Although locals are still waiting to learn the fate of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center’s (SPAC’s) classical season—the New York City Ballet, for example, recently announced a greatly reduced calendar—as far as perennial favorites the Dave Matthews Band are concerned, there’s going to be a Live Nation season at SPAC later this summer, come hell or high water.
DMB, who were forced to cancel their annual two-night residency at the Saratoga venue last summer due to COVID, today released their summer tour schedule, and the two rescheduled nights at SPAC are on it, along with a number of other rescheduled shows and a few added ones. The SPAC shows have been confirmed for September 17–18, with the band coming into town, fresh off a performance at Milwaukee’s longtime Summerfest celebration two nights prior. SPAC is one of just several venues where the DMB will play a pair of shows, the others being West Palm Beach, FL, Chicago, IL, Noblesville, IN, Gilford, NH and Irvine, CA (check out the full tour itinerary here).
Back in February, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino hinted at the possibility of a midsummer running start for shows at music venues across the country, depending on where states were in the reopening process. “As long as these states open up to the right capacities, we can start in midsummer, and in the southern US, we can go all the way into November,” he told Variety, though it was unclear what “the right capacities” meant.
Whether New York Governor Andrew Cuomo will even allow Live Nation to rent out SPAC, as it has done for decades, is still very much up in the air, too. As of April 1, capacity levels for entertainment venues in the state that hold more than 2,500 fans was 10 percent indoors (the amphitheater) and 20 percent outdoors (on the lawn). Whether that meets Live Nation’s “right capacity” standard is unclear.
While SPAC currently has a number of Live Nation shows posted to its calendar, some of them have already been rescheduled again to 2022.