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The Pike Piddles Storytelling Festival has been a popular event in Pike County since 2007.

The last weekends in January more than 13,000 have attended the weekend festival that features four storytelling concert.

The festival opens with supper and stories at the We Piddle Around Theater in Brundidge on Friday night and three storytelling concerts at the Trojan Center Theater on the campus of Troy University. The annual storytelling festival features a storytelling concert at Troy University on Friday for students from all high schools in Pike County.

Lawrence Bowden, president of the sponsoring Brundidge Historical Society, said this year’s Pike Piddlers Storytelling Festival will feature four of the country’s most popular storytellers, Donald Davis, Tim Lowry, Bil Lepp and Barbara McBride-Smith, and three popular local tradition music groups, The Benton Brothers & Company, Mike Benton & Amanda Smothers, The Sheppards.

“We are excited and thankful to be able to host the Pike Piddlers Storytelling Festival this year,” Bowden said. “We were fortunate that the festival was just before COVID in 2020. In 2022, North Carolina storyteller Donald Davis offered to come to the We Piddle Around Theater for a one night performance in2021. So, it’s been too long since we have had the opportunity for a weekend of storytelling.”

Bowden said hopes are that the support of the Pike Piddlers Storytelling Festival will be as it has been in years past.

“We’ve had a lot of people from Alabama and from surrounding and distant states come piddling around,” Bowden said. “Hopefully, the pandemic has not diminished the importance of the age-old form of entertainment. As Alabama’s legendary storyteller, Kathryn Windham, said, stories are how our family histories are passed down and our community histories as well. Stories bind our country and our world together. We invite everyone, to come and enjoy stories told in the oral tradition. It will be worth your time.

For more information, call 685-5524 or808-4237.