job opening.

“To me, being [back] with my family and having the opportunity to represent the state theater, in my mind, trumps everything,” Mike Creager said. “What I thought was my dream job up there, truly it wasn’t the case; it was down here.”

It would be special, Mike Creager said, for his daughter and son to be able to go to the same school he did, Cherokee Bend Elementary, live in walking distance to his parent’s house and get some of the same opportunities he was afforded through Mountain Brook’s education and its tight-knit community.

When he decided to take the job as technical director for the Alabama Theatre and the Lyric Theatre, the Creagers moved themselves back in June 2018 to where they loved best: Mountain Brook.

Suttle, who was happy to see them come back, said, “You can be gone for a while, but you will always be a part of the [Mountain Brook] community.”

Ashley McGowen, who used to work under Mike Creager and credits much of her current success at Live Nation to him acting as her mentor, said she was always so impressed with his strong emphasis on family and vast knowledge about music. 

“He’s seen it as an artist and performer. He’s seen it as a venue administrator. He’s seen it as a production manager. So he’s got the artists’ best interest, the fans’ best interest and the employees of the venue and people that work concerts — he’s got everyone’s best interest at heart,” McGowen said. “He was born playing music, and he was born in the music industry.”

And his love of Birmingham music, in particular, makes him a great asset, she said.

Laurel Creager, who also works in the music industry at Live Nation, said watching her husband work at the two theaters for the last few months has been “such an honor,” and that their family is happy to be back.

‘Leaving an imprint’

Mike Creager said his love for music started with his grandfather, who was an inventor and also “a prodigy on the guitar.”

“From an early age, I was messing around with wiring diagrams and learning how to build things and how to play music,” Mike Creager said. 

Family friend Chelsey Suttles, who went to Mountain Brook High School with Mike Creager, said his “claim to fame was his music.”

“I just remember any time there was a school function or music played, he was involved. He was always a part of it,” she said. 

Even when they were in art class together, Suttles remembers all of his projects centered around music. She said in the Mountain Brook and Birmingham area, Mike had one of the best reputations, even before he was more well-known.

“He is just so good at what he does, and he’s such a good person,” she said. 

Mike Creager remembers late night jams and being exposed to talented bands and music players. Although his grandfather passed away when he was 19 years old, the man left an imprint about the importance of music that stuck long after he was gone, to this day even, Mike Creager said.

When his family moved to Birmingham right before he began first grade at Cherokee Bend, Mike Creager started playing guitar, which he said he excelled at. Upon entering high school, he got on a work-study program that allowed time to travel, play music and eventually put a band together that had some early success. 

“I remember some of my earliest memories not only loving music, but the chemistry between all the players on stage. It was special,” he said, adding that he played guitar and sang while touring with the band.

When he grew up in Mountain Brook, bands mainly played at house gigs around town or hole-in-the-wall venues, Mike Creager said, and each year he would go to the Alabama Music Hall to perform at Battle of the Bands for the chance to play City Stages, an annual Birmingham-based festival held from 1989 to 2009.

“The people behind the scenes were in the trenches, so to speak. I think a lot of us just wanted and knew that Birmingham was bigger and capable of these greater things,” Mike Creager said. 

After some time away touring, he was back working at his recording studio in the Birmingham music scene and living in Mountain Brook. Then, in 2012, his friend Steve DeMedicis hired him to be the technical consultant and production manager at his music venue, what would become one of Birmingham’s most well-known sites: Iron City.

“Coming off the road from traveling for many years not only as a performer but an engineer, I was exposed to all of the good and the bad that venues have to offer,” he said. 

Mike Creager said he was hired by Steve DeMedicis not only for his audio specialties and to design the state-of-the-art sound system at the venue, but also for his general knowledge in venues and the way they operate. When he was performing and designing sound systems earlier in his life, he never thought about getting into music management, though.

“Things changed with Iron City … It was a beautiful place to go from a dirty old warehouses to a top venue,” he said.

Broadening skills

In the first quarter the venue was open, Iron City was named in the top 25 venues in the world by Pollstar and got international recognition. Even in March 2018, it won Live Music Venue of the Year by Nightclub & Bar, which recognizes bars from all over the U.S.

Mike Creager said he fell in love with the platform and became close with the owners, and he was hired as general manager only a month and a half into the job, which is where he stayed until 2016.

“I always wanted to help merge our local scene with the national touring acts, and really, that was some of the [best] things when the venue [Iron City] was introduced,” he said. “You have this great sold-out show in this beautiful venue, you get to have a local band that you really believed in and get to align them in those positions … Several times I can remember just magical moments that would occur when we had these beautiful pairing of local and national acts.”

McGowen, who worked under Mike Creager at Iron City from 2013-16, said she was constantly impressed by how much he took the time to teach her, in addition to how seamlessly he was able to manage being a father with a busy and time-consuming general manager position.

“He didn’t skimp [being a father] for work. He would have the children there with him, and he was just such a passionate teacher. Even when the kids were very, very small, he would teach them the etiquette of how to act backstage, and they got to see him in action,” she said.

Within his role in Iron City, he was able to broaden his skills to business-related activities like managing shows, creating expenses and experience plans for bands and audio and performance skills, which helped prepare him for his current role.

“Mike has had just so many advantages because of the closeness of the Mountain Brook community,” Laurel Creager said, adding that the Weinbergers, who currently own Red Mountain Entertainment, have been “like Mike’s mentor over the years.”

Mike Creager said Red Mountain Entertainment, which was hired as the talent buyer when Iron City first opened, was a key part in the development of the venue.

“We needed a relationship and strength like Red Mountain [Entertainment] to help solidify the venue. It was extremely difficult trying to get agents to respond in what we felt like was going to be one of the better platforms in the world, not just a club from Birmingham,” he said. 

Mike Creager also acted as liaison between the venue and various install groups. At one point, he even created Artists Care, a program at Iron City where famous musicians donated memorabilia or time to go to Children’s of Alabama to perform, McGowen said.

“Even to this day, a band sent him this loving note. It’s a tradition. Every week, we have new messages from these artists that are playing award shows, saying to him, ‘You are just the most incredible sound engineer and guy to work with,’” Laurel Creager said. 

Mike Creager has also been a promoter for Red Mountain Entertainment, and over the years he's had opportunities to tour with bands like the Roots and George Clinton, in addition to opening his own recording studio.

“It’s so cool to watch how Mike has progressed in the industry when back 15 years ago, we were all playing small little hole-in-the-wall bars,” Laurel Creager said.

At his new job, Mike is excited to continue his legacy in music and to watch his children grow up loving the industry. Birmingham’s Lyric Theatre reopened in January 2016 after major renovations, adding to the city’s mix of high-quality music venues. 

“I think the Lyric opening is just such a wonderful opportunity for history, the history of Birmingham,” Laurel Creager said. “It goes so deep … and watching it develop with the new places, new venues and also the restoration with these incredible places, is incredible.”

“...Now I have the honor of repping the state theatre,” Mike Creager said. “There’s no other place that has given me those opportunities and supported me and opened those doors, and I wouldn’t have learned without the Gary Weinbergers and the Steve DeMedicises of the world and having their support.”