There’s nothing quite like spending a weekend out of town. It’s even better when you spend it outdoors jamming to your favorite artists. In an ever-stressful world, you sometimes need an escape.
If this sounds like a good time to you, then the All Good Music Festival and Camp Out would have been your place to be if you live in the Mid-Atlantic. Since it debuted in 1997, the music festival has been a spectacular event with various musical acts ranging from jam and folk to bluegrass and funk rock.
Typically held in July, the festival became popular among the local jam-band crowd. It’s grown from a small event in Maryland to one of the premier camping and music festivals in the United States. 2011’s All Good event had an estimated 30,000 people in attendance.
All Good Presents organized the festival. It is a grassroots production and promotion company committed to reaching and uniting music lovers and touring artists in the Mid-Atlantic region. Tim Walther and Junipa Contento-Süslü founded the company.
What to Do at the All Good Music Festival?
Although people flocked to the festival for good music, there were plenty of things to enjoy at that event.
Music
The event generally included three performance spaces. The headlining acts performed on the main stage, flanked by a smaller stage. Another stage, dubbed the Grassroots stage, gives local artists a chance to shine.
Most All Good Music Festival events have a no-overlapping set setup, allowing attendees to see every set and band in the lineup.
Camping
There are also plenty of meetups and activities occurring around the campsite. If you’re the sort of person who loves mingling, you’ll surely meet many interesting people in the All Good Camp Out.
There are several categories of All Good Music Festival camping. A separate site is available for families with children under 12, and another camping area is recommended for families with slightly older children. Another area is allotted for people intending to camp in recreational vehicles.
You could also spend the night in your non-camper vehicle if you have the right permits included in your pass.
Vendors
Besides hearing the amazing musicians perform on stage, there is still plenty else to do once you are at the festival. Around the site, vendors sell clothing, memorabilia, and food.
According to their 2012 event FAQ page, the Vendor Villages showcased a variety of clothiers, jewelers, painters, potters, and other retailers. The event also hosted concessions of beverages, beers, and good eats. The festival organizers reassure us that vegetarian options are always available at their events.
Festival Origins
Tim Walther started All Good in 1995 as the “Full Moon Festival .” Walther began his career as a promoter for bands. As he started working with more and more bands, he thought of using his experience and connections to create his festival. In an interview with Glorious Noise, Walther wanted to bring both bands and fans together in a harmonious setting.
The inaugural festival in Brandywine, Maryland, had over 800 people attending. Walther says the bands were playing for free, only taking money Walther made from ticket sales.
After trying four different locations, Walther decided on Marvin’s Mountaintop in 2003. The venue had room to grow and was just the right distance away from Washington DC and Baltimore. According to Walthers, it was “just far enough away that you get away from the hustle and bustle, but not so far away to be a strain of a drive.”
In an interview with the Baltimore Sun, Walther explained the philosophy behind the festival. According to him, the name ‘All Good’ represented the type of vibe the organizers wanted to aim for. “People come to these events expecting everything to be all good, expecting it to be a really friendly camping-out experience,” Walther said.
The All Good Music Festival was designed to have a continuous flow of music without overlap. The main and side stages were typically next to each other. Headliners played full sets, smaller bands played between sets, and the next major act set up their instruments.
According to Walther, the no overlapping sets is a strong pull for people since they are guaranteed to see every artist they want to see.
The festival also includes a volunteer program known as WET or Work Exchange Team. These volunteers typically pay for an All Good ticket and get a refund once they work 15 hours.
In an interview with Glide Magazine, Walthers mentions that a recent festival had over 300 WET volunteers working in over 60 departments throughout the site. According to Walthers, the WET program was a great way to get fans involved in running the event and is instrumental in making All Good a success.
Tickets and Passes
Throughout the years, the admission price varied. For example, the 2012 festival included a General Admission 4-Day Pass worth $175. The price included camping, parking, and all entertainment included in the festival.
For an even better experience, you can shell out $460 for an “EVEN BETTER” VIP Pass. These tickets gave VIPs access to a lounge overlooking the main concert area.
Other VIP Perks included:
- Private air-conditioned bathrooms
- Exclusive VIP showers
- Faster, Separate VIP entrance to the concert area
- Discounted Beverages
- Exclusive permit for car camping
All Good and CID entertainment provided fans with a one-click travel solution for the All Good Festival if you’re traveling from outside the state. Aspiring festival-goers could choose from various packages with hotel accommodation, festival tickets, and shuttle transportation.
For festival attendees who love to stay overnight but want to avoid the hassles of camping, All Good provided several Contentment Camping Packages.
The BETTER YET VIP CAMPING pass was available for $1,895 and included an elegantly decorated 10×13 tent for two people. The pass included two Even Better VIP festival passes and access to all previously mentioned VIP perks.
Location
The festival started in Maryland in 1997 and later relocated to West Virginia. Fitting for the Mountain State, the festival was held on a mountaintop for nine years. Beginning in 2012, the All Good Music Festival was held in Legend Valley, in the small village of Thornville, Ohio. In their last festival in 2015, the event went back to West Virginia.The Mountain State is well known for its beautiful nature and its country roads, and for legalizing online gambling in 2017. The demand for real money online casinos in West Virginia has risen dramatically with many different operators competing for the top spot in the years since.
While the festival has moved several times in its lifetime, it has spent most of those years in Marvin’s Mountaintop in Masontown, West Virginia. Despite being in the middle of nowhere, festival fans persevered through hiking a mountain to attend the event. You can watch this video to get a good idea of how the event was set up in such a unique location.
Despite the appeal of having a music festival on a mountaintop, the venue did not come without its issues. One of these main issues involved traffic. Thousands of attendees had to climb up a single one-lane country road, which made it a problematic venue logistically. The logistics problems, along with a fatal accident, have led the West Virginia community to push back.
Walther found the Legend Valley in Ohio a perfect candidate for a new location. As a fan of the Grateful Dead, he attended several concerts in the 80s. Compared to Marvin’s Mountaintop, the new venue was more accessible and allowed attendees to get in and out when needed easily.
The festival took a hiatus in 2014 to find a more permanent location after spending 2012 and 2013 at Thornville. Many people seemed to miss the atmosphere of Marvin’s Mountaintop and didn’t care for the Legend Valley relocation. After a year without the All Good Festival, it finally returned in 2015 to a new location, Summit Point, West Virginia.
The venue for 2015’s festival was flatter than Marvin’s Mountaintop and much smaller than the Legend Valley venue. Berryhill Farm can be found deep in the background of Summit Point, West Virginia. While long-time fans could not help but compare the venue to the marvelous Marvin’s Mountaintop, it served well as an outdoor venue for the final All Good Music Festival.
Listed below is the complete timeline of the All Good Music Festival and Camp Out venue changes
- Wilmers Park – Brandywine, MD ( 1997-1999)
- Buffalo Gap Campground – Capon Bridge, WV (2000)
- Oakley Farm – Spotsylvania, VA (2001)
- Sunshine Daydream Campground – Terra Alta, WV (2002)
- Marvin’s Mountaintop – Masontown, WV (2003-2011)
- Legend Valley – Thornville, Ohio (2012-2013)
- Berry Hill Farm – Summit Point, West Virginia (2015)
Musical Lineups
All Good has been a mainstay in the jam rock festival scene since its inception in 1997. Like many other jam band music festivals, the lineup typically includes bands that capture the signature jam band energy of extended musical improvisation.
Jam bands spawned from the psychedelic rock movement of the 1960s. Famous acts such as the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers Band frequently performed jams in their concerts.
The All Good Music Festival hosted talented performers from many genres. The jam band’s cross-genre focus has allowed artists from blues, country music, progressive rock, bluegrass, and electronic music to participate.
Its lineup had artists like the Flaming Lips, the Allman Brothers Band, Primus, Moe, and Cake. Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead, whose music has inspired the jam rock scene, is a frequent headliner at All Good.
Because the festival tradition is jam music, taping is allowed and even encouraged by the organizers. It would make sense, considering the music heard in jam band festivals are wholly unique and may never be put to record ever again.
The culture of the jam band scene places great focus on live recordings because improvisational jam bands often play their songs differently at each venue. Devout fans often travel from festival to festival to listen to their favorite jam band artists play.
Since the bands only have limited time between sets, live sound checks are the norm. Logistics has become difficult because the bands themselves can’t do any full sound check. While a bit outside the norm, it allowed the All Good Music Festival to create their signature no-overlapping-sets policy, which is a big pull for their festival attendees.
Controversies
In July 2011, a fatal accident left a 20-year-old woman dead and two others injured. The accident involved a truck rolling into a camp of tents where festival attendees slept. The truck owner blamed security and parking agents who pointed him to a particularly steep slope for parking.
In three separate lawsuits filed in September and October of that year, the deceased’s father accused the festival organizers of gross negligence. Some principals were sued individually, but all of them did not accept accountability.
In the aftermath of the accident, the festival organizers announced that they would move away from Marvin’s Mountaintop for the next year.
Another controversy occurred in 2014 when the Jefferson County Board of Zoning Appeals ruled to deny the request to hold a five-day music festival on Thursday. While the festival was not approved to last five days, Walther said the show would still go on to local guidelines.
Retirement
On February 24th, 2016, the All Good Music Festival and Camp Out organizers announced that they would be retiring from the festival. While it is unfortunate that the festival can no longer continue, the memories made in the past 18 years will certainly be cherished by everyone lucky enough to be there.
In a letter to fans posted on the website and social media, the retirement of the festival was not the end of their celebration of music, community, and arts. They announced that new events would continue at the Merriweather Post Pavilion, an outdoor concert venue in Columbia, Maryland.
While the annual event has been retired, Tim Walther and Junipa Contento-Süslü will continue to operate more All Good Presents events in the Baltimore and DC areas.