July 23, 2009

We’ve only got a few days to go before picking a winner of our Naukabout Festival giveaway, so be sure to get your entry in before 11:59PM on Tuesday night for a free pair of tickets to see Rusted Root, Pete Francis featuring Barefoot Truth, the Old Silver Band, the Ryan Montbleau Band and all of the other bands that are on the lineup for this year’s fest.

We recently spoke with Jeff Conley, one of the founding members of Naukabout and Executive Festival Coordinator about how the festival came to be, what we can expect at the Fairgrounds on August 8 and more…

Hidden Track: Last year was the first year of the festival, what lessons did you learn that will make this year’s festival even better?

Jeff Conley: Logistics, logistics, logistics. Having a plan in place for every possible scenario and an answer for every question. That is not to say we didn’t have a plan for last year’s festival, but one year older is one year wiser. When the planning began for this year’s festival, the first thing we did was look back at 2008 and figure out what needed to change and/or improve to make 2009 even better, and I think we have done that. With a solid framework to build upon from last year, we focused more on the details this year, which will help maximize the experience for both the attendees and the artists.

HT: There are all sorts of ways to market your brand, why a music festival?

JC: Naukabout is an Afterwear company; those casual, comfortable clothes you wear after work or sport, which derived from when my father used to come home from work, change into his “knock-abouts” and go outside and play ball with my brothers and me. As a whole, we also strive to provide opportunities for everyone to build amazing memories with friends and family and that is where the music festival comes in.

READ ON for more of Scotty’s interview with Jeff Conley…

If you’re into Phish-related art at all and heading to see the band perform at Red Rocks, you’d be well served to check out the Mock Show poster exhibition on

Charlie Brinson headed to Masontown, WV on July 9 – 12 for the 2009 All Good Festival and filed this report about his experience…

Let me serve you a little truth sandwich. The All Good Music Festival was my first full-on – no showering – granola bar eating – sleeping in a tent for no more than four hours at the most – festival. There…I said it. It is kind of embarrassing that I just popped my festival cherry at this age but I don’t care. The weekend was a blast and I could not think of a better place to have it happen.

Unlike larger festivals, the guys over at Walther Productions realized that deciding which band you wanted to see at a certain time is about as easy as deciding which of your friends are going to be a part of your wedding. They actually made it possible to catch every single band in the festival’s line-up and it was basically non-stop music with bands performing in and out on stages no less than 50 yards apart from each other.

Thursday, July 9th

I arrived in Masontown, WV (Population: 647) around 8pm and was getting pretty excited to get into the festival. It was an adventure getting into the campgrounds and I didn’t make it to the actual campsite until about 10:45pm with just enough time to spare to crack a beer while setting up my tent before Keller went on.

Jonathan Schwartz, the host of the weekend’s festivities from SIRIUS Radio’s Jam On, introduced him with a brief history of Keller’s time at All Good. Keller has played at more All Good Festivals than any other artist and he was crowned “the undefeated, undisputed heavyweight champion of the All Good Festival.”

READ ON for more from Charlie Brinson about All Good 2009…

Steely Dan kicked off the gimmicky leg of their Rent Party ’09 tour last night at the Wang Center in Boston by treating the audience to not one but two

The Quireboys – Castle Donnington, 08/18/1990 [zip file] 1990 was a great year for English roots rockers The Quireboys. The band had just released their major label debut A Little

The producers of a number of this summer’s major festivals have had to scramble to replace the Beastie Boys after the band canceled all of their festival appearances due to