Mountain Music Festival

Mountain Music Festival is the music and camping weekend at ACE Adventure Resort, in the New River Gorge, in West Virginia. The stage, the festival's own page says, sits in the middle of a 1,500-acre adventure property. The first year that page signs is 2014, the first weekend in June, and it closes with the names of Jerry Cook and Ernie Kincaid. The same page says 2026 is its twelfth year. If 2014 was the first, 2026 would be the thirteenth: both figures live in the same text. Charlie Hatcher, in a site interview dated 2024, calls himself one of the founders and the principal talent buyer, and says he brought the idea to the owners of ACE, who built a permanent stage. ACE, he writes, produced that first weekend, and Hatcher has stayed on the production.

The ground is flat and earthen, with no cement walkways. Camping comes with the pass. Accessible bathrooms and showers are at the main gate. Accessible parking needs the permit, and service animals check in at the Welcome Center. Dogs, glass, outside alcohol and bicycles do not enter the grounds. Bags are searched at the gate. West Virginia Executive gives another measure of the property, 15,000 acres in Oak Hill, and the opening of the grounds: on 5 June Congressman Rahall cuts the ribbon with Jerry Cook, president of ACE, and the festival takes the next two days, with attendance projected near 1,000. Cook, that magazine says, had opened ACE in Fayette County in 1979. A West Virginia Business Daily listing, dated 10 May 2026, puts the address at 1 Concho Road, Minden, WV 25879. The ten-year page, from December 2023, says a county ordinance blocked an event like this and that in 2013 ACE got the green light for the following year.

The weekend the review walks is 4–6 June 2026. Jolene Rheault, in Fuel the Scene, publishes on 10 June the Thursday 4 set: Andy Frasco & The U.N. open the weekend on the mountain stage. Mike Gantzer comes in on guitar a few weeks after Shawn Eckels left. Frasco climbs off the stage, over the barricade, and dances with the crowd while the band keeps playing. At the peak of the night the crowd forms a traditional hora and lifts a ten-year-old boy who is having a birthday. Behind Frasco, Jax Silvertree, of the traveling circus, swallows a sword. They play Mature As Fuck, Ugly on You and Love You When I'm Sad. Try Not to Die comes from Growing Pains, the tenth studio album, the first full-length since L'Optimist, from 2023. The piece hears a country twang and an island breeze in the same song.

They also cover Fame, by David Bowie, and Crazy on You, by Heart. Allie Kral, fiddle and voice, takes the center. Rheault writes that she had just had a baby and that the mountain stays with that voice. They follow with Keep On Keepin' On. The close is Somedays and Dancin' Around My Grave. The 10 May listing, before the weekend, also names Melvin Seals & JGB — written there as Mevin Seals — The Floozies, Here Come the Mummies, Tropidelic, Big Something, Dirtwire, The Bumpin Uglies, Sunsquabi and lespecial, and three stages: Mountaintop Main Stage, Lake Stage and Late Night Pavilion. Those names stay as the announced bill. The set that is recounted is Frasco's.

The site's own closing note, also on 10 June, thanks the bands, the visual artists, the people doing flow and the people doing fire, and the wellness and art workshops. It thanks security, medical staff, production, vendors and volunteers, and ACE for the mountain. It names two other weekends at the same resort, Boots in the Gorge and Domefest, without walking them. The note already looks toward another June. Wook Wranglers, on 6 and 7 June 2025, walk warm rain, dust and the Pigment Sanctuary, with Daniel Donato's Cosmic Country, Tropidelic, Big Something, Neighbor and Shadowgrass on that piece's bill, and they sign off with a 5 and 6 June 2026 that are not the dates the 2026 pages use.

The pass, on the May listing, includes mountaintop camping, bathrooms and hot showers, music day and night, the vendor village and the gallery. The festival page adds whitewater rafting, climbing and mountain biking in the gorge, and paid cabins if camping is not enough. The 2025 guide, before that June, talks about a Thursday arrival at the Lost Paddle, afternoon music on the lake on Friday and Saturday, and free water on the grounds. That is that year's sheet, not a 2026 receipt. What Rheault leaves walked is Thursday the 4th: funk, rock and a sword, on the dirt of the New River Gorge.