Tim Walther on All Good Now Fest & 30th Anniversary

Beloved jam band Goose hits the stage this weekend, June 14-15, at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland with Joe Russo’s Almost Dead and the String Cheese Incident for All Good Now, the 30th anniversary of Baltimore promoter Tim Walther’s 1995 outing with Gov’t Mule and John Scofield at Wilmers Park, Maryland.

“Back then it was just me, some bands, a fax machine and a bunch of fliers,” Walthers tells Billboard of that first-year effort. Since then, he’s grown his small promotion company into one of the most influential indie promoters in the mid-Atlantic region with over 2 million tickets sold across 3,000 club shows and 68 festivals, staging events at venues across the region, from the famed 9:30 Club in Washington D.C. to the bustling mountaintops of West Virginia.

“We’ve always stayed true to our roots while also having our eye on something bigger for fans of jam bands and improvisational music,” Walthers says. This weekend’s festival also includes sets from Lawrence, Molly Tuttle, the Disco Biscuits, Pigeons Playing Ping Pong and more. The festival is divided by two stages, a symphony woods section and a Shakedown Street where fans can shop and socialize.

Walther notes “there was no promoter playbook” when he first started the All Good Music Festival & Campout in 1997 with landowner Arthur Wilmer to launch “a new kind of music festival—one driven by spirit, spontaneity, and shared values. We were just trying to figure it out and make enough to make it to the next festival.”

Over time, the crowds swelled from 940 people to 23,000 fans, with 1,200 people hired annually to work on the event, which has become a rite of passage for jam band fans from around the world. The festival “never lost its soul,” Walther tells Billboard. “There’s no overlapping sets and whenever possible, fireworks.”

To view set times and buy tickets, visit allgoodpresentslivemusic.com.