Music in the Streets begins its ninth season at 6 p.m. Friday in downtown Washington.

Music in the Streets is organized by the Washington Harbor District Alliance.

Mitch Barrett, sponsored by the Beaufort County Traditional Music Association, takes the main stage, which has been moved to Respess Street. Barrett, a singer-songwriter who lives in Kentucky, has won several songwriting competitions, most recently the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival in Lyons, Colo., the MerleFest Chris Austin Songwriting Competition (twice awarded) and the prestigious Kerrville New Folk Competition.

Other scheduled performers include J.B. Mayes, an instrumental musician based in Greenville; Item 9, also of Greenville, featuring Gene Gillikin and Gina Gerard; Hayden Drake, a Washington native who primarily plays guitar; Jonny Waters Band, which features Columbia-native Waters leading a country-Southern rock/blues/acoustic group; Living Waters, a praise-and-worship band from Washington; Kinston-native Karla Karlson, who is working to record a CD in Wilmington; Shakedown, a local band that infuses several musical genres; Redeemed and Trinity, with Redeemed being a men’s gospel quartet and Trinity being a women’s trio whose members attend First Church of Christ in Washington; and Washington Maranatha Ministries, a gospel/spiritual group.

“We’ve got an excellent, working music committee this year,” said Lavon Drake, one of the committee members.

Drake said she is pleased with the variety that MITS will offer Friday.

“We seem to be getting a little bit of variety for future months,” Drake added.

The other committee members include Alan Futrell, Sara Woolard and Mayes, one of the performers slated to entertain Friday.

The Music in the Streets Shaggers and the Down East Rods & Classics return to Music in the Streets this year.

Nonprofit groups slated to appear at Music in the Streets on Friday are the Little Washington Sailing Club, Real Crisis and the Beaufort County Literacy Council.

This year, Music in the Streets patrons have opportunities to take the street festival’s sounds home.

“This year, we are planning on creating a compilation CD with original songs from the best performers. We will sell the CD’s as a fundraiser for Music in the Streets,” reads a press release.

“We invite nonprofits organizations and other agencies to come out and interact with the Beaufort County community at MITS. We welcome them to participate in MITS by offering an interactive demonstration. An interactive demonstration may be anything: face-painting or a bean-bag toss, but we encourage the agencies to develop an interactive component that relates directly to their organizations. This is a great chance to fulfill the organizations’ outreach goals or boost fundraising dollars. With such a large audience, there is no better way to raise awareness for local organizations,” reads the release.

MITS organizers will be stationed at the intersection of Stewart Parkway and Main Street at the beginning of each event to answer questions related to the event and direct musicians and other participants to their places.

MITS organizers plan to have at least two food vendors at each MITS event.

MITS is held the third Friday of each month from April through October. This year’s MITS events, which begin at 6 p.m. and end at 9 p.m., are scheduled for April 15, May 20, June 17, July 15, Aug. 19, Sept. 16 and Oct. 21.