The Harvest Moon Festival was an annual music festival based in Cincinnati, Ohio, as a fundraiser for charities to benefit the homeless and hungry in Ohio. Created by Cincinnati natives Kent Meloy (Collins Gate, Staring at the Sea, Kelp, Kid Jupiter) and Jay Nungesser (Collins Gate, Staring at the Sea, Virgoblique), it ran annually from 1999 to 2004, growing in size and popularity each year. Originally conceived as a concert featuring bands that "sounded like fall"—local folk and roots-rock bands—the Festival's musical scope grew to include jazz-rock (The Doug Perry Ensemble), jazz (Me or the Moon), experimental electronica (Sedate), and reggae (Kris Brown), with the only constant being Katie Reider as the festival's headliner for its entire run. The Festival even grew beyond Cincinnati, as sister festivals of the same name sprung up around America, coordinated by Meloy.
The Festival brought together a wide variety of Ohio and Kentucky-based musicians each year—each band donating its time to the cause—and raised additional money and awareness by selling CDs at the event collecting all the night's bands into a collectible album, called Voices of Harvest Moon (vols. 1-4).
The festival became one of the best-known musical events each fall, but increasing scheduling conflicts between bands and venues, a lack of sponsorship, and the difficulties in keeping an audience for an early-October music festival caused Meloy and Nungesser to cancel the annual event in 2004 and replace it with the Christmastime-themed Festivus Maximus festival, which proved popular during its two-year run at the Southgate House in Newport, Kentucky.