FROSTBURG — The screening of a documentary six years in the making on the history of DelFest was debuted in Frostburg Thursday evening.
Several members of the McCoury family, including Del and his sons Rob and Ronnie, attended the showing of “Sweet Appalachia: The Story of DelFest,” which was shown before a full house at Palace Theatre.
Established in 2008, DelFest is a four-day bluegrass and Americana music festival held annually at the Allegany County Fairgrounds in Cumberland on Memorial Day weekend, It attacks nearly 30,000 people to the area each year.
The film was produced by students from Frostburg State University under the tutelage of director Annie Danzi and her assistant Sidney Beeman, along with editor Matt Watkins.
Beeman said she worked on the film as an FSU student and as an alumni. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the hour-long documentary took six years to complete.
“This is a huge event for me,” Beeman said. “I worked on this for six years as a producer and we’re all so excited and overjoyed to be here. Without this project I wouldn’t be who I am today and have the love and passion for film making that I do.”
Danzi and Beeman thanked the McCoury family for giving them permission to do the film.
Numerous members of the McCoury family appear in the film along with several local individuals who have either assisted in organizing the festival or attend nearly every year.
The documentary traced the history of the festival from the decision made by Del McCoury to choose the Allegany County Fairgrounds for the event, through the difficult days of the pandemic up to today.
Del McCoury recounted his decision to choose the fairgrounds. When he was approached about a festival he said he’d like it to be in the mid-Atlantic region near where he grew up in York County, Pennsylvania.
McCoury’s management team had selected about five locations for him to see with the Allegany County Fairgrounds being first on the list. Del visited the site and decided he’d seen enough: He chose the fairgrounds.
“It’s a pretty site; prettier than most,” Del said in the film. “You have the (Potomac) river there and it’s not a small river. You have the rock cliffs. You couldn’t ask for a better spot for campers, a stage and parking.”
In addition to plenty of reactions from festivalgoers and live performance footage, the film focuses on the economic and cultural benefits it has brought to the Cumberland area, which has struggled for many years following the loss of industry.
The DelFest Foundation, established in 2010 to distribute financial grants to local charities, has given away more than $700,000 to numerous nonprofits in the area since inception.
Following the screening, Danzi and Beeman, along with Del McCoury and sons Rob and Ronnie, participated in a question and answer session.
“I thought it was great,” Del McCoury said when asked what he thought of the documentary. “They really did a fine a job putting it together. I’m very pleased.”
When Del McCoury was asked when he first heard about the film, his down home sense of humor was on display.
“Tonight,” he said. “They told me to put a suit on; we’re going to something special.”
Danzi, from Ocean City, is an associate professor in the Department of Communications at FSU. She said she enjoys doing films on “communities being uplifted.”
Danzi said she hopes to be able to show the documentary at film festivals across the country at places such as Telluride in Colorado, Austin, Texas, and Nashville, Tennessee.
“Through film festivals we hope someone comes through and decides we’d like to host this on our streaming app,” Danzi said. “That usually emerges through the film festival process. We really hope we get a distributor through the film festival process so it can be made available online.”
Following the event, a reception was held for the creators of the film, DelFest organizers and the McCoury family at the Toasted Goat on Main Street in Frostburg.