For the lucky, the weekend of July 19, 2012 will be remembered as the weekend we dusted the rolling fields of Ohio with soul. This past weekend, the proud town of Thornville became forever engrained in a positive light for hosting the All Good Music festival. A musical success of epic proportions, the weekend featured performances by Phil Lesh and Friends, The Flaming Lips, The Allman Brothers, and Galactic in addition to an astounding forty-two other celebrated bands and artists.

The storm was arriving just as late as we were, and right as Phil Lesh and Friends moved into the classically timeless hit, “Sugaree,” the rain had began its first and most anticipated set of the weekend. Unlike quintessential city folk, the group of thousands represented the small population that still took pleasure in dancing in the rain, or in any predicted forecast for that matter. How refreshing it is to be constantly acknowledged with a high five, a smile, or a hug for three days straight, especially after being consistently ignored by millions in a city that sometimes refuses to smirk; but I digress, because on its better days, Chicago does have heart.

What night two had in store for me, (even with an accomplished concert-going background), I couldn’t have even slightly foreseen. The only way to fully understand any experience is to be there, but that expression takes new significance when the spoken upon subject is The Flaming Lips. Being a predictable ten minutes late to the show, I found myself running to the venue with the suspicion that I was missing the hit song, “Do Your Realize.”

Unfortunately, my intuition served me right, but after their set, and to my surprise, they played the song again and with much greater length and sentiment than ever before. As Wayne Coyne got toward the halfway point where the lyrics declare, “instead of saying all of your goodbyes, let them know you realize that life goes fast” I turned my gaze toward the audience behind me, and was reminded why people turn to music in times of uncertainty. Through a misty haze of my own, there was an endless sea of similar emotional responses. The remarkable experience ended with a firework show that topped any standard Fourth of July by a long shot.

Night two set the bar pretty high, but this didn’t stop the following shows from delivering at their finest. The largest and most diverse audience may have been for The Allman Brothers who, when day three was ending, took utter hold the night even before their set was said to begin. The most favored songs that were played included, Midnight Rider, One Way Out, Statesboro Blues, and In Memory of Elizabeth Reed. Tossing in a couple Muddy Waters and Bob Dylan covers succeeded in pleasing the audience in unsuspecting ways. For the finale, the audience was treated with a twenty-minute version of the famous Whipping Post, which to a great number was one of the first songs that paved the way to ultimate fanaticism.

Besides the highlighted shows, Galactic covered The Rolling Stones, Sympathy for the Devil along with Simon and Garfunkel’s enduring single, Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover. G Love also did his own amusing rendition of Lennon’s, Why Don’t We Do It In The Road. All things considered, I really couldn’t have asked for a better weekend of performances. Camping was convenient, the people were even more lovely than usual, and the experience was a lot more costly to miss than the ticket was to afford.