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?-?-2008
Music
Posted on April 17, 2008 12:00 AM

All Good Festival fosters wild, wonderful vibes

There are several music festivals to attend in the upcoming summer months, but only one guarantees attendees an "All Good" time.

The All Good Festival is a three-day camping, music and arts event held on Marvin's Mountaintop in Masontown, W.Va. This year's festival is taking place June 11-13.

"Everyone goes in with 'All Good' intentions and to have an 'All Good' time," said Tim Walther, the event's promoter. "We allow people to feel and experience the music while they are there."

Walther said the jam band festival began 12 years ago and has relocated five times (hitting up three different West Virginia spots, one location in Virginia and one in Maryland), but even with the relocation it still has had constant followers and 18,000 to 20,000 festival-goers every year.

"We have fans that have been to every festival," Walther said. "We've grown as a festival and we've grown with the fans."

Matthew Balaban (senior-business management) went to All Good in 2006 and plans to go again this year.

"The environment there is really cool and just the way it's set up -- it's in the middle of the mountains," Balaban said. "There's this place they call Shakedown Street where everyone just chills and camps out."

Balaban said he is looking forward to seeing the event's headliners, Phil Lesh and Friends and Widespread Panic.

"It's really cool because it's one of the few festivals with two major bands headlining the show, and the other bands playing, I think, are the best around," he said.

Other acts include Michael Franti & Spearhead, Gov't Mule, The Avett Brothers and Keller Williams.

"We consider Keller the king of the campground; he's played nine of the 12 shows," Walther said.

The electronic musical group Pnuma Trio will perform at the festival for the first time this summer.

"We've never performed before, but I've been there," said the trio's bassist, Alex Botwin. "It was really awesome. I met some of my closest friends there."

Botwin said festival shows are much different from the typical club show.

"Festivals are a good way to get people to hear your music," Botwin said. "They might not know the name of the band, but they'll still watch the show, and that's good for us because we are still a relatively new band."

Another band performing at the festival is the Latin-rock band deSol. Albie Monterrosa, the band's lead singer, compared All Good to larger summer music festivals such as Bonnaroo.

"The smaller festivals are more focused. At larger festivals there is a lot going on," Monterrosa said. "I understand promoters need to have more stuff going on like more stages and an array of performers, but it's a lot to take in all at once."

Walther said unlike Bonnaroo, which has multiple stages and overlapping performances throughout the days, All Good has a singular main stage and each act has its own performance timeslot.

"You aren't chasing music all day," Walther said. "I feel like bigger festivals are more of a hiking festival than a music festival."

Dave Weismann, All Good's publicist, said the festival never had the intention of being a larger festival like Bonnaroo. In fact, he said, it's been around longer than the Tennessee mega-festival.

Weismann said attendees hail from all 50 states and even from outside the country.

"Everyone is so excited by the time they get there because everyone is making such a haul to go to the event," he said. "There is sort of a New Year's Eve vibe when everyone first gets there -- like everyone is wondering what is going to explode by the end of the night."

1-02-2009