Ben Jernigan’s path to running one of Fairhope’s signature cultural events ran through an ambulance bay, a baseball diamond and the Fillmore in San Francisco — in roughly that order. The executive director of Live at Five, the volunteer-run concert series at the Halstead Amphitheater, started his working life as a paramedic who played music on the side, and now books national acts into a 3,000-capacity amphitheater on the Eastern Shore.
Along the way he partnered with a World Series champion pitcher, fronted a band that sold out the Fillmore and played Red Rocks and Central Park, and helped build a Mobile recording studio. The Live at Five job, he says, just followed the path put in front of him.
From paramedic to stage
Jernigan, a Mobile native and working musician, made his early living as a paramedic while playing music on the side. Friends began asking him to put bands together; nonprofits sought him out to organize events. His life, he says, was “revolving” — or, as it turned out, evolving.
The pivot point was Jake Peavy, the Mobile-born pitcher who starred for the San Diego Padres and Chicago White Sox. Jernigan and Peavy became friends and business partners, exploring ways to develop downtown Mobile. “I wanted to bring creative types and entrepreneurs together and create a cool downtown environment,” Jernigan said.
Then Peavy’s fan base discovered something the baseball world hadn’t fully appreciated: the Cy Young winner could play guitar and sing. Fans wanted more. Jernigan put a band together — The Outsiders — and they took the show on the road. They sold out the Fillmore in San Francisco with a Jerry Garcia and Grateful Dead tribute, played Red Rocks in Colorado and Central Park in New York, and eventually came home to play Bienville Square and the Mobile Civic Center.
“It was quite an adventure and a very steep learning curve,” Jernigan said. “I made many contacts and friends in the music business and decided I didn’t want to be an EMT anymore.”
Building Mobile’s music infrastructure
Back home in 2018, Jernigan directed 1065, a music festival that followed in the footsteps of BayFest, Mobile’s long-running downtown music festival. With Peavy he started Dauphin Street Sound, a professional recording studio, along with the Cedar Street Social Club — and the ventures kept coming. He books entertainment for venues across the Southeast and works on concert promotions for major universities.
That resume led him backstage at Live at Five in 2022, where he had come to see his old friend John Popper of Blues Traveler. There he met board chairman Clifton Mosteller and joined the board as the series’ booker; by the summer of 2023 he was executive director.
“I have been to dozens of venues and this is a special situation,” he said of the Fairhope series. “The location of the venue, the bring-your-own-chairs-and-cooler atmosphere, the history of Fairhope’s support of the art community at large, and bringing musicians and music to the Eastern Shore grabbed my attention.”
The 2024 season
Jernigan’s booking skills showed in the spring 2024 lineup, announced as the series entered its eighth year. The season opener on March 29 featured the Red Clay Strays, the Mobile band in the middle of a national breakout on its Way Too Long tour, with River Dan and Brooke Brown opening. On April 19, the Band of Heathens, the Austin, Texas Americana outfit with multiple albums and Americana Music Association honors to its name, headlined with Lamont Landers and Fairhope’s own Summerlyn Powers on the undercard.
May 10 brought Southern rock royalty: the Marshall Tucker Band, with Taylor Hunnicutt and Shelby Kemp opening. The season closed on May 31 with the Tip Tops, the region’s favorite dance band. Every national act on that bill costs tens of thousands of dollars to book — money the nonprofit raises through ticket sales and sponsorships rather than the college underwriting that kept early ticket prices low.
Sponsorship tiers run from $1,000 up to a $10,000 Presenting Sponsor level, with perks including free tickets, parking, stage and fence banners and series swag — and, for business owners, a tax-deductible way into the amphitheater’s grass. All profits flow to the Jacob Hall Memorial Grant, which gives money and instruments to aspiring musicians in the area, keeping the series’ charitable loop closed.
Alive at Five
What has made Live at Five a must-do Fairhope event is unchanged since its founding in 2017: a spring breeze through the pines, ice chests and picnic baskets, children and dogs on the lawn, and a favorite band playing as the sun drops over downtown. Audience members have taken to calling the experience “Alive at Five” — a description organizers have embraced.
For Jernigan, who likes to “put himself in the middle of it all,” the series is the natural destination for a career that has touched every corner of the Gulf Coast music business — ambulance to amphitheater, studio to stage. The volunteers who run the series credit his experience and connections with professionalizing the operation; the bands credit his bookings with putting Fairhope on the touring map. And the 2024 Red Clay Strays date, he predicted, was going to be “the biggest thing Fairhope has ever seen.”