Tonight, a few miles outside of Athens, musicians, artists, students, people you’ve seen at shows downtown and many new friends will gather under the stars for the Orange Twin October show.

The festival will benefit Orange Twin’s Arts Community Education Foundation (ACE).

Co-owner of the Orange Twin label Andrew Reiger explained that some of the bands performing are part of the label, like Elf Power and Nana Grizol, while others are simply Athens legends, like long-time friend of Orange Twin, Vic Chesnutt. Scott Spillane will open the show with his project The Scott E. Spillane EXP.

Reiger’s day job is a record label owner, but his night gig is fronting Athens mainstay Elf Power. “We will play a set of our music, and then another set with Vic,” Reiger said.

Chesnutt collaborated with Elf Power and the Amorphous Strums in 2008 to make the album “Dark Developments.”

“It’s the first time the whole big band – everybody that was on the record – will be playing together in a while,” Chesnutt said.

The Amorphous Strums consists of Athens legends Sam Mixon and Curtiss Pernice.

“There will be several generations of Athens [music] going down here,” he said.

Although Chesnutt released his latest album, “At the Cut,” only last week, he still considers “Dark Developments” to be a “freshy.”

“We will play the album almost to its entirety, and then we will play some of my old songs,” Chesnutt said. They plan to play one song from his first album, which was recorded in 1988.

Chesnutt refused to spill the beans on any secret plans or surprises, and said there was “no hope” that he would play with anyone else or by himself.

But he was very enthusiastic about comedian Neil Hamburger.

“It’s going to be the best time ever; he is the funniest guy ever,” Chesnutt said.

The 155-acre Orange Twin property is an old Girl Scout camp from the ’60s and was purchased in 2001 to form the Orange Twin Conservation Community.

In 2008, 100 acres of the land was placed into a conservation easement while the remaining 55 acres comprise the village, record label office and venue.

The low-impact village has a swimming hole, chicken coup, garden, horse pasture and bee hive.

“There are a lot of cool things out there, and the concerts are a good way for people to come and see what’s going,” Reiger said.

Theo Hilton of Nana Grizol works with Reiger and Laura Carter, co-owners of the record label, and lives with about five others on the property as a member of the Orange Twin Conservation Community.

“Our goal is to be as self-sustaining as possible,” Hilton said.

At the festival, members of the community will be around to talk about the community and their vision.

“It is going to be really cool to play at a place that I am very involved in and take a lot of pride in,” Hilton said.

The community was conceived by a gathering of like minds.

“The record label [was] born out of a fundraiser, which was just an online Web site,” she said.

The original three people, which quickly grew to 10, who wanted to start the community knew they needed to create a type of fundraising mechanism for the project.

“So we created an online store that we would sell artwork and anything anybody that we knew or ourselves were producing to sell,” Carter said.

However, it soon became obvious that they were “musician heavy,” she said.

Then Reiger decided to reissue some out-of-print albums from the ’60s and ’70s, and the label grew from there. Orange Twin’s roster includes Neutral Milk Hotel, Gerbils, Ham1 and Madeline, and the label has surprised itself with its success.

“We didn’t intend to go as full scale as we have,” Carter said.

In the past year, Orange Twin began separating funds for educational and community uses, with the creation of the not-for-profit ACE foundation.

While the conservation community and the ACE foundation have many of the same board members and are closely related, they are two separate entities.

The conservation community is concerned with organizing a pedestrian-based eco-village, and ACE focuses on more “educational outreach kind of stuff,” Carter said.

One hundred percent of parking proceeds from Orange Twin’s Fall Festival are going straight to ACE, as well as proceeds from the festival itself once expenses are covered.

Parking cost depends on car occupancy to encourage carpooling: a full car can park for free, three to four people in a car for $5, two people for $10 and one person for $20.

Many of the individuals involved in Orange Twin are involved in many parts of the multifaceted organization and its associated musical projects.

Along with co-owning the label, Carter plays drums and trumpet in Nana Grizol and clarinet, keyboard, guitar and accordion in Elf Power.

John Fernandes of Circulatory System will be playing with The Scott Spillane EXP.

Orange Twin is allowing people, especially those from out of town, to camp at their grounds the entire weekend in case they would like to stay for the Circulatory System and Faust show at The 40 Watt on Saturday.

The October show is a one-of-a-kind experience that can’t be found in a rock club downtown and draws in all kinds of people for all kinds of reasons.

“The crowds in the past have been very diverse,” Reiger said.

Glass containers and dogs are not allowed.

Water will be available but attendants are encouraged to bring their own. Concert-goers, if they are not camping, are also encouraged to bring a blanket to sit on, and everyone is asked to clean up any trash they generate.