Folk Festival Starts 39th Year Tonight

by David Croyle

It has been 39 years since the first time tents and trailers took over the north end of Kittanning’s Riverfront Park. The smell of chicken, roast beef and other sundry treats filled the air as crowds watched craftsmen demonstrate their trade.

Tonight, festivities will begin at 6 PM tonight and continue through Sunday.

Board Member Ray Voller said the decision to downsize the event from five to four days was an effort to get better quality crafters.

“It was a five day festival a couple of years ago, but a lot of the crafters didn’t like it to go five days. Now it is a four-day festival and that is still longer than most festivals. Most are only three days,” he said.

Voller said the origin of the festival was the effort of the Jaycees and the Y-men. “The profits went to those organizations. But now the festival is its own little entity. The board runs the festival.”

Although the festival committee had trouble getting volunteers over the past several years, Voller feels there is a resurgence with the addition of new board members.

“When people come to the folk festival, they think it just happens no matter what. But there is a whole bunch of things that go on behind the scenes that people don’t even know about. There are some board members that spend two or three weeks – their whole vacation (in preparation for the festival). The influx of some new board members is nice to bring up some new ideas. It is exciting to see the new energy.”

Voller dispelled rumors of the festival moving out of downtown Kittanning.

“We don’t want to move it out of town. We talked about it because we need a big space. It is like having a party. The party is getting bigger and bigger and the facilities seem to stay the same obviously, so we have talked about going to the south end, but it is really difficult to get all the supplies down to the south end of the park. The whole idea is to keep it in downtown Kittanning and keep it a river-side type of thing.”

The current layout of the festival sprawled along the Allegheny River has room for about 145 vendors. “The emphasis of the festival is to build it with the highest quality of crafters that we can have and with the nicest, friendliest people we can staff it with,” Voller stated.

Opening ceremonies begin at 6PM tonight on the main stage at the YMCA followed by a concert by the Kittanning Firemen’s Band.