The King of Pop and the Phunk of Appalachia: Ruby Friday Gets Loud
If your Friday, August 7, doesn't involve a moonwalk on the riverfront, you're doing August wrong. The Ruby Summer Concert Series brings Who's Bad, billed as "the #1 Michael Jackson Tribute in the world," to Hazel Ruby McQuain Park, with regional funk outfit The Heavy Hitters opening. Music at 7 p.m. Free, as the whole glorious series is.
Who's Bad is not a karaoke act with a sequined glove. The band has been at it since 2004, racking up more than 2,500 shows across 20-plus countries — a live production with a full band, dancers, and singers that has played rooms as big as London's O2 Arena. That's a genuinely absurd résumé to catch for free on a Morgantown lawn. The MJ catalog is built for exactly this: a big outdoor crowd, a summer night, and songs — "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'," "Billie Jean," "Bad" — that were engineered to move thousands of people at once. Expect the whole park to be dancing by the second number.
The opener is where the local pride kicks in. The Heavy Hitters, a five-piece out of the Appalachian region, cheerfully call themselves "the phunkiest band around" and took home a 2024 Most Versatile Band of the Year nod. Their stated mission is to "show the phunky side of Appalachia to the rest of the world," which is both a great slogan and a fair warning: these guys will have the crowd loose and grooving before the King of Pop's stand-ins ever hit the stage. It's a smart pairing — homegrown funk feeding straight into the most danceable catalog in pop history.
Why it matters: this is the Ruby doing the thing it does best, using a free civic series to put a world-touring production and a regional band on the same stage, no ticket required. It's also a bounce-back moment for a series that lost its July 17 date to wildfire smoke; a packed, dancing park on a clear August night is exactly the reset this summer needs.
The usual playbook applies. Come early — a headliner this fun fills the good grass fast. Bring chairs, bring a cooler, budget for the food trucks, and drop a few bucks in the donation fund that keeps the whole thing free, since it's tax-deductible and every dollar helps cover the artist fees that climb every year.
Two-plus decades of the world's best MJ tribute, the phunkiest band in the mountains, and a river at your back. If you can't have fun at this one, check your pulse.
Sources: Who's Bad – August 7 (Ruby Amphitheater); Ruby Summer Concert Series (Ruby Amphitheater); 2026 Ruby Summer Concert Series lineup released (WV MetroNews)