I call it the mini-MerleFest. After a two-year hiatus due to the Covid pandemic, I’m excited to announce Carolina in the Fall Music and Food Festival, presented by Window World, is set to return on Sept. 23-24, 2022, to Wilkesboro.

Organizers say significant changes have been made for this year’s festival including a new presenting sponsor, Window World, which also sponsors MerleFest.

“We have been blessed with great local support for the festival from the very beginning and that tradition continues as Window World has taken over the role of the presenting sponsor for Carolina in the Fall”, said Dale Isom, festival organizer, on the event website. “We are very thankful for all of our sponsors over the years and their desire to provide excellent entertainment to our community”. 

Additionally, this year’s festival will be held entirely in the Carolina West Wireless Community Commons in Historic Downtown Wilkesboro. 

“Probably the biggest change to the festival is that it will be free to those that want to attend free”, Isom added. “We will sell a limited number of Reserved Seats to help fund the festival and the rest is free to the public”. 

The goal from the very beginning was to present a free festival, said Jens Kruger, of the festival’s host band, The Kruger Brothers, who call Wilkesboro home. “It just took us a while to figure out how to do it. We are excited to offer an amazing weekend of free music to our community and those that will visit Wilkesboro.”

The festival begins on Friday at 5 p.m. and Saturday’s festivities will begin at noon.

“We are very excited about the bands we have lined up for this year’s festival,” said Festival Director Michelle Isom on the website. “We have worked very hard to bring excellent talent to Wilkesboro just as we have in our previous years. As always, we focus on bringing bands from North Carolina as this festival is a celebration of our musical roots. We are thankful to have the Kruger Brothers back as our host band and this year they are bringing a very special surprise for our audiences”. 

For more information and the full lineup, visit www.carolinainthefall.org. 

Famous for an amazing selection of food trucks, Carolina in the Fall will be bringing some of western North Carolina’s best trucks to feed their audiences. The festival will also have a limited number of vendor tents. The festivities will include the Annual Chad Lovette Memorial Run to benefit the American Cancer Society. Festival beer and wine sales will be handled by the Wilkes Heritage Museum with all proceeds going to benefit the museum.

Carolina in the Fall Music and Food Festival is a production of Heart of Folk, LLC along with the Town of Wilkesboro and The Kruger Brothers.