Lee Bains III is no stranger to Birmingham stages. Whether with his current band, Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires, or past projects, including the Dexateens, Bains has amped up the volume at venues all over town.

He'll do so again Sunday at the inaugural Sloss Fest. The inaugural event takes place Saturday and Sunday at Sloss Furnaces, with three stages of music, art, food and drinks.

We spoke to Bains in advance of the event to learn what the band has been up to since the 2014 release of "Dereconstructed" (SubPop).

AL.com: Fans know y'all tour loud and often. But of course, we also know you've got to find time somewhere to write new music. What has the band been up to lately?

Lee Bains III: We're taking it easy this summer as far as touring goes. I've just really been working a lot on writing new stuff. We've been getting together to figure out how to parlay the songs into a full-band arrangement. That's pretty much it, really just thinking about these new songs and doing a few shows--we're doing Sloss Fest and we're playing with Alabama Shakes in Atlanta next month. Just a few little things until the fall, and then we'll pick back up touring then and play some of these songs we're working on.

AL.com: There was a significant sonic shift between the band's first two albums: "There is a Bomb in Gilead" included several more mellow songs, whereas "Dereconstructed" was full-throttle rock. What should we expect ahead?

LB3: That's a good question. I'm not totally sure how the record will come out sounding. I think I've learned as I've been doing this that a lot of times I can build up a vision of how something will come across, and then once we get down to doing it, it just takes off in its own trajectory. So I'm trying to ride that out and see how the songs play themselves out as we get more familiar with them.

But as far as the songs themselves go, I would say that on the whole, a lot of the songs are being informed by recollecting my adolescence through my early 20s and the music I was being energized by at that time, sort of reflecting on that moment, where music just had this intense psychic power. ... A lot of the songs are--I'd say they're a good bit more melodic than the last record. Other than that, they're still taking shape. I'm excited to be home for a while and really sit down and work on them. Kind of like you were saying about all the people chattering at work, (touring) is not the most conducive environment for writing.

AL.com: Will we hear any of these songs at Sloss Fest?

LB3: I'm thinking so. I'm thinking so. We have at least one more get together before then, so we'll see how we're feeling about them. There is one song that we've been doing a lot that will be on the record, and we did a version of it for a 7" that's coming out in a couple of weeks (July 24). So we'll definitely be doing that song. But other than that, I'm not sure. I hope to.

AL.com: It's also going to be exciting to see what Sloss Fest could mean to the city. We've got a number of music festivals, and this one is operating on a significant scale. Of course, you and I grew up with memories of City Stages, so that legacy echoes in our memories.

LB3: City Stages there toward the end, I don't if it was my age or if it was the slate of bands they had, but it definitely over the last few years got less inspiring. But I remember growing up seeing some of the best shows I've ever seen, partly because as an underage person in Birmingham, that was one of the few places you could see a lot of shows in a short period of time. There's something I really miss about the experience of just walking around City Stages, too, in addition to the bands, seeing people that I hadn't seen since we were like 8, just people who you were like, oh yeah, I guess you do, you live in Birmingham too. That was a cool byproduct of City Stages. I was talking to somebody about that recently and hoping that this festival could take on some of that homegrown social aspect.

It was such a great cross section of Birmingham, and at a time when, socially Birmingham was more segregated by neighborhood or suburb or whatever. Everybody came downtown for City Stages, and that was a time when people didn't go downtown otherwise, too. That was one of those few moments when you got a sense of Birmingham as a city in a single experience.

I've only been able to play at Sloss one time, but it's one of my favorite environments to see shows in, so that'll just be great in and of itself.