Big Muddy Folk Festival

For 34 years, the Big Muddy Folk Festival has brought folk music—with its wide variety of styles—to the beautiful and historic confines of Thespian Hall in downtown Boonville, Missouri. The iconic brick-column facade draws you in, and the intimate theatre and acoustically rich stage play host to evenings filled with diverse traditions: bagpipes and banjos, fiddles and slide guitars, singers with stories to tell, and dancers with nimble feet. Performers come from all over Missouri, across America, and from abroad to create a singular event year after year.

In the 1990’s, well-known Missouri musicians Cathy Barton, Dave Para, and Bob Dyer started the festival to present a wide breadth of folk music—from ethnic traditions and multiple generations to old favorites and contemporary songwriters—the kind of festival they loved in their own travels. The Friends of Historic Boonville happily agreed to sponsor the event and, in its second year, added a second evening and daytime workshops at nearby venues, giving folks a hands-on chance to help keep the tradition alive.Come and experience music, old and new, in the welcoming arms of a historic theater and the heart of our river town.