On June 14–15, 2025 All Good Now will take place at the Merriweather Post Pavilion in in Columbia, Maryland. This will be a reimagined version of the All Good Music Festival & Campout 10 years after the fest last took place. In anticipation of what’s to come, All Good Presents founder Tim Walther looks back on its origins.

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After touring with the Grateful Dead and the passing of Jerry Garcia, we found ourselves following our hearts in search of the music, the scene and the community we had grown to love. Representing Walther Productions and also as a fan, I attended multiple campout events at Wilmer’s Park which inspired me to promote and produce festivals there of our own.  Wilmer’s Park in Brandywine, MD was founded in the 1950’s by Arthur Wilmer and hosted legendary acts such as James Brown, John Coltrane and Jimi Hendrix.  I will never forget sitting in Mr. Wilmer’s living room and negotiating the next year’s deal while watching the Price is Right. 

In 1996 Walther Productions launched our first festival, the Full Moon Festival, essentially throwing a party for our 940 closest friends, and we launched our Autumn Equinox Festival that ran from 1996-1999. In year two of the Full Moon Festival, it dawned on us that in order to have the full moon itself at our festival, we would have to follow the lunar calendar and not the yearly calendar.  Hence, we threw our 2^nd and last Full Moon Festival, which led us to launch our first All Good Music Festival & Campout at Wilmer’s Park in 1997. On the Grateful Dead tour everything was groovy, everyone looked out for one another, it was “all good brotha,” it was “all good sista,” and to keep that spirit alive, it was the All Good Festival.  

Arthur Wilmer and Tim Walther

We were right where we wanted to be, we were the middleman between live music and the fans, we were Walther Productions, known now as All Good Presents. There was no handbook, but the biography of legendary promoter, Bill Graham, inspired me to get into the music business and to start on the street as a grassroots promoter. Without social media in the late 90’s and without bands that aired on the radio, I spread the word by personally handing out over two million fliers in six years, Bill would have been proud.  The scene was emerging, the bands were jamming and there was love in the air.  This was just before these acts were crowned as ‘Jam Bands’ in 1998 by Dean Budnick when he launched jambands.com and released his book: Jam Bands – North America’s hottest live groups plus how to tape and trade their shows.  This was the birth of the ‘Jam Band’ Scene.

For our first festival at Wilmer’s, it was basically myself, All Good Festival partner Junipa Contento, and a vision. Junipa was involved in all things All Good, created all of the art, managed the vendors and was our resident vibe coordinator.  With our crew made up of one-in house security guy, 4 production guys, a few multi-taskers and some volunteers, we found ourselves a bit understaffed.  We enlisted our friends who came for the show to help at the gate, we pointed to general areas to park and camp and we threw a party and got away with it.  As we moved forward and steadily grew our operations, we developed an essential crew we called the “Peacekeepers.”  They were a well-intentioned fan friendly group that kept it kind and kept it safe.  Over the years to follow, we developed 75 departments totaling over 1,200 staff, volunteers and security on site.

Lake Trout

Sometimes we had to improvise.  The parking lot is full and there are 100 cars in cue, WTF are we going to do? I went to the neighbors and offered them $5 per car to park on their property and they took me up on it. On that Friday night we parked 180 cars and paid a neighbor $900, on Saturday we parked 300 cars that paid out $1,500. The show must go on, it always has, and it always will. Be a good neighbor, maintain control, let everyone have fun and leave nothing but footprints.

We were part of the community, we camped with the fans, we celebrated with the fans, and we all loved the live music. Camping at music festivals was a rite of passage, it was the preferred way to enjoy a festival. Fans camped next to their cars, in their cars, on their cars, they camped in the woods and some laid beneath the stars. The 24 hour circus included food and craft vendors, drum circles, campside kitchens, cold-beer-for-a-buck coolers, bootleg vendors, shady guys with something you were looking for and that’s right, there was always that one naked guy.

There are things that came naturally and made sense to us in the beginning that remain intact today.  We believed in slow growth, we wanted to do it right and provide personal freedoms, to make it a warm family experience, we wanted fans to have the time of their lives, to be part of a community and to be one with the staff and the bands. It wasn’t about making money, it was about survival. On Grateful Dead tour I was trying to make enough money to get to the next show and with Walther Productions we were trying to make enough money to throw the next festival. We started at $18 for a weekend of music and camping. We believed strongly in no-overlapping sets, that fans should be able to see every minute of every band they came to see. We did our best to build the bands; we hosted bands at the clubs, brought them to the festival and then brought them back to the clubs. It worked, the bands were growing.  And of course there should always be fireworks. It took me a while to learn, but fireworks should be done by professionals.

We were fortunate then and are fortunate now to book the lineup that we would most want to see. In the 90’s as a promoter, to discover a band, you had to either receive a promo-pack in the mail from a booking agent or you had to go to live shows to check out a buzz band.  There was no Spotify, no streaming and their CDs could not be found in record stores. Oftentimes we would be seeing bands for the first time along with the fans and there was nothing better than witnessing the reaction of a crowd when a band hits the stage and blows their minds.  Pure bliss.

Victor Wooten and Bela Fleck

The bands were original, trail blazing, grassroots, diverse and talented.  They gave us their all from the national and local level. In the Wilmer’s Year’s we hosted national acts such as Aquarium Rescue Unit, Bela Fleck & the Flecktones, Gov’t Mule, Jazz is Dead, John Scofield, Zero, Strangefolk, Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe, Deep Banana Blackout and Agents of Good Roots.  To local favorites;  All Mighty Senators, Lake Trout, Jah Works, Blue Miracle and the Kelly Bell Band.  To full circle acts such as The String Cheese Incident, Moe., and The Disco Biscuits that we will feature at All Good Now this year.

As a living and breathing community, we shared love and kindness, we got to know each other, we watched each other’s backs and ultimately, we found our way back home.

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1) After Garcia’s death, the big questions were ”what would be next,”  “where would the energy go,” “who would make the music,” and ultimately, “what would happen to the scene?”  The answer is now clear, and it’s All Good.  See you at the next festival. Lee Abraham – Relix magazine 1998

2) “And while it may be true that there are no more Woodstocks, surely the offspring of the event lives, and at least one of them is finding its wings at Wilmer’s Park in Brandywine, MD”. “There is a general feeling of well-being and camaraderie in the audience- a real “we’re all in this together” feeling.” Benjy Eisen – Jambands.com 1998

3)  I was there with the Stubblefield, Medeski, Wood thing. That’s a great festival. I love that spot, Wilmers’s Park. People love it there, and Tim Walther Productions has done so many successful festivals now that it’s become a big thing for people all over the east coast. John Scofield – Jambands.com 1999

4) In January 1995, I founded the Home Grown Music Network, which would soon become a hub of the burgeoning Jamband community.  Around the same time a young Deadhead in Baltimore started Walther Productions, promoting concerts and then festivals featuring the same artists that I loved. Lee Crumpton – Homegrown Music Network 2025

5) “All hail the Second Annual All Good Fest! I look forward to starting many more summers this way, having more fun than humans should be allowed to have!  Peace!” Paige McIntyre – Music Monthly – 1998

6) In turn, the festival scene is getting bigger and bigger.  Soon it’ll be huge.  They say that “you can’t fight progress” and as long as Walther Productions sticks to their slogan “It’s all about the music” it’ll be a great new age. Lee Abraham – Signal to Noise – 1998