Music, other fun on the mountaintop this weekend

Jun. 3—The action's just getting revved up at the annual Mountain Music Festival at ACE Adventure Resort in Oak Hill.

After music by acts such as Bennett Walker Wales, Moon Hooch and The Motet and a plethora of activities including yoga and visual artists planned through Thursday, the 2022 incarnation of the festival, which originated in 2014, runs through early Sunday, June 5, on the mountaintop of the sprawling resort.

The primary focus of the weekend — the music — continues on three stages on Friday. The sounds started early, with 10 a.m. sets by Short & Company (Lake Stage) and Annie Neeley Band (Strange Stage). Those two stages will feature other concerts by The Settlement, Dinosaur Burps, Strizy, Corduroy Brown and Matt Mullins & The Bringdowns through 5 p.m. on June 3. Then, with the exception of a 2 a.m. show by Litz on the Strange Stage on Saturday morning, the rest of the Friday music will emanate from the Main Stage. From 4 to 5:30 p.m., The Kind Thieves are up, followed by the NTH Power (6 to 7:30 p.m.), Ripe (8 to 9:30 p.m.), Galactic (10 to 11:30 p.m.) and Tauk Paper Scissors! (noon to 1:30 a.m.).

Saturday offers wall-to-wall sound, too. From 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Pluto Gang, The Freeway Jubilee, Buddhagraph Spaceship, The Talismen, Darrin Hacquard, Logan Halstead and Ranford Almond Band will play either Lake Stage or Strange Stage. From 2 to 3:30 a.m. Sunday, Josh Teed will hit the Strange Stage.

Main Stage acts on Saturday will be as follows: 4 to 5:30 p.m. — Joslyn & The Sweet Compression; 6 to 7:30 p.m. — Spafford; 8 to 9:30 p.m. — Doom Flamingo; 10 to 11:30 p.m. — Cory Wong; and midnight to 1:30 a.m. — Big Something.

"We're definitely seeing attendance being down this year, with the economy hurting, and people have less money in their pockets to go out and do things like this," Chris Colin, special events coordinator at ACE Adventure Resort, said Thursday afternoon. "But it's not slowing down the vibe; it's not slowing down the attitude. Whether we've got 1,000 people here or 10,000 people here, we're going to throw the best, biggest party that we can throw.

"We're looking forward to bringing 30 bands out here. We've got all the vendors. The Pigment Sanctuary Art Gallery just got set up in their brand new structure this year."

"The Pigment Sanctuary Art Gallery is my favorite aspect of this festival," Colin added. "The amount of creativity and talent that explodes out of that building is just something you're not going to see anywhere else."

He said the "most anticipated, most unique" musical act of the weekend is expected to be the Tauk Paper Scissors! lineup. "Tauk is the band, and they're bringing in, like, eight guest performers from different bands, like people from Trey Anastasio Band, people from Vulfpeck, people from String Cheese Incident. They're going to do this super jam; it's something you're not going to see anywhere else. It's only happening here."

That particular show is set for midnight Friday to 1:30 a.m. Saturday.

With music and nature as the backdrop, as well as the availability of the region's multitude of outdoor recreation opportunities, the festival also features the Greenbrier Valley Brewing Company, visual artists via The Pigment Sanctuary Art Gallery, and workshops and clinics centered on yoga, beer, flow, plants and art, among other activities.

Festival tickets are still available at the gate. There are two-day passes for the weekend and single day tickets for Saturday. For more on tickets, camping and activities, visit https://mountainmusicfestwv.com/.

----Along with Colin, a favorite activity for many others on Mountain Music Festival weekend is The Pigment Sanctuary Art Gallery, which brings together a talented collaborative of visual artists from across the country, 31 of which are featured in 2022. Their work includes paintings, murals, sculptures and more.

The gallery is open through the weekend.

Lacey Vilandry, co-founder (with Ashton Hill) of the art gallery, said, "It started off literally as just a pop-up tent, and I came here as a stranger among strangers. Maybe we had seen each other once or twice before, but this (at the festival) is the first time that we really interacted ... Just kind of over the years, the same people, the same faces, kept popping up, and in 2018 we started calling ourselves the Pigment Sanctuary and calling our family the Pigment Sanctuary.

"We founded the LLC in 2021 and we opened our permanent gallery location in Princeton, W.Va., just a couple of months ago in March."

Vilandry is originally from Virginia but moved to West Virginia in December 2019. "It's just an area that was really supportive of the arts, so that's what drew me out here," she said.

And, the MMF is a critical supporter of the artists, she noted. "The Mountain Music Festival has by far been the most supportive of the artists out of any festivals we've been to, even from the start. Every single year they've gotten us a bigger and better tent, until they literally built us a permanent structure here." That will help protect the artists and their creations from the elements, Vilandry stressed.

The aim of the Pigment Sanctuary, Vilandry said, is that "we create a safe space for creative people of all kinds. And we encourage other people to join us. ... We want to give people the space to express themselves, and we want to create a culture within our reach to really be a sanctuary, to be a place where people can come for peace, enjoyment and tranquility amongst all this chaos that's happening all around us."

Their efforts help bring the process of art being created to the average person, she said.

Hill said the artists "have developed a really tight community" and they "try to be open to other artists."

The main aim, Hill says, is "collaboration over competition." The artists help each other and support each other, she stressed. The collaboration particularly is a lifeline for those who are "new and learning" by helping them get a foot in the door, she said.

Among the others onsite Thursday was Gina McGrath, whose company Consent Culture Initiative was at this week's festival from a southwestern Virginia location. McGrath oversees an awareness booth that gives general resources and information to attendees "so that they can be better informed and empathetic community members who are capable of responding when identity or gender violence happens."

McGrath has worked in that mission at festivals and creative communities for about seven years, as well as through forums and online classes.

The Mountain Music Festival is a main avenue to help get the message out, McGrath said. "There really isn't anything like the reach that you get at events like this."

Email: skeenan@register-herald.com or follow on Twitter @gb_scribe