Appalachian Festival Returns to FSU Sept. 18 Through 20 With “King Coal”
Aug 27, 2025 8:00 AM
Frostburg State University’s much anticipated Appalachian Festival will return to campus for its 20th year on Thursday, Sept. 18, to Saturday, Sept. 20. The free, family-friendly event brings together artists and craftspeople to celebrate all that makes the region unique – its history, culture, music and dance, folk arts, food and more – with performances, workshops, displays, discussions and activities. This year’s event focuses on “King Coal.”
The Saturday capstone concert is a ticketed event with an uplifting performance from multiple Grammy Award-winning bluegrass legend Tim O’Brien and vocalist and mandolin player Jan Fabricius. The event is in partnership with FSU’s Cultural Events Series in Frostburg’s historic Palace Theatre on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. This husband-and-wife team have performed together nationally and internationally since 2015. Their bluegrass, folk and country music reveals the power of their deep collaboration, and they light up the stage with the warmth of acoustic roots that are both original and traditional. Tickets can be purchased at the door or ordered at ces.frostburg.edu.
The festival opens Thursday evening at the Palace Theatre at 7 p.m., with a performance by Mary Hott. She will deliver a soulful Americana song cycle inspired by recently discovered first-person accounts of life deep in West Virginia’s coalfields.
That evening, at the Palace Theatre, the festival will host “King Coal,” a lyrical tapestry of a place, the film mediates on the complex history and future of the coal industry, the communities it has shaped, and the myths it has created. Oscar-nominated filmmaker Elaine McMillion Sheldon reshapes the boundaries of documentary filmmaking in a spectacularly beautiful and deeply moving immersion into Central Appalachia where coal is not just a resource, but a way of life, imagining the ways a community can re-envision itself.
The Friday symposium features a powerful collection of presentations focusing on the people who have called the Appalachian region home. At 1 p.m., an interactive workshop led by the Brownsville Project (TBP) will engage participants in learning tools to understand and create transformative justice-based storytelling around the question of “what makes a community safe?” Exercises will utilize Voices of Witness (VOW) ethical storytelling principles and story mapping developed by the Black Appalachian Coalition (BLAC). Participants will focus on the use of memory, imagination and creativity to re-examine the Appalachian narrative and the strength of the community.
The Brownsville Project (TBP) debuted their interactive play at the Appalachian Festival in 2018 supporting all the pieces of the historic African American Brownsville/Park Avenue community that once flourished where Frostburg State University stands today. At 2:30 p.m., TBP will lead audiences to re-examine the narrative of Appalachia as white and poor, resurfacing evidence of Appalachia’s rich Black history and the region’s unique legacy of slavery.
At 3:30 p.m., Cumberland Pride will host a panel and conversation exploring the lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ community across the mountains of the tri-state region. Hear what it’s like to grow up queer in this pocket of Appalachia as the group explores and confronts stereotypes and reflect on what it means to navigate identity, faith, family, community and tradition through the eyes of the people who are often misrepresented, misunderstood and rendered invisible.
At 4:30 p.m., there will be a showing of the Coal Miner Memorial Exhibit, located near the Frostburg Depot and the Great Allegheny Switchback. The exhibit is dedicated to the more than 725 men and children who died working underground in the dark, damp and dangerous conditions. Finally, at 5:30 p.m., there will be a dinner and showcase at the Frostburg Music Academy as a fun, memorable and effective learning experience taught by musicians who have spent thousands of hours in the teaching room and the bandstand.
Saturday’s events kick off at 10 a.m. with Garrett Highlands Pipes and Drums at on FSU’s center quad. Performances featured on the Compton Stage include Bear Hill Bluegrass, Ken and Brad Kolodner, Billy McComiskey, Rhys Jones and Richard Osban, Footworks Percussive Dance Ensemble, Marshele Bradford Exchange, Hickory Bottom Band, Day Old News, Hildaland, Second Wind and Gilbert Lee and Ghost and the Radio.
Performers of Sowers Stage include The Time Travelers, Davis Bradley Duo, Noon Ann and Amy Lough, Me and Martha, Jeff and Myles Thomas with Madalyn Higgins, Appalachian Soul Man, Aristotle Jones with the Porch Pinkin’ Trio, Loretta Hummel and Paul Dix, Black Guy Fawkes, Smith & Roberts, Pete Hobbie and Dakota Karper and The Critton Hollow String Band.
Additional performance areas include Chapel Happenings Outdoors with music by the Frostburg Arion Band; Appalachian Storytelling with Adam Booth, Bill Hairston, Stories by the Score, Mikalena Zuckett, and Jo Ann Dadisman; and a canjo workshop with Jim Morris.
The Family Stage provides something for children of all ages and features interactive performances by The Song Imagineers, Jug Band with Slim Harrison and the Sunnyland Band, Jim Morris, The Cat and The Fiddle Student Showcase and Barn Dance with Slim Harrison and Friends.
Hands-on workshops, including those by the Herbs and Mountain Dulcimer, and presentations can be found in the Folkways Tent. Jump into an Irish dance with Madalyn Higgins and learn the basics of Irish step dance and céilí dance, or the Roots and Rhythm – Appalachian Music & Dance. Jay Smar and Folk Punk: A Round Table will perform songs about old and new traditions.
The Explorations Tent offers engaging talks and storytelling highlighting Appalachian culture, history and environment. Sessions included King of the Strings: The Joe Maphis Story, Book Talk and Signing by Greg Larry, The Nature Conservancy’s interactive “Species of the Allegheny Front” story jam, and Len Shindel’s “The Strike that Changed Maryland’s Wilderness County.” Additional sessions will discuss Sharing the Wisdom of the “Mother Tree”: Intergenerational Living in Allegany County with Nancy Giunta, Elesha Ruminski, and Jane Rohde; "When the Legend Becomes Fact: Tall Tales, Some True, from the Weird Western Maryland Project" with Andy Duncan; and The Fall and Rise of the American Chestnut with Jeff White of The American Chestnut Foundation.
The Jam Tent will be open all day, inviting musicians of any level to gather and jam together in celebration of community and creativity.
A wide variety of artisans will also be on site to demonstrate local traditions as well as multiple community groups and organizations and food vendors. In addition, the Capering Kids 4-H Goat Club will return with goats offering milking demonstrations throughout the day.
The festival and its programming are sponsored by the Cultural Events Series, 91.9 WFWM, the city of Frostburg, the Maryland Traditions Program of the Maryland State Arts Council, Frostburg State University, the FSU Foundation, FrostburgFirst, Weis Market and Friends Aware.
For more information, visit the festivals website at www.frostburg.edu/events/afestival.