What Soft Festival Market? How This Weekend’s All Things Go In D.C. & NYC Became A Runaway Success

In this year of softer festival ticket sales, there may be no better counter argument bucking that trend than All Things Go, an independent music festival dramatically increasing its business. This coming weekend, Sept, 28-29, the Washington, D.C.-based fest will celebrate its 10th anniversary in spectacular fashion: with two simultaneous editions at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland (its 20K-cap home since 2021) and at the exact same time at New York City’s Forest Hills Stadium (14k-cap) in the borough of Queens, both sold-out. In effect, ATG is doubling its footprint and increasing its attendance by an estimated 70% from 40K to nearly 70K with revenue growth to match. And if it sounds like a heavy lift, it’s because it is.

“Everything was relatively smooth sailing until about a week and a half ago,” says Stephen Vallimarescu, co-founder of All Things Go, who then was 10 days out from concurrently opening gates. “Now, having two festivals on the same weekend, we’re trying to figure out how to clone ourselves so we can divide and conquer properly and do things as efficiently as we can with our little team.” Luckily, the festival promoter says, “We also have really, really amazing partners in D.C. and in New York.”

In D.C., All Things Go is partnering with I.M.P. Prsents, the DMV’s preeminent independent promoter which has operated and programmed Merriweather since 2004 (as well as The Anthem, 9:30 Club, Lincoln Theatre and The Atlantis and, this past weekend, promoted a reboot of the HFStival at Nationals Park which drew some 25K). At NYC’s Forest Hills, ATG is working with Tiebreaker Productions, which runs the historic 1923 venue and works closely with Bowery Presents.

“For us, Forest Hills and the team over there — including Mike Luba (who runs Tiebreaker) and who we’ve known for years — is beloved by artists and fans alike in the same way Merriweather is a very unique venue and beloved by artists and fans alike,” Vallimarescu says. “It just made sense and felt like a place where we could replicate the really special environment we have in DC and bring it to New York.”

Vallimarescu says both iterations of this weekend’s fest “sold out instantly,” with a top-notch lineup that includes Hozier, Janelle Monáe, Bleachers, Reneé Rapp, Remi Wolf, Conan Gray, Laufey, Reneé Rapp, MIchael Kiwanuka, Julien Baker and Ethel Cain. along with a certain exploding supernova goddess who this summer has transformed her megafest slots at Coachella, Gov. Ball, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza and Outside Lands into vast underplays.

“We are anticipating Chappell Roan pandemonium and we’re very ready for it,” says
Vallimarescu, noting that it is exactly these kinds of informed bookings by him and his
co-founder Will Suter that is the spark behind ATG’s genesis.

All Things Go, named for a Sufjan Stevens lyric from his sublime track “Chicago,” started out in 2006 as a music blog. “We rose in the Hype Machine (blog) era and were writing about the artists we loved,” says Vallimarescu. “Many have played the festival in the last few years. Over time, the blog grew to become more of an industry tastemaker publication versus anything mainstream. We were able to leverage our small and super engaged audience and start promoting club nights at a place called U Street Music Hall, which no longer exists. When it started, we were writing about bands like HAIM, The 1975 and Glass Animals and started thinking, ‘You know, a lot of those artists are just starting, but they’re only doing showcases in New York, London and L.A.’ They weren’t coming to D.C.”

The ATG fest started in 2014 at Union Market,an D.C. urban development project then in its nascent stages. When asked if that first year was a proof of concept or a cautionary tale, Vallimarescu says a little of both: “When we threw the first festival, we had $7 in our bank account and somehow we were able to book Future Islands and Tove Lo. This was right as Future Islands was blowing up from the David Letterman performance.”

Baked into ATG’s DNA is a strong social activism streak with the fest helping lead the industry on gender-balanced lineups. “The first year we sat down with Maggie Rogers and Lizzy Plapinger who’s part of LPX (and MS MR and Neon Gold Records) who are close friends of the festival,” says Vallimarescu. “They started talking to us about how few women were headlining music festivals. It’s something most people don’t think about until you start looking at festival posters and seeing the massive disparity between female and male headliners. We then booked alongside them an all-female lineup with Maggie and Billie Eilish headlining with Carly Rae Jepsen. It was a beautiful moment and experience.”

All Things Go also partners with gender equality groups Ally Coalition, She Is The Music, Amplify Her Voice and Women in Music. “We’ve been able to align ourselves with organizations that are important to us, the artists who play the festival and the fans who come out. It’s been a really important part of what makes All Things Go, All Things Go.”

With return performances to ATG by a slew of acts that includes Jack Antonoff, Maggie Rogers, Fletcher, Soccer Mommy, MUNA, Carly Rae Jepsen and Ethel Cain among others, the fest has became a favorite play for many artists who relate to its independent spirit and ethos. And this year, Roan, Monae, Rapp, Baker, MUNA and Cain this weekend will be traversing the I95 corridor this weekend to play both D.C. and NYC.

Already, ATG is starting to think about next year’s lineup. When asked if they’ll do simultaneous fests again after this year’s heavy lift, Vallimarescu says at this moment he just doesn’t have the bandwidth to fathom the question. “I don’t know,” he says, “I just gotta get through this weekend and then we’ll figure it out.”