ALL IN

 

September 6, 2022

ALL IN

The main purpose for my visit to Indiana this trip was to attend a brand new music festival at the Indiana State Fairgrounds called the ALL IN music and arts festival. It is the first truly large scale music festival in Indianapolis and I really wanted to take it in. Especially since the festival was the brainchild of two legendary Indianapolis concert promoters Dave Lucas and Steve Sybesma.

Steve’s daughter, Ashley lives in Key West and we are friends with her and her husband Paul, who were both traveling up to Indianapolis to attend the festival as well.  Lucas and Sybesma and their former company Sunshine Promotions ruled the Indy concert scene throughout my earliest concert going days. I have literally been to hundreds of concerts that they promoted, including the last show they promoted at the State Fairgrounds back in 1988 featuring John Mellencamp and Henry Lee Summer.

They went on to develop and build Deer Creek Music Center, which still is one of Indy’s best concert venues, many years and names later. I still call it Deer Creek. For this new venture they selected the comfortable confines of the fairgrounds which have a lot of amenities perfect for a large music festival including the historic coliseum, ample parking, permanent restrooms, onsite camping, permanent buildings and lots of open space.

I was so excited to get there and experience the event, but I had one stop that I had to make first. As usual, I try and pack as much in as possible to my trips and I was sort of bummed that I was missing another of my favorite annual Key West events by missing Brewfest. The annual beer festival is a great event and to make up for missing it, I found out that there was a small beer festival happening in Greenwood, just south of Indianapolis while I was there.

The Beer and Band Fest was hosted by Greenwood’s Hoosier Brewing Company and featured about 30 mostly Indiana breweries, with a couple from Kentucky at a park near downtown Greenwood. I was on-hand when the gates opened so that I could sample the selection of beers and still get to the fairgrounds at a decent time to catch the first day of the music festival as well.

I even had time to wander the downtown of Greenwood and pay visits to both the host Brewery, Hoosier Brewing and another downtown Brewery, Smocktown Brewery. Neither was too crowded as most beer lovers were at the festival, but it was still cool to see them. I really enjoyed the festival, it wasn’t too packed and the people were all so nice and the beer was great and gave me a chance to try out a host of new Indiana beers. 

I headed up to the fairgrounds and arrived just in time to catch a fantastic set by Mike Campbell and the Dirty Knobs. Campbell the former lead guitarist of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers is a force to be reckoned with and he lit up the coliseum stage with a blistering set that included a couple familiar Tom Petty hits that Campbell had written as well as a great selection of solo stuff.

I caught a couple of sets on the local Indiana stage including Kara Cole and Doug Henthorn as well as portions of sets by Trampled by Turtles, Samantha Fish and Misterwives before catching the entirety of the main stage set by Portugal the Man. I had seen them previously at ACL Fest and Coachella, but only in small doses and I really enjoyed the full set that I got to see this time.

https://allinfestival.com/