Tyler Childers, Chris Stapleton bringing Healing Appalachia music festival to Ashland
Two of Kentucky’s finest musicians are teaming up to give back to their homeland. Tyler Childers and Chris Stapleton will headline the 2025 edition of Healing Appalachia, which bills itself as the largest recovery-based music festival, in September. The concert typically takes place in West Virginia, but Childers, one of the festival’s co-founders, and Stapleton are moving it to Ashland, Kentucky. A mountaintop near the Boyd County Fairgrounds, to be specific.
If you were at Childers’ concert at Kroger Field on Saturday, you heard him share the news. The two-day festival will take place on September 19 and 20, which, coincidentally, happens to be Kentucky football’s first bye weekend. The rest of the lineup will be announced in the coming days. Past acts include Childers, Gov’t Mule, My Morning Jacket, Shooter Jennings, Sierra Ferrell, Lost Dog Street Band, 49 Winchester, Charles Wesley Godwin, Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit, Galactic, Trey Anastasio, Margo Price, and Sierra Hull. Since Healing Appalachia was founded in 2018, the event has grown from fewer than 2,500 attendees to more than 21,000 in 2024. Childers hails from Lawrence County, and Stapleton from Staffordsville in Johnson County, so bringing the festival to the “right side of the river” has special meaning.
“Moving Healing Appalachia to Kentucky is special for a lot of reasons,” said Ian Thornton, Childers’ manager at Whizzbang BAM Booking and Management, in a press release. “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 1,500 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.”
Hope in the Hills, the West Virginia-based nonprofit organization that puts on Healing Appalachia, has distributed 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 from the event 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. The festival has also had an economic impact of more than $5 million in rural communities.
“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.”
“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.”
You in? Tickets are already on sale, so hurry to secure your spot. General admission tickets are $199 for adults and $25 for ages 12-17. VIP passes are available at an early-bird price of $650. Car camping passes are also on sale at the event’s website.
Tyler Childers performs sold-out show at Kroger Field
How appropriate is it that Childers announced the news about Healing Appalachia while performing at Kroger Field, where Stapleton played three years prior? I wasn’t at Childers’ show on Saturday night, but after scrolling through social media, I certainly feel like I was. He performed for over two hours, with Kentucky icon Wynonna Judd and fellow Bluegrass native S.G. Goodman serving as the opening acts.
Wearing a “Kentucky Strong” sweatshirt, Childers performed all his hits, including the rarely heard “Jersey Giant.” He gave the city of Lexington plenty of shoutouts, recalling his early days playing at Al’s Bar and his three semesters at Bluegrass Community and Technical College. There was also a drone show that looked absolutely awesome. I can’t wait to see what he and Stapleton have in store for Healing Appalachia.
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