Anvil Brewing owners building live music culture in Pittsburg
Byron and Kristin Aldredge met in Central Texas back when he was a Texas state trooper, and he spent his off-duty hours soaking up the live music scene there. When they moved to Jefferson to buy The Steamboat Inn Bed & Breakfast, they also brought their love of live music with them and opened the Cork Yard, a wine bar, bistro, and music venue. They have since sold the Cork Yard to launch their newest venture Anvil Brewing in Pittsburg, which celebrates its one-year anniversary July 4.
Anvil Brewing and the Pittsburg Feed & Seed Dance Hall, housed in the original Pilgrim’s Pride feed store is the beginning of the couple’s multi-faceted vision to establish Pittsburg as a live music destination.
“Our vision started down in San Marcos and Austin and New Braunfels. My wife and I loved seeing live music, and when we moved to East Texas, we lost that outlet for going out and seeing the up and comers, bands like Band of Heathens and Youngsville and The Vandeliers,” Byron Aldredge said. “From Austin to San Antonio there is live music all over the place, and here it was pretty much a desert for music.”
Coming back to his hometown that has Aldredge roots back to its pioneering days, he immersed himself in the project of bringing the feed store’s bones back to life using all reclaimed materials from the building itself.
He’s also passionate about the past that surrounds this little Texas burg and he wants the rest of the state to know just where it is on the map, to come for the talented, diverse, not-on-the-radio yet musicians and stay to learn about the entrepreneurial, pioneering spirit of the town’s historical figures, like Carroll Shelby, James Cavender, and Bo Pilgrim.
“We want people to know that Pittsburg is a venue for great music and that it was first in flight with the Ezekiel Airship, that it was the birthplace Cavender’s Boot City, the birthplace of the Cobra Mustang, that it started here on these streets,” he said.
With concerts every weekend, Anvil Brewing hosts an eclectic mix of bands and genres, all with that hungry desire to make it on the bigger stages someday and are happy to play for the door on wood floors in an old historic gem – walls reinforced with great acoustics – tucked at the end of Compress Street.
“What we’re trying to do with the artists and the music is to engender an atmosphere of camaraderie and that shared experience, in turn, engenders friendships,” Aldredge said.
He admits Youngsville might be “a little eclectic and a little Austin-y” for some folks’ taste around here. But, he’s also hosted Kid Icarus out of Tyler who “you’d never think would be putting out the type of music they’re putting out” and the Drugstore Gypsies “who are phenomenal and left our place to go and open for people like Blake Shelton.”
Of course, there’s hometown favorite Cole Risner who is on the artist trail making a name for himself and excited that there’s a place to play when he comes home.
“He’s exactly the kind of artist we want here. He’s an up and rising star, and he’s opened for some huge people like Reckless Kelly. He has two Top 40 songs on the charts. He’s a great musician. He went to high school here, married a girl from here, but he’s not going to make his fame here. Here is where he’s going to go to connect with people that are helping support his fame,” Aldredge said of Risner who recently performed at Anvil. “Cole has that longevity as an artist. He’ll be a Chris Stapleton, a Robert Earl King.”
He said he and his wife are working hard to create a venue that “when you’re in San Antonio people are talking about Anvil Brewing and the Feed & Seed Dance Hall in Pittsburg, Texas.”
“I want musicians to be talking about what a fun time they had playing at the Feed & Seed, and I want people statewide to put it on their bucket list of Texas Things To Do: Go to Pittsburg, Texas and see the Ezekiel Airship, walk the streets, have a Pittsburg Hot Link and come to Anvil and see some live music,” he said.
Aldredge says the venue struggles a bit with the locals. Going out for a night of live music and having a beer is still a relatively new idea in Pittsburg. He said 90 percent of his clientele are from out of town, but he wants to change that. The brewpub brews eight types of craft beers they serve on tap and in growlers to take home, but it makes craft root beers as well. And, his second brewpub and dancehall location is already in the works at the brick building on the south side of the Anvil location that he purchased with Rick Wall, the owner of Rick’s Antiques.
“We bought the building that was Walt’s Sharp Shop. It was condemned, and we were able to get it from the estate,” Aldredge said. “Rick believes in my vision, and so we’re working together with that property.”
The big picture is to create a brewpub capital in Pittsburg.
“We’ll have our second one this year and hopefully keep things on track. We are in negotiations on a third location for the end of this year or early next year, so we’ll have three brewpubs with a music venue in each of them. There is another location that could have an amphitheater in it,” Aldredge said.
In the middle of all his building and entrepreneurial plans, he flips houses and does construction on the side to help pay the bills.
“We did this on a dirty shoestring budget and halfway through somebody took the shoestring away and left us with nothing but the dirt,” he said, beaming with pride in the accomplishment. “We took something that was condemned, that was trash that was thrown away, and we brought it back to life for the betterment of the entire town.”
As for the music, he said his 25-plus years of red dirt music venue experience has culminated in this place called Pittsburg, Texas.
“It was a lot of fun and a neat experience to see all those bands, and now we have that outlet to bring it back to my family’s hometown,” he said.