Those looking to be immersed in the sounds, smells and tastes of Italy won’t even need to buy a plane ticket.

Butler Italian Days will be held on Butler’s Main Street between the intersections with Wayne and Cunningham streets. It will start Friday evening, Aug. 22, and continue through most of the day Saturday, Aug. 23.

The event will feature around 70 food and retail vendors, and live entertainment acts will perform throughout the two-day event.

In terms of food vendors, Charmaine Fetterman, who is organizing the event, said her goal was to gather as many options as possible, but with a focus on finding Italian businesses or cuisine, such as food trucks from Ambridge Italian Villa and Benvenuti’s Pizza Factory.

Fetterman herself will continue to run her vendor stand, Bellissimo Catering, which serves homemade Italian food. But food options expand beyond just Italian.

“Come with your sweet tooth, because we’ve got a lot of sweets,” she said.

Fetterman pointed out Uzi’s Pastry, the Sweet Gremlin and Sapore Di Italia as just a few of her personal favorite sweet spots.

“(Sapore Di Italia) is doing Italian specialty cookies, so think like pizzelles and things that you don’t normally see,” she said.

Butler Italian Days will be held rain or shine and the Sons and Daughters of Italy Lodge, 338 S. Main St. in Butler, will be open for attendees to get out of the heat or rain, Fetterman said. The stage for the entertainment acts will be located in the hall parking lot.

“We will have chairs set up, but we want to encourage people that if you bring a chair, you can put it up in the street. We’ll also have a few tables up for people to put their drinks down,” she added.

Filling the stage throughout both days will be a number of musical acts that are either local or Italian. Friday’s lineup will feature artists from Butler County, with Frankie Russo and the Drama Kings kicking off the event at 5 p.m. and Dinnerbell Road, a multigenre band, closing out the evening.

Saturday’s performance lineup includes The Stoberts at 1 p.m., The Cavaliers at 3 p.m., Mirella The Musician at 5:30 p.m. and Black Ridge at 7:30 p.m. Pat Septak, a local accordionist, will perform while walking the festival grounds on Saturday.

“(The Stoberts) are a father, son and daughter,” Fetterman said. “They’re actually friends of the family. Taylor (Stobert) has a phenomenal little voice. They do a great job.”

Outside of food vendors, one of the tables Fetterman is especially excited about is the Butler Italian American Oral History Project.

“They are seeking all the Italian immigrants that settled in Butler,” she said. “At Slippery Rock University, Dr. (Mark) O’Connor and his class is writing this book, and it’s going to go into the Heinz History Center.”

Interviews will be held throughout September and October at the Butler Area Public Library. More information on the project and setting up an interview will be available at the event table.

“Hopefully, people will go so they can get the information and the background. A lot of people did settle here in Butler from Italy,” Fetterman said.

Butler Italian Days got its start last year when the planned Butler Italian Festival was canceled. The Sons and Daughters of Italy, a vendor at that festival, quickly decided to organize a new event for the city.

“We are the Sons and Daughters of Italy, so we decided to give it a crack,” she said.

What followed was a year of communicating, planning and learning for Fetterman. She said she wouldn’t have been able to organize this event without the support she’s received from family, friends and the community at large.

“We started going to council meetings and, going in blind, you have no idea what you’re doing,” Fetterman said while recounting her first steps in the process. “(Chief Bob O'Neill) could not have been more helpful. Mayor Bob Dandoy was giving us every angle or crutch to do this.”

Fetterman said the search for vendors and sponsors started later than she would have wanted, but the support and collaboration she received from Main Street businesses was very positive.

“We’ve offered everybody in our wheelhouse from Wayne to Cunningham, who has either a retail or restaurant business, you can have your space, just let us know what you want to do,” she said.

She highlighted Johnny’s Distillery, Miller’s Shoes and Two Twenty-Nine Clothing & Home as just a few of the brick-and-mortar Main Street businesses looking forward to supporting the event.

Fetterman also said how surprised she was that the community quickly rallied behind the event.

“With the time we had, we got a lot of people excited about it. We have over 5,000 people put ‘interested’ on Facebook,” she said.

Fetterman said that, while she personally wanted to see an Italian festival carry on in Butler, she and everyone she worked with was doing it for the Butler community and its Italian-American population.

“We were so proud to say that Butler had an Italian festival,” Fetterman said. “To see the people on the street that you don’t normally see — and laughing and clapping and dancing — and the old-timers meeting and catching up, it’s just the vibe I hope we can hit.”