Childers, Stapleton headline recovery-based music fest

With the full line up to be revealed in the coming days, the festival will take place Friday and Saturday, Sept. 19-20, on a mountaintop near the Boyd County Fairgrounds in Ashland, Ky.

Childers announced his headlining slot to a sold-out crowd at the University of Kentucky's Kroger Field in Lexington this past weekend, making history as the second artist to ever sell out the stadium after Stapleton in 2022.

"Moving the festival to Eastern Kentucky and to the heart of The Country Music Highway, we could not be more excited or humbled to have two of the commonwealth's greatest songwriters and voices for their people - Chris Stapleton and Tyler Childers," said Dave Lavender, board president for Hope in the Hills. "Not only have they both urgently and boldly shared their journeys and songs of home with the world, but both are first in line to roll up their sleeves and help folks in need. We can't wait to leave the porch light on for them here in the hills of home at Healing Appalachia."

Founded and hosted by Lawrence County, Ky. native Childers and his team at WhizzbangBAM! (Booking and Management), Healing Appalachia is the flagship production of Hope in the Hills, a West Virginia-based nonprofit organization operated by an all-volunteer board of directors committed to combating the opioid crisis and supporting recovery across Appalachia.

After five good years in West Virginia, festival organizers looked to Kentucky this year.

"We are thrilled to host Healing Appalachia in Kentucky for 2025," said Andrew Steele, Executive Director of Boyd County Tourism. "We are beyond excited to show off the Country Music Highway with a few of our very own. The mission behind this festival is so important to our region, and we can't wait to help the event grow."

Held in September during National Recovery Month, Healing Appalachia spreads empathy, kindness and life-saving resources, honoring the more than 87,000 people in the U.S. who died of overdose in 2024 and celebrating the over 20.9 million people in the U.S. recovering from alcohol and/or substance use disorder.

Since the inaugural Healing Appalachia in 2018, the fest has grown from a small concert for 1,500 fans at the West Virginia State Fairgrounds, to 20,000 music lovers representing 42 states and three countries.

"Moving Healing Appalachia to Kentucky is special for a lot of reasons. It exemplifies the growth of something that started as an idea on how we could create change in a world that we were watching destroy our friends and families first hand," said Ian Thornton, founder of WhizzbangBAM! "Watching it start at home in WV with 1500 people, to becoming the movement that it is today and being able to start traveling through Appalachia, it's an honor to have Tyler and Chris headline this inaugural trip across the Big Sandy as a couple of local boys who did it right."

The festival is fueled by local groups and businesses, teaming up with regional veteran, community and youth organizations to assist the cause. School bands help park cars, clean the grounds and lead a march to kick off the fest. Concertgoers also witness recovery in action, staffed by nearly 500 local recovery volunteers working all posts, from security, green team, hospitality and even help building stages, sharing their inspirational, personal journeys of recovery between musical acts.

This community spirit has enabled Hope in the Hills to distribute more than $1 million to boots-on-the-ground nonprofits offering life-saving prevention, recovery, and wellness programming across Appalachia and beyond since 2018. All proceeds are funneled into inspiring programs of change, including everything from yoga in women's prisons, mentoring for teen girls in foster care and outdoors-based camps for trauma-impacted kids, to music therapy and festival outreach nationwide, harm reduction, recovery houses and reentry and recovery-to-work initiatives.