All Good Festival Moves to Ohio

The 16^th annual All Good Festival will take place in Thornville, Ohio, after nine years in West Virginia.

While the recent West Virginia site, Marvin’s Mountaintop, was a short three-and-a-half hour drive from Baltimore, the new site is about six-and-a-half hours from Baltimore. In a statement to fans, All Good organizers said they thought about the hardships fans went through getting onto the mountain in recent years.

“We had to take a hard look at the negative impact the West Virginia site had on you, our fans, who sometimes spent four to six hours covering the last five miles under close scrutiny from authorities,” the statement said. “We had to weigh the impact of our traffic and presence on the local population and local officials who never warmed up to the festival, its legion of loyal fans and our ‘style.’”

The new site, Legend Valley, formerly known as the Buckeye Lake Music Center, has hosted legendary Grateful Dead shows, Lollapalooza, AC/DC, The Allman Brothers Band and still hosts the Hookahville Music Festival.

In addition to the scrutiny from public officials in West Virginia, Preston County passed some rather unfriendly legislation. In 2011, county officials passed a “Mass Gathering Ordinance” that promoters said directly targeted the All Good Festival and levied an “outrageous tax” on the event.

In its press release and statement to fans, the death of 20-year-old festival attendee Nicole Paris Miller was not mentioned as affecting the decision. At this past summer’s festival, a driver leaving the site on Sunday morning lost control of their truck, crashed into a tent, killing Miller and sending two others to the hospital.

All Good founder Tim Walther said the new site will prevent drivers from dealing with some of the logistical issues the West Virginia mountains posed.

"While Marvin's Mountaintop was a brilliant place for the music and camping aspects of the All Good Festival, getting over 12,000 cars up and down single lane country roads was problematic," Walther said. "We felt that offering a similarly fantastic music and camping experience without the three to six hour wait time for fans and negative impact of traffic on the local community made the move the right decision."

Legend Valley is located less than a mile off of Interstate 70.

The All Good Festival will maintain its signature setup of no overlapping sets and more than 40 hours of eclectic music on two main stages. The festival has hosted premier acts like The Flaming Lips, The String Cheese Incident, Umphrey’s McGee, moe., Further, Ben Harper and The Wailers as well as local bands The Bridge and Basshound.