All Good Now

We were All Good Then
After the passing of Jerry Garcia and touring with the Grateful Dead, we found ourselves following our hearts in search of the music, the scene and the community we had grown to love. As Walther Productions and as a fan, I attended multiple campout events at Wilmer’s Park in Brandywine, MD and was inspired to launch the All Good Music Festival & Campout there in 1997. For 18 years, we gathered in fields and on mountaintops, we camped, we jammed, we danced to endless sets of amazing live music, and we experienced epic personal moments. We experimented, we made lifelong friends, and we came together as a family. It was a time when the hippy festival campout was the place we called home, we were All Good then. Thank you all, we are forever grateful. Tim Walther

We are All Good Now
We invite you to join us 10 years later as we bring the All Good family vibes, All Good music and All Good razzle dazzle to Merriweather. We have all grown; our lifestyles have changed but the spirt of the music and community have remained the same. We are hardworking, fast moving, and life living. We prefer our creature comforts and conveniences, and our concert experiences have evolved primarily from campouts to classic venues like the iconic Merriweather Post Pavilion. From camping to commuting, from a tent to a hotel room, from home and back. Let’s revel in the past and celebrate in the present. We are All Good Now.

Joe Russo’s Almost Dead is Marco Benevento, Dave Dreiwitz, Tom Hamilton, Scott Metzger and Joe Russo. We’re a Grateful Dead cover band.

The past three decades have written a story packed full of surreal experiences, epic moments, groundbreaking involvement and huge accomplishments. The String Cheese Incident has been recognized for their commitment to musical creativity and integrity, for their community spirit, philanthropic endeavors, and for their innovative approach to the business of music.

When The String Cheese Incident’s growth first started gaining momentum in the 1990s, as the Internet was just beginning to take hold and the major-label business model was failing, the band decided to make music on their own terms.

Since then, The String Cheese Incident has gone on to carve out a completely unique approach to the business of music; they are truly pioneers of a new way of “making a band.” With the Internet as their tool, SCI was among the first artists to disseminate information online, such as tour dates, release information, and other news, to their growing fan base. Rather than doing business on such terms as “the bottom line,” SCI put their music and their fans first, opening companies of their own, including a ticketing company, a merchandise company and a fan travel agency, to best serve their community. The band’s record label, SCI Fidelity Records, has always operated under the same ideals. Even early on, SCI Fidelity embraced downloadable music and file sharing, delivering SCI’s “On The Road” series, where every show the band plays is made available for download on the Internet. Whether they realized it at the time or not, The String Cheese Incident was inventing grassroots band development. Today, literally hundreds of bands are using some version of this same approach to build their brand.

The String Cheese Incident’s commitment goes well beyond their immediate community, and even beyond the music community as a whole. Early on, the band took a serious interest in giving back to the communities that they visited, and they were among the first performers to encourage “Green” shows and tours. SCI’s support has helped give rise to such not-for-profit organizations as Conscious Alliance and HeadCount. All the while, The String Cheese Incident has stayed committed to music as a creative endeavor, not just in their recordings but also in their live performances. The list of SCI’s special guests and collaborators is long and diverse. Their annual events such as Electric Forest and Hulaween, and holiday shows such as New Year’s Eve, have helped redefine the concert experience and have garnered the band a reputation as live music vibe innovators.

“A virtuoso guitarist with a galvanizing charm that electrifies her audience” —Guardian

Raised in Northern California, Molly Tuttle moved to Nashville in 2015. In the years since, she has received many accolades, including two GRAMMY wins plus a nomination for Best New Artist. She earned three wins at the 2023 IBMA Bluegrass Music Awards and won Album of the Year at the 2023 International Folk Music Awards. Additionally, she has earned Instrumentalist of the Year at the 2018 Americana Music Awards, and Guitar Player of the Year at the IBMAs in both 2017 and 2018. Tuttle has performed around the world, including shows with Billy Strings, Dierks Bentley, Dave Matthews, Béla Fleck, Tommy Emmanuel, Hiss Golden Messenger, Jason Isbell, Old Crow Medicine Show, and Dwight Yoakam, as well as at several major festivals including Newport Folk and Pilgrimage. She is featured on Ringo Starr’s acclaimed 2025 album Look Up and joined his band for performances of the music at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium in January. She also performed the Tom Petty classic “American Girl” with Dierks Bentley on the Country Music Association Awards in late 2024.

In 2023 and 2024, Tuttle earned consecutive GRAMMY and IBMA wins for Best Bluegrass Album/Album of the Year for her Nonesuch records Crooked Tree and City of Gold. She and her band were nominated for eight IBMA Bluegrass Music Awards..

Nonesuch released the six-song EP Into the Wild in the fall of 2024. The EP included three new songs — the title track, “Getaway Girl,” and a cover of Kate Wolf’s “Here in California”—as well as previously released covers of Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” and Olivia Rodrigo’s “good 4 u” and an alternate version of the City of Gold track “Stranger Things.”

Tuttle says of the record: “With this new EP we invite you to come on a journey with us Into the Wild. I wrote the title track with Ketch Secor after a week spent in the redwoods. This song is about getting lost in the wilderness even if it’s just in the forest of your mind. ‘Getaway Girl’ was an unfinished song I had started writing for City of Gold. It’s about a whirlwind romance set in New York City, kind of like Carrie Bradshaw meets bluegrass.

“In addition to these two new original songs, we included some of our favorite covers that we’ve woven into the live show, ‘White Rabbit’ by Jefferson Airplane and ‘good 4 u’ by Olivia Rodrigo,” she continues. “We paid tribute to one of my favorite California songwriters, Kate Wolf, with a new version of her song ‘Here in California’ that features my dad, Jack Tuttle, and longtime friend AJ Lee singing with me. I used to play this one with my family band back in the day! On ‘Stranger Things’ (Down the Rabbit Hole Version) I wanted to go for a stripped back ethereal version of this song originally played by the full band on City of Gold.”

Molly Tuttle is currently working on her next album, which will be announced later this year.

The Disco Biscuits are a band of transformation and invention. The Philadelphia-based group remains the pioneers of “Trance-Fusion” – bridging the gap between electronic dance music and jam rock – while consistently looking for new sonic boundaries to break and avenues to tell stories within. 

With two rock operas (1998’s Hot Air Balloon / 2000’s Chemical Warfare Brigade) amongst the 8 full-length studio albums under their belt, The Biscuits are back with their 9th studio record, a space opera entitled “Revolution in Motion,” to be released on March 29th, 2024. 

Released in 4 parts and accompanied by comic book-style 3D-animated films, Revolution in Motion tells of an alien species set out to discover and study other life throughout the universe. After partying a little too hard and losing track of their mission, the aliens slip through space in a wormhole, arriving at none other than our planet Earth. Vowing to complete their mission, the aliens set out to abduct and study humans with only The Disco Biscuits able to save their own world, and possibly the alien’s world as well. 

With a vast touring schedule and ever-changing live shows, The Disco Biscuits’ soul belongs as much to marathon dance parties as it does to live improvisational journeys. They employ emerging technologies to help them create music that is 100% human although, perhaps, not entirely of this planet.

On his new album In Plain Sight, Neal Francis offers up a body of work both strangely enchanted and painfully self-aware, unfolding in songs sparked from Greek myths and frenzied dreams and late-night drives in the depths of summer delirium. True to its charmed complexity, the singer/songwriter/pianist’s second full-length came to life over the course of a tumultuous year spent living in a possibly haunted church in Chicago. The result: a portrait of profound upheaval and weary resilience, presented in a kaleidoscopic sound that’s endlessly absorbing.

The follow-up to Francis’s 2019 debut Changes—a New Orleans-R&B-leaning effort that landed on best-of-the-year lists from the likes of KCRW, KEXP, and The Current, and saw him hailed as “the reincarnation of Allen Toussaint” by BBC Radio 6—In Plain Sight was written and recorded almost entirely at the church, a now-defunct congregation called St. Peter’s UCC. Despite not identifying as religious, Francis took a music-ministry job at the church in 2017 at the suggestion of a friend. After breaking up with his longtime girlfriend while on tour in fall 2019, he returned to his hometown and found himself with no place to stay, then headed to St. Peter’s and asked to move into the parsonage. “I thought I’d only stay a few months but it turned into over a year, and I knew I had to do something to take advantage of this miraculous gift of a situation,” he says.

Mixed by Grammy Award-winner Dave Fridmann (HAIM, Spoon, The Flaming Lips, Tame Impala), In Plain Sight finds Francis again joining forces with Changes producer and analog obsessive Sergio Rios (a guitarist/engineer known for his work with CeeLo Green and Alicia Keys). Like its predecessor, the album spotlights Francis’s refined yet free-spirited performance on piano, an instrument he took up at the age of four. “From a very early age, I was playing late into the night in a very stream-of-consciousness kind of way,” he says, naming everything from ragtime to gospel soul to The Who among his formative influences. With a prodigy-like gift for piano, Francis sat in with a dozen different blues acts in Chicago clubs as a teenager, and helmed a widely beloved instrumental funk band called The Heard before going solo. Along with earning lavish acclaim (including a glowing review from Bob Lefsetz, who declared: “THIS IS THE FUTURE OF THE MUSIC BUSINESS!”), Changes led to such triumphs as performing live on KCRW’s “Morning Becomes Eclectic,” sharing the stage with members of The Meters at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, and touring with such acts as Lee Fields & The Expressions and Black Pumas.

Recorded entirely on tape with his bandmates Kellen Boersma (guitar), Mike Starr (bass), and Collin O’Brien (drums), In Plain Sight bears a lush and dreamlike quality, thanks in large part to Francis’s restless experimentation with a stash of analog synths lent by his friends in his early days at the church. “My sleep schedule flipped and I’d stay up all night working on songs in this very feverish way,” he says. “I just needed so badly to get completely lost in something.” In a move partly inspired by Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy, In Plain Sight takes its title from a track Francis ended up scrapping from the album. “It’s a song about my breakup and the circumstances that led to me living in the church, where I’m owning up to all my problems within my relationships and my sobriety,” says Francis, whose first full-length chronicles his struggles with addiction. “It felt like the right title for this record, since so much of it is about coming to the understanding that I continue to suffer because of those problems. It’s about acknowledging that and putting it out in the open in order to mitigate the suffering and try to work on it, instead of trying to hide everything.”

The opulent opening track to In Plain Sight, “Alameda Apartments” makes for a majestic introduction to the album’s unveiling of Francis’s inner demons. “I started writing that song maybe six years ago, before I got sober,” he says. “I was going through another breakup and getting kicked out of my place, and I had a nightmare about moving into an art-deco apartment that was haunted, where the walls were all shifting around.” A prime showcase for Francis’s piano work, “Alameda Apartments” simulates that dream state in its untethered melodies, luminous grooves, and lyrics that drift from despair to detached curiosity (e.g., “It remains to be seen if the ghosts are all right”). “The craziest thing is that I’d never encountered the name ‘Alameda’ in any time in my life prior to that dream,” says Francis. “It’s bizarre that I even remembered it, especially since you don’t dream very often when you’re getting fucked up.”

On “Problems,” In Plain Sight eases into a brighter and breezier mood, with Francis mining inspiration from early-’70s Sly & the Family Stone and the glistening soft rock of Mirage-era Fleetwood Mac. But in a stark contrast to the track’s radiant synth and rapturous harmonies, “Problems” centers on Francis’s exacting introspection. “It’s about being half-in and half-out of a relationship, and how untenable that is,” he says. “I wrote it at a time when I really couldn’t maintain a relationship, because I had too many issues with myself that needed to be addressed.”

Graced with a smoldering slide-guitar solo from the legendary Derek Trucks, “Can’t Stop the Rain” arrives as the first unabashedly hopeful moment on In Plain Sight. “I wrote that with my buddy David Shaw, who came up with the refrain and this idea that even though life’s going to throw all this shit at you, there’s still so many things to be grateful for,” says Francis. Propelled by the track’s cascading piano lines and wildly soaring vocals, that refrain takes on an unlikely anthemic power as Francis shares a bit of gently expressed encouragement: “You can’t stop the rain/It’s always coming down/It’s always gonna fall/But you’re not gonna drown.”

On the guitar-heavy and glorious “Prometheus,” Francis nods to the Greek myth of the Titan god who stole fire from Mount Olympus and gave it to the humans. As punishment, Prometheus spent eternity chained to a rock as an eagle visited each day to peck out his liver—which then grew back overnight, only to be eaten again the following day in a never ending cycle of torment. “That song came from the lowest ebb of quarantine, when Chicago was literally on fire,” Francis says. “It came to me while I was driving around all these abandoned streets in the middle of the night, and turned into a song about facing my problems with addiction and feeling like I’m chained to this set of compulsions.” Threaded with plain spoken confession (“It’s not in my nature to try to do better”), the track features a sprawling synth arrangement informed by the many hours Francis spent playing the St. Peter’s pipe organ. “I call that section of the song ‘The Pope,’” he says. “It’s this grand, powerful entry that’s sort of sinister, and then it just drops away.”

By the end of his surreal and sometimes eerie experience of living at the church—“I’m convinced that the stairway leading to the choir loft where I used to practice is haunted,” he notes—Francis had found his musicality undeniably elevated. “Because I was forced into this almost monastic existence and was alone so much of the time, I could play as often and as long as I wanted,” he says. “I ended up becoming such a better pianist, a better writer, a better reader of music.” Dedicated to a woman named Lil (the de facto leader of the St. Peter’s congregation), In Plain Sight ultimately reveals the possibility of redemption and transformation even as your world falls apart.

“When I started the process of writing these songs, I was so emotionally out-of-sorts and really kind of hopeless that I’d be able to come up with anything,” says Francis. “But then I sat down and started working, and embraced whatever inspiration came my way. Sometimes it felt like beating my head against a wall, but I tried to trust that it would lead somewhere. The whole thing was like a weird dream—this very strange time of terrible, wonderful isolation.”

In Plain Sight has received critical praise from KCRW (“an unapologetically joyful, electric feel”), Rolling Stone (“Neal Francis is making piano rock cool again”), SPIN (“one of the year’s best releases”), and more. Both radio singles from the album—“Can’t Stop The Rain” and “Problems”—charted on AAA and Americana radio, with “Can’t Stop The Rain” going as high as #3 on the Americana charts. Francis has toured relentlessly to support the album, playing to thousands with sold out headline dates at legendary venues in Chicago, San Francisco, Nashville, Denver, London, and many more.

In November 2022 Francis released the EP Sentimental Garbage (ATO Records) which includes a number of standout tracks recorded during the original album sessions at St. Peter’s. “Sentimental Garbage was the working title of our last LP,” Francis says, “which includes the track of the same name. We ended up calling that record In Plain Sight while removing the title track from the sequence. I knew this was my last chance to slap ‘Sentimental Garbage’ on a record jacket, the thought of which always brought me great joy. It also works because this record is compiled of bittersweet scraps.”

The sandy shores of Asbury Park, New Jersey are hallowed ground in the northeast; the rolling waves have ushered generations of venerated musicians to worldwide acclaim. Dogs in a Pile, an eclectic quintet, has emerged as the heir apparent to the town’s rich musical legacy. Merging funk, jazz, and rock and roll with psychedelia, the quintet presents a completely original vibe built on kaleidoscopic soundscapes eerily reminiscent of the days of yesteryear.

The Dogs employ a unified approach to performance and songwriting, crafting aural mosaics through adept instrumentation and humble precocity. As avid storytellers, they draw inspiration from personal experiences, balancing life’s foibles with ever-present youthful sanguinity.

Dogs began when Philadelphia University of the Arts guitar gun-slinger Jimmy Law began playing with young Joe Babick (drums), a student at the Count Basie Theater program in Red Bank, NJ.  Lightning struck when they were introduced to Berklee School of Music student and bass player Sam Lucid, who immediately suggested fellow Berklee student and keyboard player Jeremy Kaplan. The addition of fellow Berklee student Brian Murray (guitar) in 2019 made for the quintessential final piece in the Dogs’ puzzle. 

A string of successful local shows drove the development of a massive northeast fan base, affectionately known as the Dog Pound. The band’s astronomical growth culminated in an epic, sold-out performance at the legendary Stone Pony in Asbury Park during the summer of 2021. Armed with a fresh batch of new material, Dogs in a Pile is taking its perpetually evolving testament to the Great American Songbook on tour in 2022, visiting plenty of new cities and spreading good music and good energy to good people along the way.