To all the talk of this August’s competing Woodstock Festival 50th anniversary festivals—Woodstock 50 at Watkins Glen versus the Bethel Woods Music and Culture Festival in Bethel— let’s add another potentially confusing shakeup to the concert festival calendar: This year, Mountain Jam ain’t on a mountain. It’s in a field. The field that was formerly Max Yasgur’s Farm, where the original 1969 Woodstock Festival happened. Which is now the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts. Where the latter Woodstock 50th anniversary fest will take place three months after Mountain Jam 2019, which is set for June 13-16. Goit it? Good.
The name Mountain Jam is a reference to the Allman Brothers Band’s epic version of the identically named Donovan song and the preeminent East Coast jam-band festival’s previous location, Hunter Mountain, where it had been held since 2005. This year, however, in an effort to increase attendance by drawing more revelers from areas to the south, event founder Gary Chetkof and his partners have elected to move the mountain, as it were, to Bethel Woods.
Tickets for the event went on sale last week and stars Willie Nelson & Family, Gov’t Mule, the Avett Brothers, Toots & the Maytals, Michael Franti & Spearhead, Joe Russo’s Almost Dead, Marco Benevento, Alison Krauss, Twiddle, Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real, Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe, Amy Helm, the Allman Betts Band, the Nude Party, and many more.
Here’s Gov’t Mule at 2016’s Mountain Jam delivering a fine version of the Etta James classic “I’d Rather Go Blind”:
Tickets for Mountain Jam 2019 are on sale now at https://mountainjam.com/.
