Healing Appalachia, which bills itself as “the largest recovery-based music festival,” is moving to eastern Kentucky this September after five years of gathering in West Virginia. Making the move with the fest is its co-founder and perennial headliner, Tyler Childers, joined this year by a co-headliner, Chris Stapleton, who’ll be making his Healing Appalachia debut with the 2025 edition.
This year’s festival will take place Sept. 19-20 in Ashland, Kentucky, on what is described as “a mountaintop near the Boyd County Fairgrounds.” Both Childers and Stapleton are native Kentuckyans, making this what the festival is characterizing as something close to a hometown show for both.
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The goals of Healing Appalachia include “spreading addiction and recovery awareness, fostering empathy, and inspiring life-saving action throughout communities worldwide.”
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The full lineup has not yet been revealed, but Childers announced details about his return to the festival over the weekend while performing to a sold-out crowd at the University of Kentucky’s Kroger Field in Lexington. Childers has been playing the arena circuit in recent years, while Stapleton has headlined the occasional stadium show on top of doing arenas.
“Moving Healing Appalachia to Kentucky is special for a lot of reasons,” said Ian Thornton, Childers’ manager at Whizzbang BAM Booking and Management. “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 firsthand — starting at home in WV with 1500 people, to becoming this movement that it is today, and being able to start its own travels through Appalachia. It’s an honor to have Tyler and Chris headline the inaugural trip across the Big Sandy as a couple of local boys who did it right.”
Since the inaugural outing in 2018, attendance has grown from under 2,500 music fans the first year to 21,000 in 2024 … and that number may well be bigger this year, with country superstar Stapleton joining Childers in top-billed status.
Other artists who have previously been on the lineup include Jason Isbell, Margo Price, Gov’t Mule, Charles Wesley Godwin and Trey Anastasio of Phish. Last year’s bill included My Morning Jacket, Sierra Ferrell, Shooter Jennings, S.G. Goodman and Hiss Golden Messenger. While the festival ran for three days in 2024 at the State Fair of West Virginia in Lewisburg, this year’s event will be across two days.
“In our first year of moving to Eastern Kentucky, we are beyond grateful and honored to have two of the greatest singer/songwriters to hail from the perpetual talent wellspring that is the Country Music Highway,” said Dave Lavender, board president for Hope in the Hills and the president of Healing Appalachia. “Chris Stapleton and Tyler Childers have each dug a deep and distinct furrow through the heart of the music industry. They also embody the heart and soul of what it means to be from here, from Appalachia. That Bill Withers ‘Lean on Me’ coal-camp spirit drives them to always be calling out to help neighbors and folks in need both here and the world over.”
Hope in the Hills, the WV-based nonprofit that puts on the festival, has distributed more than $1 million — and all of its proceeds beyond production costs — to “boots-on-the-ground nonprofits offering life-saving prevention, recovery, and wellness programming across Appalachia and beyond… 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 innovative reentry and recovery-to-work initiatives.” Healing Appalachia is also involved in Naloxone education and training.
Tickets can be purchased here. General admission tickets for the two days are $199 for adults and $25 for children 12-17. VIP passes are currently priced at an early-bird price of $650. Car camping spots are also on sale at the website.
