Surprise tour cancellations, mask requirements rock Colorado music, comedy scenes

Canceled tours, shows and festivals are remaking Colorado’s 2021 performance calendar this week, adjacent arsenic artists and promoters scramble to enforce stricter rules that volition dilatory down the surge successful COVID-19 cases.

“It was a surprise,” said Denver R&B vocalist Adiel Mitchell, who was scheduled to play the Aug. 14-15 Bohemian Light Music Festival successful Fort Collins earlier its Monday cancellation. Producers cited “the emergence and accelerated dispersed of the Delta variant.”

“It’s weird to deliberation things could displacement backmost to disguise mandates and staying astatine location truthful quickly,” Mitchell, 27, said. The singer, shaper and dancer this week discontinue his part-time occupation astatine Apple, wherever helium worked arsenic a Solutions Consultant, to absorption connected his creator career, helium said.

“I’m bummed I whitethorn not beryllium capable to spend (being an artist) again,” Mitchell said. “But we’re inactive a agelong mode from going retired successful nationalist similar we utilized to.”

Fleetwood Mac vocalist Stevie Nicks, 73, connected Wednesday canceled all 5 of her 2021 solo concerts, including a Sept. 5 outdoor acceptable astatine Jazz Aspen Snowmass, citing wellness concerns. Jimmy Buffett volition regenerate her to adjacent retired the event, The Aspen Times reported.

Also connected Wednesday, Dead & Co. announced caller COVID protocols that necessitate each attendees to supply impervious of afloat vaccination oregon antagonistic COVID tests 48 hours earlier entry. The band’s nationalist circuit includes Oct. 22 and 23 concerts astatine Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre, which could gully up to 36,000 implicit 2 days.

On Tuesday, alt-country leader Jason Isbell canceled a Houston concert, blaming the venue for unwillingness to acceptable stricter COVID information measures, according to the Houston Chronicle. Counting Crows, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Limp Bizkit, Michael Bublé and Fall Out Boy person besides canceled dates successful caller days owed to Delta variant concerns and, successful immoderate cases, touring members investigating affirmative for COVID.

In Colorado, concerts make $2.1 billion, enactment 16,127 jobs and lend $113 cardinal successful authorities and section taxes, according to a study released this week by Oxford Economics.. A instrumentality to 2020’s shutdowns is unthinkable, immoderate said, and fans request to get vaccinated.

“You person nary thought however precarious this concern is for musicians and crew,” Denver metallic set Khemmis tweeted Tuesday. “Another twelvemonth of canceled tours volition perfectly destruct the artists, venues & related businesses you assertion to love.”

Officials from AEG Presents Rocky Mountains and Live Nation, the region’s 2 large promoters, did not respond to requests for comment. But Live Nation backs artists who privation to acceptable up their own, much stringent COVID protocols, according to Pollstar.

Denver comic and instrumentalist Ben Roy connected Monday said he’s cutting a national, punk stone and drama circuit abbreviated owed to “the detonation of caller COVID cases successful the areas we’d beryllium playing,” specified arsenic Florida.

“This was already risky successful areas moderately affected, but going into areas with bogged down wellness attraction facilities and perchance adding much patients to infirmary beds conscionable feels downright irresponsible,” he wrote connected Facebook.

Denver creator Adiel Mitchell, 27, said Monday’s cancellation of the Bohemian Light Music Festival successful Fort Collins has abruptly near him with a gig this weekend. (Jaiel Mitchell, provided by Adiel Mitchell)

“I enactment my beingness connected clasp for sixteen months,” Roy added Wednesday via email. “(But) I’ll revisit erstwhile things chill off.”

Denver’s nine country is tightening up to enactment up of immoderate imaginable authorities mandates. Comedy Works successful Lower Downtown past play hosted its archetypal shows since the pandemic began, with “WTF” podcast prima Marc Maron requiring impervious of vaccination and masks astatine his sold-out, indoor sets.

High Plains Comedy Festival, the region’s biggest stand-up fest, volition necessitate assemblage members to beryllium vaccinated to participate its aggregate venues, Sept. 16-18, laminitis Adam Cayton-Holland told The Denver Post this week.

Promoter Z2 Entertainment, which runs the Boulder, Fox and Aggie theaters, said its venues volition present necessitate vaccinations oregon impervious of a antagonistic COVID-19 trial wrong 72 hours of arrival. The cheery clubs Trade and Tracks volition besides statesman requiring impervious of vaccination upon arrival, Westword reported.

Denver’s Oriental Theater is unfastened to tightening its restrictions adjacent more, said Scott Happel, who manages the historical venue on with South Broadway’s HQ nine (formerly 3 Kings Tavern).

“Some events whitethorn take to necessitate stricter rules, and we volition accommodate those for them,” helium said. “But that is up to each idiosyncratic event.”

Two months ago, promoters were rushing to capable venues with long-postponed and recently booked shows. Even amid Delta variant concerns, dozens much proceed to articulation the calendar each week. The planetary performance manufacture mislaid $30 cardinal successful 2020, and a fewer abbreviated months of shutdowns tin ravage a scene. Between April 1 and July 31, 2020, Colorado’s euphony manufacture mislaid 8,327 jobs and $344.6 cardinal successful income revenue, according to a study from Denver Arts & Venues.

“My fearfulness is that if autumn and wintertime events are canceled this year, galore of our autarkic venues volition cease to exist,” said Chris Zacher, president of the Colorado Independent Venue Association. “Arts and civilization is the third-largest economical operator successful the state. … When venues are shuttered oregon permanently closed, the trickle-down effect is devastating.”

Denver folk-rock set Heavy Diamond Ring watched its play amusement get cancelled erstwhile Fort Collins’ Bohemian Light Music Festival connected Monday said it was shutting down this year’s lawsuit owed to Delta variant concerns. (Ele Hart, provided by Paul DeHaven)

Paul DeHaven, co-founder of Denver folk-rock enactment Heavy Diamond Ring, is afloat expecting to suffer income successful the coming weeks from canceled shows.

“I consciousness like, archetypal of all, spell get vaccinated! What are you trying to beryllium here? That you tin unopen down the system again? That you tin marque maine suffer my occupation again?” said DeHaven, whose set was besides scheduled for this weekend’s canceled Bohemian Light Festival. “It’s infuriating and exhausting.”

Outbreaks astatine Colorado concerts this twelvemonth person been exceedingly rare, according to information from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Even with hundreds of metro-area shows welcoming tens of thousands of concert-goers successful caller months, less than a half-dozen indoor arts venues person been cited, the CDPHE reported.

Small outbreaks occurred astatine the String Cheese Incident shows astatine Red Rocks Amphitheatre, July 16-18, with larger outbreaks of 23 cases astatine Mesa County’s Country Jam implicit the Fourth of July weekend, and the Greeley Stampede successful aboriginal July, with 25 cases.

Whatever happens, Heavy Diamond Ring’s DeHaven is inactive looking guardant to an Aug. 20 solo amusement he’s playing with Patrick Dethlefs astatine Globe Hall. It whitethorn beryllium his past for awhile, helium said.

“As acold arsenic a Plan B goes, I don’t truly spot a viable one,” DeHaven said. “I don’t cognize what volition hap if we person to spell done different wintertime similar past year.”

Denver Post information writer Kevin Hamm contributed to this report.

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