Inside the Music Festival That Actually Listens to Its Audience
Interminably damp fall weekends are good for any number of things: Tackling an at-home to-do list or returning to a book you put down and haven't touched for eleven-odd years. Or, most realistically, rotting away like a Victorian widow if Victorian widows had two hundred streaming apps, TikTok, and UberEats. They are not, however, good for an outdoor music festival–not even if you’re Glastonbury and Alexa Chung shows up and gets photographed wearing a pair of cutoffs and wellies and that picture becomes a relic to be replicated by every third girl even two generations later.
At last weekend’s All Things Go–the music festival’s 10th anniversary and its first in New York City–two back-to-back days of downpour could’ve been enough to keep the shes, theys, and gays (plus the bisexuals and their boyfriends) away. Then, there was the absence of Chappell Roan, the most anticipated headliner of the festival. If excessive precipitation wouldn't ruin the weekend, then the pop supernova pulling out to “prioritize her health” one day prior surely would. But, judging by the thousands of camouflaged, cowgirled, and carabiner'ed who flocked to Forest Hills in Queens to see Ethel Cain, Janelle Monae, Renee Rapp, and others, no one seemed to mind.
“Am I disappointed? Yes. Am I upset? No,” one attendee, Opal, told Jezebel. One day earlier, the twenty-something traveled from Denver to attend the festival with her mother, Genni, who uses a wheelchair. Cross-country travel and concert-going require a bit of forethought–especially when venues aren’t always as accessible as they should be–but the mother and daughter (and their blind and deaf poodle, Rosie) often do it anyway. And for Chappell Roan? There are no exceptions.
“She’s a fuckin’ person. She deserves to be able to say no,” Opal said when I asked what she made of Roan’s decision not to perform. “And, I mean..this is like, the gayest festival ever so…I’ll be fine.”
And All Things Go has become, well, just that. Among both artists and attendees, it’s collectively known as “Lesbopalooza” or “Gaychella.” At Forest Hills this year, Dave’s, a Queens-based lesbian bar and queer community space got its own pop-up, and one day after the festival’s conclusion, the official All Things Go Twitter account announced if their latest tweet got 10,000 likes, they’ll make next year’s iteration “even gayer.” It wasn’t always this way, though.
When the festival was founded in 2014 by then-music bloggers and D.C. natives Will Suter and Stephen Vallimarescu—yes, two cisgender men—it wasn’t exactly trying to be known as Xanadu for queer concert-goers. In its first iteration, for example, Future Islands had top billing. But since 2018, when Maggie Rogers and LPX aka Lizzy Plapinger were given free rein in creating an entirely female schedule, its lineups (and attendees) have become decidedly female and definitely queer.
“I think over the last couple of years the identity of the festival has developed,” Vallimarescu told Jezebel in August. “It’s been very clear what artists fit within our world and live within our world.” This, he credits to a novel concept for men: listening to their audience. How do they do it? In short: via a system of digital surveys that regularly engage concert-goers and by maintaining the kind of social media presence their average audience member might (read: a very active one). “We’re constantly collating all this information, anecdotally and via spreadsheets. We’re always trying to figure out what core we need to have at the festival.”
Considering today’s political climate and an exceedingly predatory, plutocratic music industry, it'd be easy to feel cynical about All Things Go’s evolution—and to chalk Vallimarescu and Suter up to two dudes cashing in on queer artists and their legions of devoted followers. Because there's a spate of festivals–Coachella and Lollapalooza, to name a few–currently doing just that, or fostering what’s long been reported as environments where concert-goers are being sexually assaulted, harassed, or made uncomfortable, I was skeptical. Can men create a safe space for women, femmes, and queer concert-goers? Certainly not on their own.
It wasn't just listening to their audience that proved successful for All Things Go. While four men are often credited with its early development (from a music blog to an actual live event), its recent shift to a “female-forward” festival is the result of an updated internal structure. When I speak to Vallimarescu, we’re joined by Carlie Webbert, the festival’s manager who joined the team post-Maggie Rogers lineup stewardship.
“I would assume that having that first event with Maggie Rogers…the energy felt amazing. I’m sure the crowd felt incredible. I’m sure the community really needed it,” Webbert told Jezebel. “For me, it’s just like, when you give a platform to a community that hasn’t had that or been seen, people are hungry for it.”
As it turns out, the appetites of older generations are being satiated by the festival, too.
Among the swaths of Gen Z attendees singing in the rain together in NYC on Saturday night, there was an unmistakable number of elder millennials and Gen Xers in the mix. Most notably, Maureen and Maureen, an intergenerational couple who met on Her, a lesbian dating app, less than three months ago and are already engaged, even though they’re currently living in different states. The elder Maureen, a Gen Xer, and Floridian, converted the younger Maureen, a millennial and New Yorker, into a Chappell Roan disciple and there they were, clad in matching "Hot To Go" sweatshirts and kissing while a contingent of local drag queens convened a dance party to their favorite artist’s discography on stage.
“She’s my soulmate,” the younger Maureen tells me. She’s U-Hauling next week I think, seconds before she confirms it. “I’m moving to Florida next week!”
Photos: Emilio Herce
Or, Sarah and Kristin, who–again–came for Roan but stayed for the vibes. And who wouldn't? Everywhere you turn there's nothing but smiling people spinning themselves in circles or belting bridges that have clearly seen them through both heartbreak and happier times (in rain ponchos, no less). Here, VIP isn't too cool to do the "Hot To Go" dance--or anything, really.
“As a couple of bi ladies who are married to men and dating each other, it’s pretty great to be in a universally accepting situation,” Sarah told Jezebel, gesturing around at all the other openly queer couples in the vicinity. When I tell them I love that, Kristin quips: “Our husbands love it, too!”
Then, there was Genni, another Gen Xer who I kept crossing paths with on Saturday and Sunday. Each time, she was either gleefully allowing anyone to take a picture of her dog (wearing sunglasses), or hugging gaggles of Gen Z attendees she’d only just met.
“They’re my little babies,” she told me, pointing to a group of young girls that would've scared the shit out of me at their age passing around a cigarette. They’re from the city, she explained. Even still, she’s concerned how they’ll get home later that night. One of them will text her to verify their safety.
“They make me wish I was in my twenties again,” Genni said. Only she’s not referring to the girls, but the queer artists they’ve come here to see. As we continue talking, I learn she not only grew up a few counties over from where Brandon Teena was murdered for being trans, but during the time the case was making headlines. As a result, Genni spent many crucial years closeted–her youth as a queer person robbed of the joy so many at Forest Hills are experiencing now. As if to lighten the conversation, she then jokes that now she and Opal share the same taste in women. Who? “Towa Bird.”
Genni and her dog, Rosie. Photo: Emilio Herce
On Saturday, I walked into the stadium with a group of over 20 women in head-to-toe Midwest Princess drag–all hot pink prom dresses, curled wigs, and sequins. They came to celebrate a friend’s birthday and escape the mundanities that accompany marriage, motherhood, and moving a few miles outside of a major city.
“We are repressed moms who all have little kids,” one of the women, Caroline, told me. “We had kids, moved to the suburbs, and none of us want to be fucking lame, even though we all procreated. Even though we added this part [motherhood] to our lives, the other parts don’t just go away.”
Creating a community that feels like an annual reunion for attendees is a primary goal for Vallimarescu and Webbert, as is giving ticket buyers value by stacking lineups with scores of artists they love so if one headliner has to, say, take an unexpected break, they won’t be totally heartbroken–or feel cheated. Webbert recalled to Jezebel that Roan was among the top three artists attendees most wanted to see in 2024, according to a 2023 survey. Though it’s difficult to imagine now, at the time, she wasn’t a headliner at any festival just yet.
But their audience had a sense. The All Things Go team trusted it.
Roan was missed, to be sure. But other headliners like Mannequin Pussy, Samia, Holly Humberstone, and Annie DiRusso did, in fact, seem more than enough for a number of concert-goers. DiRusso, a rising indie rock musician, was among a number of artists who found ways to express support for Roan.
Photos: Emilio Herce
“Who would want to see an artist play when they're struggling? It's so hard to watch,” DiRusso told Jezebel backstage. “And no artist wants to play when they feel that way because it just feels like a disservice. "
"I'm inspired by her being able to speak for what she needs,” DiRusso continued. “I'm a much smaller artist but even someone of my size…I don't want to let down my agents. I don't want to let down my manager. And I especially don't want to let down the people who paid to see me.”
“We love Chappell so much,” MUNA’s Katie Gavin told the crowd during their set before performing an acoustic cover of “Good Luck Babe.” “When we started as a queer band in 2014, we were given the time and the grace that we needed to be nourished as artists and we wish nothing but that times a billion for her.”
During Renee Rapp's set a simple question seemed to sum it up the theme of the weekend: "Gay people, how you feeling?” Applause. “Straight people, I don’t care.” Deafening roars.
“I think one of the best things about the community is that it doesn’t take itself so seriously,” Vallimarescu said. “They’re lighthearted.” That might be true. But with the expanding number of venues and artists, expectations are rising, too, and an overwhelming number of festival-goers are beginning to take All Things Go very seriously.
Weeks prior to this year's All Things Go, Vallimarescu and Webbert were already thinking of how to top it. As a festival programmer, I imagine this is a daunting problem to have year after year—as is trying to ensure affordability. The pressure to please the community they've built is at an all-time high. Fortunately, it appears their ears are more open than ever.