MILTON -- It looks like a festival, it sounds like a festival, but with a forecast of gray skies and rain Saturday, you'll be glad it's not an outdoor bluegrass festival.

The Mountaineer Opry House in Milton will be filled to the brim with a full day of live national and regional act bluegrass music starting at 2 p.m. as the all-ages venue hosts a benefit show for Ernie Thacker. The event will feature Grasstowne, Charlie Sizemore, David Parmley, Melvin Goins, New River Line, Dave Evans, Summertown Road and The Tommy Webb Band.

Thacker, a southwest Virginia resident who fronts the band Route 23, and plays with the America's Bluegrass Band, is paralyzed from the waist down after an April 2006 auto accident that nearly killed him.

All money raised at the benefit goes to The Ernie Thacker Fund to help out Thacker, who, like a lot of musicians, did not have health insurance.

Admission is $15 and $5 for children 12 and under.

The concert is organized by Bo "Bo Man" McCarty, host of the syndicated radio show "America's Bluegrass" that is heard on 16 stations in the United States, one in the Philippines and streaming on the Web.

A good friend of Thacker's, McCarty said it is still a real struggle for the family day to day.

Thacker, who spent about five months in intensive care and lost a foot earlier this year to infection, still has managed to get out and play a few times this spring and summer. Thacker played RudyFest this summer as well as a big benefit show in Columbus.

McCarty said he can only play every little bit because it takes a lot out of him to travel any distance.

"He is unable to work, and his wife is unable to work as she is taking care of him so much and the bills keep coming in," McCarty said of Thacker. "His Social Security disability isn't even paying day to day bills. He contacted Melvin (Goins) and let him know he was having a pretty tough time. So we said, 'Let's do something, and let's do it soon because he needs it now."

McCarty said he put out an e-mail on several bluegrass bulletin boards and on his own Web site, and the offers to play poured in from bands including Grasstowne, which notched up the SPBGMA's 2008 Album of the Year for the band's debut project, "Road Headin' Home."

Other bands include New River Line, fronted by Dave Carroll, who has got a couple of cuts on Thacker's new Pinecastle Records CD that is to be released in October.

Standout songwriter Charlie Sizemore, who like Thacker spent time in the legendary Ralph Stanley band The Clinch Mountain Boys, is coming from Nashville. Coming from Kentucky are good friends, Melvin Goins, who played with Thacker in America's Bluegrass Band and Tommy Webb, who notched a Top 5 bluegrass single this summer with, "If It Weren't For Bluegrass Music, I'd Go Crazy."

"It's a big, big lineup, and we'll end up whenever we end up," McCarty said. "It will probably be about 8 or 9 in the evening. It's all about getting money for them daily and keeping the lights on and food in their bellies. We're hoping to at least get 500 people out to the Opry House and raise $7,000 or $8,000."

Larry Stephens, who runs the Opry House with his wife, Mary, and other volunteers, said they didn't think twice about opening up the Opry House to host Bo's benefit for Ernie.

"The Bo Man called me up and said that Ernie is up against it and asked if I would be willing to let them use the place for a fundraiser and, of course, I agreed to it," Stephens said. "He didn't have any insurance so I am sure it is devastating."

File photo/The Herald-Dispatch

Bluegrass musician Ernie Thacker talks with reporters at Boyd County Ford in Ashland on Nov. 20, 2006. The car dealership donated an electric wheelchair to Thacker, who was paralyzed as the result of an auto accident last spring.

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