Middlesboro City Hall will be closed Friday in preparation for the upcoming Cumberland Mountain Fall Festival.

“Middlesboro City Hall will be closed Friday,” Mayor Rick Nelson said. “There will be road blockages as a result of the fall festival.”

The Cumberland Mountain Fall Festival begins this Friday and they are expecting one of the largest crowds in years. The event will take place in downtown Middlesboro on Oct. 4-5.

The weekend will include free live music, carnival rides, crafts, food, a car show, kids’ event area, Rock the Crater bicycle ride, the Magic City Mile Run and much more.

In early September, promotions to get the word out about the festival took place in both Somerset and Lexington to help promote the lineup.

Bell County Tourism and Middlesboro Main Street visited Jarfly Brewing in Somerset, with Luna and the Mountain Jets, Dave Shoemaker and Dalton Mills and then invaded one of Lexington’s most iconic music venues, The Burl, for our second pre-show featuring Josh Nolan, Chelsea Nolan, Dave Shoemaker and Jade Robertson.

This year for the music lineup, there will be over 20 national, regional and local bands of all genres gracing downtown stage.

“We are trying to continue to build off the great success of the Levitt AMP Middlesboro Music Series by having as many genres as we could throughout the Fall Festival weekend and bringing a few Levitt alumni back,” Grace explained. “I’m a firm believer that good music is good music, regardless of genre. That’s why we have everything from R&B, country, rock, blues, bluegrass/old time and Americana/folk. And some bands like Locust Honey that play such a wide variety, it’s impossible to classify them as any one thing. We’re really happy with how the lineup turned out. Every act on it is really, really good.”

See pg. 5 of Wednesday’s edition for a schedule of events as listed on the Cumberland Mountain Fall Festival website.