Photo courtesy of Sam Holt.
Sam Holt, a Mountain Brook native, is a freshman at McCallie School, an all-boys private school in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but he plans to make the trip home to perform at the 2025 Rocky Ridge Battle of the Bands event in Vestavia Hills. He won the middle school category at least year’s show.
Mountain Brook’s Sam Holt has been strumming the strings of a guitar since the fourth grade, and he’s getting ready to take the stage again for this year’s Rocky Ridge Battle of the Bands event.
Started in 2018, this marks the sixth annual event that brings middle schoolers and high schoolers from across the Birmingham metro area to live out their rockstar dreams. Organizers skipped the event in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We’ll have 400 people out there, and people bring chairs and stuff. We do the big fake checks and do a check presentation. And we’ll have a tour bus parked there for the kids to hang out on and a green room where they can kind of be hidden back behind the bus,” Bob Barker, co-event organizer, said. “We just treat them like rock stars, and there’s no real reason for any of it except to support these young people pursuing and playing music.”
Holt is a freshman at McCallie School, an all-boys private school in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but is a native of Mountain Brook. He first performed in the Battle of the Bands last year, winning the middle school category as the first-ever acoustic winner.
He says his style falls in the country and indie folk genre — like a mix between folk-pop artist Noah Kahan and country singer Sam Barber.
As an early-career musician, Holt fills with adrenaline each time he steps in front of a crowd, a feeling he’s encountered from a few performances at bars and restaurants. Of course, the internal voice is there reminding him not to mess up, too.
Those stage jitters are part of the reason organizers try to make the event mimic a professional setting while emphasizing community. Mason Music and Anovys, a software company based in Vestavia, are two of this year’s big sponsors, but Barker says the rest is a grassroots effort.
“Everything else is literally just people throwing in 300 bucks at a time, but it takes almost $7,000 to put the event on,” Barker said. “That’s staging, professional lights, professional sound. There’s a VIP area and everything like that, and somebody donates the food. It is one of the most organic — it’s not unorganized at all, but it’s just un-corporate. It’s just really everybody getting together to do it.”
The event usually features about 10 bands, and it’s free for kids to participate. They each get to play a set, and judges pick the winners, who receive a cash prize. At the end of the show, performers from all the different bands usually get together for an impromptu jam session, allowing the kids an opportunity to collaborate and connect with other musicians.
“Battle of the Bands helped me meet people,” Holt said, “and reach out to new types of people who play different music.”
Holt’s Battle of the Bands performance can be seen on April 19 starting at 5 p.m. The free event will take place in the parking lot of Rocky Ridge Plaza, 2531 Rocky Ridge Road, Vestavia Hills.
