String Cheese Incident Book Three Red Rocks Nights, One With Phil Lesh

The String Cheese Incident announced five Colorado dates for July 2022 on March 10, 2022, capped by a three-night stand at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison.

Each Red Rocks night carries its own billing. Yonder Mountain String Band joins on Friday, July 15. Leftover Salmon joins on Saturday, July 16. Sunday, July 17 is billed as The Phil Lesh Incident, pairing the band with Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh.

The run opens before that with two nights at Dillon Amphitheater in Dillon, Colo. on July 12 and 13.

A summer fixture in the band’s home state

Colorado is where the band is from, and the July booking follows a pattern it has kept for years.

“It wouldn’t be summer without SCI in Colorado,” the band wrote in its announcement. “The tradition continues with 5 Incidents across two of our most cherished venues.”

The band shared the news through its official Instagram account, @sci_official, and posted the same text to its own site.

Presales, codes and on-sale

A band presale opens Tuesday, March 15 at 11 a.m. MT through AXS.com and runs until 10 a.m. MT on Thursday, March 17. The band noted that no code is required for that window.

A local presale, promoted by AEG, then runs March 17 from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. MT under the code JELLYFISH.

General public on-sale follows on Friday, March 18 at 10 a.m. MT, also through AXS.

The pairing goes back to 1999

The Sunday billing revisits a pairing that goes back to the Summer Sessions tour of 1999, a month-long traveling festival that carried String Cheese, Galactic, Gov’t Mule, moe. and Phil Lesh on selected dates.

That tour reached Morrison on August 13 and 14, 1999. Michael Kang, Kyle Hollingsworth, Bill Nershi and Michael Travis played the “friends” portion of the Phil Lesh & Friends set on the second night.

“It was magical experience, getting to play a bunch of Grateful Dead tunes with the man himself,” the band later wrote of that night. “He was even gracious enough to let us throw a ‘Round The Wheel’ into his set.”

Ahead of the Colorado run

The Colorado dates are not the band’s first booking of the year. String Cheese are set to headline two nights of the first Daze Between New Orleans festival on May 3 and 4, staged at Faubourg Brewery in the gap between the two weekends of Jazz Fest.

That bill also carries Snarky Puppy, Eric Krasno & Friends, Lettuce and Rebirth Brass Band. Tickets for it go on sale March 11 at 1 p.m. ET.

Sources: The String Cheese Incident, Jambands.com, JamBase, Jambands.com, Relix.

Photo: Don LaVange, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.