Music & Performing Arts
For 2025…music joined efforts with performing arts. The results? They completely out performed themselves!
What is happening for 2026? Hot Air Balloons, a Back to School Bash, daily Tunes at Noon, and an 18th Century Colonial Fair representing SWVA celebrating the VA250!
Be sure to check back often…you don’t want to miss a thing!
While we are finalizing the plans for 2026…check out last summer’s amazing line-up!
Tunes at Noon
When: Daily — July 24 to August 2, 12-2pm
Where: Various locations
Tickets: FREE
Enjoy ten days of delightful FREE regional songwriters’ performances as they provide original music at several local restaurants and venues during the Virginia Highlands Festival.
Beginning Friday, July 24, through Sunday, August 2, check out the Tunes at Noon series for daily locations of performers. Songwriters from SOHA (Songwriters of Highlands Appalachia) such as Swampalachia, David and Ann Ledgerwood, Pat Green, Barnett Carr, Hannah Rae Adams, Julia Maggard, Melissa and Chase Johner, Julie Williams, Wille Melton and many more will be performing daily from 12-2pm at local establishments such as Delta Blues, Dwayne & Co., Tumbling Creek Cider and Wolf Hills Coffee.
For more information on joining the thriving local songwriting scene, check out highlandsappalachia.org
COMPLETE SCHEDULE COMING SOON!
Kick-Off Concert featuring 80’s Rock Band — Club Rewind
When: Friday, July 24, 7-10pm
Where: Delta Blues Outdoor Stage
Tickets: FREE
Kick off the festival in high-energy style with an unforgettable night featuring Club Rewind, the ultimate 80’s tribute band. Step back in time as they bring the decade of big hair, neon lights, and iconic hits to life with electrifying performances and spot-on renditions of your favorite classics.
While you’re soaking in the music, grab a refreshing beverage from Tumbling Creek Cider or enjoy mouthwatering BBQ from Delta Blues. From synth-pop anthems to rock ballads, this opening concert sets the tone for a weekend of music, nostalgia, and celebration you won’t want to miss.
Threads of Time: An 18th Century Market & Fair
When: Sat. & Sun, July 25 & 26: 10am - 5pm
Where: VHCC field adjacent to SWVA Higher Education Center
Tickets: FREE
Threads of Time is a two-day immersive living history experience that brings 18th-century Southwest Virginia to life through dynamic, hands-on programming for all ages. Visitors will encounter a vibrant encampment of historical interpreters portraying frontier settlers, tradespeople, and Indigenous communities, alongside live demonstrations of traditional crafts such as blacksmithing, weaving, and open-fire cooking. A full schedule of performances and presentations—including period music, storytelling, educational talks, and a narrated fashion show—explores daily life, culture, and the complex histories of the region. With interactive activities, a curated artisan market, and dedicated youth programming, the event invites guests to step into the past and engage directly with the people, skills, and stories that shaped early America.
Old World Ballads & the Mountain Dulcimer
When: Sunday, July 27, 2-4pm
Where: Sinking Springs Presbyterian Church
Tickets: Adults, $10/Youth 12 & under, $5
Th Virginia Highlands Festival will presents “Old-World Ballads and the Mountain Dulcimer,” a special concert featuring four of the Appalachian region’s foremost ballad singers. Elizabeth LaPrelle of Rural Retreat, Sarah Kate Morgan of Hindman, KY, Corbin Hayslett of Floyd, and Jack Hinshelwood of Abingdon will perform individually and together to showcase the remarkable legacy of Abingdon ballad singer and dulcimer player Andrew Rowan Summers. These artists have a combined total of over 125 years recording and performing the rich heritage music of the Appalachians and will ballads from Summers’ repertoire as well as from their own.
Born in Abingdon in 1912, Andrew Rowan Summers was a renaissance man - an attorney, law publications editor, businessman, interior furnishings designer, and antiques dealer. But his first love was music, and upon entering the University of Virginia in 1930 he majored in music before obtaining his law degree in 1935. In between, he attended the well-known White Top Folk Festival, and that was where he became captivated by the arts he would pursue for the remainder of his life – ballad singing and playing the mountain dulcimer.
Artist Bios
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Elizabeth LaPrelle is a scholar and singer of Appalachian Ballads from Rural Retreat, Virginia. She built her style and repertoire from research into archival recordings, and family and friends. She started making recordings with her family as a teen, and received her undergraduate degree from the College of William and Mary with a major in Southern Appalachian Traditional Performance. In the experimental folk duo Anna & Elizabeth, she toured internationally and helped re-popularize the “crankie” performance art form. She’s also a banjo-player, and a visual and interdisciplinary artist. She lives with her husband Brian Dolphin and their young son.
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For over 50 years, singer, songwriter, and award-winning multi-instrumentalist Jack Hinshelwood has entertained audiences with a broad swath of traditional and Americana music on guitar, fiddle, harmonica, and vocals.
Jack is a winner of the Knoxville World’s Fair Guitar Championship, the Wayne Henderson Guitar Championship, and a two-time winner of the prestigious Galax Old Fiddler’s Convention guitar contest. His most recent recording, 50 Years in the Making, is a two-volume anthology of old time, bluegrass, and blues music featuring fellow artists such as Doyle Lawson, Phil Wiggins, Dom Flemons, Michael Cleveland, Dori Freeman and many others.
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Born of Appalachian soil in Sharps Chapel, Tennessee, Sarah Kate Morgan sings, plays, and writes like she’s been in these hills since the dawn of time. She’s had plenty of varied influences, beginning with hearing a classical music CD belonging to her family and going on to discover old time music through a dulcimer built by her grandfather. She began playing dulcimer at age 7.
This proved to be a pivotal moment. At 18 years old, Sarah Kate placed 1st at the 2012 National Mountain Dulcimer Championships in Winfield, Kansas. She’s gone on to build a unique personal style which honors mountain dulcimer giants such as Jean Ritchie while working across genres to build something new. Her dexterous approach to the instrument is one that only masterful artists can bring to the table; much like Bruce Molsky and the fiddle, having been a dedicated student of the dulcimer’s complexities Morgan is able to distill them into a beautifully polished package. -
Originally from Lynchburg, Virginia, Corbin Hayslett grew up around his father and mother’s musical talents in religious and secular music. From an early age he was singing and cultivating a passion for bluegrass, old time, and traditional Americana and southern musical forms. He picked up the banjo at age 9, and has been playing music ever since!
Traditional music has been the mainstay of mine from my earliest memories. My Dad taught me to love and sing like The Stanley Brothers while I was in a car seat and my mom sat me on the front-row pew during choir rehearsals. The music of Virginia’s mountains has been passed down in my family for nine generations.
I’ve had the honor of playing mountain music in three hemispheres and on stages ranging from the Floyd Country Store to the Grand Ole Opry at the Ryman Auditorium. It is my honor to share my love of our music through the Handmade Music School. Lessons offered in banjo (clawhammer, old-time finger styles, bluegrass), old-time fiddle, guitar (lead and rhythm), mandolin, voice, hambone, jaw harp, general shenanigans and tomfoolery.
Film & Concert Series at the Moonlite Drive-In Theatre & Venue
When: July 28 & July 30, 7:30-10:30pm
Where: Moonlite Drive-In Theatre & Venue
Tickets: FREE
Join us for two nights of unforgettable films and concerts at the historic Moonlite Drive-In. Expanding upon the first collaborative concert between VHF and the Moonlite in 2024, this series will surely become a crowd favorite as we highlight the amazing talents and artists born and raised right in our own backyards!
Music On The Porch:
July 28: Sam West & Jack Hinshelwood playing traditional acoustic music on guitar and bass.
July 30: Joe Dinkins Trio playing acoustic swing and jazz from the 1930s & 1940s
About the Movies & Directors
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“It's 1982, and the Dicksons (Jim, Jeanne, and Aurelie) move to a southern town where all the girls long for Farrah Fawcett-type curls. Pre-teen Aurelie begs her parents for a permanent, hoping for life-changing curly waves but when they take her to a Beauty School instead of a salon to save money, disaster ensues. A bored Student-Beautician accidentally sets the timer for too long, and the perm ends up destroying Aurelie’s already low-grade social life as well as her hair follicles. Aurelie is left as a gawky yet endearing young teenager trying to navigate junior high with what some kids call an afro, then throw things at her, from epithets to dodgeballs.”
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Colette Burson is a screenwriter, Writers Guild and Golden Globe nominated television creator, and director. She holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU. She was a founding member of the Playwrights' Collective, a playwright based theater company, for six years in NYC. After moving to Los Angeles in 2009 she created and was the showrunner of the half-hour comedy "Hung" for HBO (2010-2012), which hired more female directors than any other show in cable at that time. Hung has been described as having a mercilessly feminist point of view and was nominated for a Writers’ Guild Award for Best New Series as well as four Golden Globes.
In 2017 Burson directed the feature film "Permanent" starring Patricia Arquette and Rainn Wilson which was based on her childhood growing up in southern small town Abingdon, VA. In 2021 she adapted the best-selling novel "The Growing Season" by Sarah Frey for ABC, and also created the limited series "Love Canal" for Showtime. Past work on shows includes "Los Espookys” for HBO and "The Riches" for FX.”
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It's 1978 and the ever-ordinary Ave Maria Mulligan (Ashley Judd) leads a simple life. She lives with her mother, runs the pharmacy, directs The Trail of the Lonesome Pine Outdoor Drama, and hopes that her best friend will take their platonic friendship in a romantic direction. Ave Maria waits, and before she knows it, she turns 40. Now the old maid of Big Stone Gap, Ave Maria decides that happiness is for other people—that is, until a long-buried family secret throws her quiet life spectacularly off course. With an all-star cast, Big Stone Gap is a love letter to small-town life, working people and the triumph of love.
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Adriana Trigiani is an American best-selling author of eighteen books, playwright, television writer/producer, film director/screenwriter/producer, and entrepreneur born in Big Stone Gap, VA and based in New York City. She is perhaps best known for her novels, beginning with Big Stone Gap (2000), the first in a series of stories set in the Appalachian region of southwestern Virginia. The stories are told from the perspective of a lovable character whose wry wit reflects the author’s own. Her writing has been described as “heartwarming without being saccharine,” and by New York Times reviewer Andrea Higbie “as comfortable as a mug of chamomile tea on a rainy Sunday.”
Her professional career began in 1985, when she wrote Secrets of the Lava Lamp for the Manhattan Theatre Club. In the succeeding decades, she has distinguished herself as an author, scriptwriter, director, and producer for both television and film.
Comedy Night at The Barter featuring Summitt Comedy
When: Tuesday, July 29, 8pm
Where: Barter Theatre’s Gilliam Stage
Tickets: $30
COMEDY NIGHT RETURNS TO THE BARTER DURING THE VIRGINIA HIGHLANDS FESTIVAL!
Summit Comedy, Inc. was formed way back in the 1900s….1998 to be exact and has booked thousands of shows since! Such nationally renowned comedians such as Jay Leno, Jamie Foxx, Amy Schumer, and more are part of the Summit family.
This year we bring to you a three part hilarious show featuring comedians Jason Allen King and Mike Speenburg followed by hypnotist, Doug Thompson. You’ll be rolling in the floor at the amazing talents of these three for an evening you won’t soon forget!
Samantha Gray Band
When: Thursday, July 31, 7-9pm
Where: Sweetbay Brewing Company
Tickets: FREE
Samantha’s unique voice has been described as soulful, sultry and powerful. She is also known for her retro style and high-energy, hip-shaking performances, which capture her audience. Melding the influences of blues, soul and rock ‘n’ roll, she forges a unique R&B sound.
“She sings with a grab 'em good and shake 'em up real fine like sort of style. It's strong. She's strong.” ~ Tom Netherland, Bristol Herald Courier
Blast From The Past!
When: Friday, August 1, 7-10pm
Where: The Meadows
Tickets: FREE (gates open at 6pm)
Join us for a Blast from the Past with 80’s Tribute Band, Cassette Rewind followed by a spectacular display of a hot air balloon glow illuminating the sky. Featuring ten professional balloon pilots, this family event is completed by food trucks, face painting, great music, and a beer garden for those of appropriate ages.
BBQ & Blues Throwdown
When: Saturday, August 2, 11am-4pm
Where: Remsburg Drive & Delta Blues
Tickets: Tasting Ticket $20/Concert is FREE
Join us for Abingdon’s Inaugural Amateur BBQ Competition complete with the c-o-o-l blues tunes of the Billy Crawford Band. Don’t miss this day of BBQ and Blues! Lined up down Remsburg Drive, local pit masters will smoke up the best they’ve got for a panel of judges to taste test for a grand prize of $500! YOU can be part of the day by purchasing a tasting ticket and then voting for People’s Choice award for your favorite smokin’ great master of the pit!
You better come hungry!
“The Billy Crawford Band has been a fixture in the Mountain Empire for the Last two decades! Playing the finest in Blues, Blues Rock and Roots Music the Band has an exciting Live show along with a Catalog of Albums and Merchandise.”
