The South Alabama Land Trust has announced its musical lineup for the 12th annual Bald Eagle Bash, the organization’s largest annual fundraiser, set for Saturday, April 30 at the Tonsmeire Weeks Bay Resource Center. The event, which has grown into one of the signature spring gatherings on the Alabama Gulf Coast, combines live music, a showcase of local seafood cooking, and a fundraising mission that reaches from the shores of Weeks Bay across the wider coastal region.
Musician Ross Newell, known for his previous work fronting The Mulligan Brothers, will open the evening, followed by Paw Paw’s Medicine Cabinet. The pairing gives the Bash both a proven favorite and a rising act: Newell returns to a stage where his former band drew some of the event’s most enthusiastic crowds, while the younger indie pop and rock group brings a sound that organizers expect to carry the night in a new direction.
Tickets go on sale March 14 at 8 a.m. and will only be sold in advance, with prices set at $65, or $55 for South Alabama Land Trust members. The advance-only policy has become a defining feature of the Bash — there are no gate sales — and organizers point to it as reason enough for interested attendees to set a reminder for the morning the tickets are released.
“Tickets for the 2021 Bald Eagle Bash sold out just days after they went on sale,” said Diana Brewer, the organization’s development and communications coordinator. “We have no doubt the 12th annual Bash will do the same. We are so excited about having Ross Newell play the first hour. He has a huge following from his days with the Mulligan Brothers, which was one of the most popular bands to play at the Bash. And Paw Paw’s Medicine Cabinet, with their cool indie pop and rock sound, is going to be a blast.”
Ross Newell returns to the Bash
As the founding creative force behind The Mulligan Brothers, a well-regarded Mobile band, Newell has spent years refining his songwriting craft. The band’s three studio albums are known for strong melodies and songs that explore the everyday struggle to build meaningful connections. Over the course of the band’s run, that songwriting earned the Mulligan Brothers a devoted following across the Gulf Coast and beyond, with Newell’s voice and pen at the center of the group’s identity.
Newell’s return to the Bald Eagle Bash stage carries the weight of that history. The Mulligan Brothers’ appearances at the Bash were among the event’s most talked-about sets, and Brewer’s comment about his “huge following” reflects an audience that has tracked his work from the band’s albums into his solo and new projects. For longtime Bash attendees, his hour on the opening slot functions as a homecoming.
Paw Paw’s Medicine Cabinet takes the late slot
Paw Paw’s Medicine Cabinet features Gabriel Will, Mike Jernigan, Ethan Snediger, Jeremy Ault and Jacob Hall. The group released two full-length albums in 2017 and has built a growing regional following, with recent appearances at the Gautier Mullet Festival in Gautier, Mississippi, and the Gulf Shores Sunset Series, as well as a performance at Americanafest in Nashville, Tennessee. Americanafest, the annual Nashville gathering that showcases Americana and roots-leaning acts from across the country, counts as a notable credential for a young Gulf Coast band.
The band has shared stages with acts including The Marcus King Band, Wet Willie, Counting Crows, Kristy Lee and The Dirt Road Revival, The Mulligan Brothers, and River Whyless. That resume — which mixes national touring acts with Gulf Coast institutions like Wet Willie, the Mobile-bred southern rock band — sketches the range of audiences the group has won over on its way to the Bash’s headline slot.
A taste of the Gulf
Beyond the music, the Bald Eagle Bash is built around a “taste of the Gulf” culinary showcase, bringing together more than a dozen area restaurants to create dishes centered on fresh shrimp — everything from fried shrimp and stuffed shrimp to shrimp and grits and shrimp ceviche. The cooking competition format has become as much a draw as the music, with attendees sampling their way through the restaurants’ offerings while deciding which plates deserve their votes.
Several restaurants will also serve desserts, and for the first time this year, organizers are adding both a vegan option and a non-shrimp option to accommodate a wider range of guests. The addition acknowledges how the event’s audience has broadened over a dozen years, and it extends the Bash’s hospitality to attendees whose dietary needs or preferences had previously limited what they could enjoy at the showcase.
Fairhope Brewing and Braided River Brewing Company will once again pour their signature beers, alongside selections from two wine distributors. The presence of the two breweries — one rooted in Fairhope, the other in Mobile — continues the Bash’s practice of keeping its beverage lineup local, pairing Alabama-made beer with wine selections that round out the evening’s offerings.
The mission behind the party
As the South Alabama Land Trust’s largest annual event, the Bald Eagle Bash raises funds that support the organization’s work restoring vulnerable coastline, protecting local wildlife, and educating the public about conservation of the region’s natural resources along Weeks Bay and the broader Gulf Coast. The land trust, long active in the Weeks Bay area, works on projects that range from shoreline restoration and habitat protection to the environmental education programs that bring local students to the bay’s waters and wetlands.
The setting reinforces the mission. The Tonsmeire Weeks Bay Resource Center sits on Weeks Bay, where the Fish River meets Mobile Bay in a nationally recognized estuary, giving attendees a direct look at the ecosystems their ticket purchases help protect. The center’s grounds host the event’s stages and food stations against the backdrop of the water and wetlands the organization exists to conserve.
The bash takes its name from the bald eagles whose recovery along the Alabama coast has become one of the region’s most visible conservation success stories. The birds nest in the Weeks Bay area and throughout Baldwin County’s waterways, and their presence serves as a living emblem of the habitat work the land trust carries out year-round with the funds the Bash generates.
This year’s event is co-chaired by Chesley Allegri of Fairhope and Kendall Dexter of Mobile. The two co-chairs lead the volunteer effort that stages the event, coordinating everything from the restaurant lineup and beverage arrangements to parking, logistics, and the music schedule at the resource center.
Tickets and additional details are available at baldeaglebash.com, or by calling 251-990-5004. Organizers’ advice, based on the 2021 sellout, is simple: buy early. With advance-only sales, a limited venue, and a lineup that pairs a returning favorite with one of the region’s fastest-growing bands, the 12th annual Bald Eagle Bash is expected to reach capacity well before the last week of April arrives.
For the South Alabama Land Trust, the event is also an annual reunion of the volunteers, donors, restaurants, and musicians who have sustained it through twelve years. The Bash began as a modest fundraiser built around the idea that the best way to win people to a conservation cause is to gather them beside the water they love, feed them well, and let the region’s musicians provide the soundtrack. A dozen editions later, that formula has made the event the organization’s financial anchor.
The funds raised flow into work that is largely invisible between one April and the next: planting shoreline grasses that hold eroding banks in place, monitoring water quality in the Weeks Bay watershed, securing habitat for the fish, birds, and wildlife that depend on the estuary, and running the education programs that introduce schoolchildren to the coastal environment on their doorstep. Every $65 ticket — or $55 for members — feeds directly into that cycle.
The 12th annual edition arrives at a moment when coastal conservation work along the northern Gulf Coast has only grown more consequential. Storm impacts, development pressure, and shoreline erosion continue to test the habitats around Mobile Bay and its tributaries, and land trusts like South Alabama’s play a role that public agencies alone cannot fill, moving quickly to restore and protect parcels and shorelines before they are lost.
For attendees, though, the evening’s appeal remains the same as it has been since the first Bash: fresh Gulf shrimp cooked a dozen different ways by the area’s best kitchens, Alabama-brewed beer and poured wine in hand, and live music from sunset onward at one of the most beautiful settings the coast has to offer. The music lineup — Newell’s songbook to open, Paw Paw’s Medicine Cabinet to close — gives the 12th annual Bash every reason to expect another sellout when tickets go on sale March 14.