FAIRHOPE - It started as a backyard music festival eight years ago.

Now, the Angel Ride in Fairhope is a big moneymaker for special needs children.

Channel Three's Jake Peterson shows us what's in store this year.

The sound stage is almost set up and food vendors are getting set up. Come Friday, this entire farm will be full of food vendors and bikers.

Oak Hollow Farms on Highway 98 is being transformed into a large fundraiser.

Organizer Mary McDaniel says the Angel Ride is part festival, part biker rally.

She started the event eight years ago to help families with special needs children.

"We feel it's important that the families don't have to worry about the cost when they are worried about their children."

The backyard fundraiser grows each year. The first year they had a few local bands and a dozen vendors.

Now, it's a regional music festival. This year, they have forty vendors and the Charlie Daniels Band.

"Very exciting, because Charlie Daniels is coming."

Raylee Odom has been helped by the Angel Ride.

His mom, Carissa Cumbie, says the weekend festival has raised more than 500-thousand dollars for special needs children.

"It does get very expensive, so we know full well."

The culmination of the event is a bike ride through Fairhope and Foley Saturday afternoon.

About 25-hundred bikers will pay thirty bucks apiece to ride.

"I ride with my dad and all my friends...just a good time together."

Shannon Witherington says the slow economy won't stop the biker community from coming out for a good cause.

"We are family-oriented and we love doing things for charity, and that's manly why I ride."

In Fairhope, Jake Peterson, Channel Three News.

For more on the Angel Ride, click on "News Links" on our website."Angel Ride" Welcoming Charlie Daniels Band