Phish fans in Colorado have for the last decade gotten their jam-band fix in Commerce City, as the Vermont act played an annual quartet of shows over Labor Day weekend at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park.
Not this year. After 42 concerts at Dick’s, Phish has moved its Colorado visit to this Thursday through Saturday, July 3-5, and, for the first time, switched to Folsom Field at the University of Colorado Boulder. The concerts are now taking place at a much larger venue in a much denser residential and commercial area, something that will present new challenges and opportunities that will only be clear when it’s over, the show’s promoter said.
“There’s always risk involved because we don’t know how it’s going to go,” said Don Strasburg, president of AEG Presents’ Rocky Mountains and Pacific Northwest regions. “But especially with Phish, they’re a band that takes intentional risks. … It’s akin to going to a sporting event with an amazing quarterback, who might throw the most amazing touchdown of all time.”
Strasburg said the band, its team, and AEG will wait until the first Folsom run has ended to make decisions about a repeat. He declined to comment on a specific reason for the change, saying only that Phish still loves Dick’s, but that the band thought a Folsom run was “worth trying.”
Strasburg has spent decades boosting Phish, which he first booked at the Boulder Theater on April 19, 1990, and has followed closely as a fan and promoter since. Now a worldwide phenomenon that has sold more than 13 million concert tickets, according to Pollstar, and cemented its place among live music’s greatest acts, Phish brings scores of fans and their money with it wherever it tours — for better or worse.
Its annual shows at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park have made that venue its second most-played of all time, trailing only Madison Square Garden, according to phish.net. But Phish hasn’t played Boulder since 1993, despite performing some of its earliest shows in Colorado in 1988 and 1990.
It’s also worth remembering that Phish was unofficially banned from Red Rocks Amphitheatre after a 1996 concert that ended poorly for its host town.
“By the time police donned riot gear and started arresting the band’s fervent fans for overpartying in nearby Morrison, the damage was done,” The Denver Post wrote at the time. “In the midst of what one business owner called ‘an invasion,’ 10 people went to jail, the town was turned upside down and the band was unofficially banned from Red Rocks for a decade.”
Phish returned to Red Rocks in 2009 for a much smoother ride, but has not played the venue since then. The question now is whether Phish can actually pack three nights at Folsom, a much bigger venue with a capacity of roughly 50,0000 people per show — compared with Dick’s 24,000 per show.
If Phish doesn’t sell more than 125,000 total tickets in Boulder (compared to 96,000 across four shows at Dick’s), the upgrade may not be worth it, even if fans play nice and infuse Boulder with food, drink and hotel spending while respecting property and public spaces.
“Any time they play a new venue like Folsom, it’s a special occasion for a lot of the phans,” wrote New Jersey resident Drew W., who requested his last name be withheld for professional reasons, in an email to The Denver Post. He attended Colorado College from 1998 to 2002 and has been watching Phish play live since his first Madison Square Garden show in 1995. That includes “legendary” Colorado sets at McNichols Arena and at Dick’s.
“Nobody knows what to expect — how is the band going to fill this new room? What tricks do they have up their sleeves for us?” he added. “And what is going to happen with the lights?”
Despite the optimism, the University of Colorado’s Athletics Department has in the past been hostile to concerts at Folsom, as have Boulder residents who said they could hear the shows more than three miles away. An “outraged” CU Board of Regents effectively banned rock shows there starting in 1986, after a booming Van Halen concert drew numerous residential complaints.
After only a handful of concerts since then — including a 2001 Dave Matthew Band run that incurred $15,000 in fines for breaking curfew (a common fine for Folsom acts) — Dead and Company helped restart regular shows there in 2016, drawing a relatively older, calmer fan base.
Folsom is well-positioned to monitor and move fans into and out of the venue with ease, given its tested history as CU’s football arena, and as a sporadic venue for big acts. Dead & Company’s July 1-3, 2023, shows nabbed positive reviews from fans after years of consecutive visits. The DJ and producer John Summit is also slated to play there on Oct. 18, although no other shows are currently on the 2025 calendar.
AEG Presents and university officials said they hope to see more concerts at Folsom in 2026.
“Shows of this caliber are monumental for our campus, our community, and our state in that they attract fans from literally all over the world to Boulder,” said Ryan Gottlieb, senior associate athletic director at the University of Colorado. “We’re looking forward to three incredible nights of music under the stars and the majestic Flatirons.”
Folsom has been hosting concerts for more than five decades, including from The Grateful Dead, Fleetwood Mac, Van Halen, Dave Matthews Band, and Odesza. A Phish run will further cement its place as one of Colorado’s top live-music venues, AEG’s Strasburg said. And he predicts many more years of shows there — country artist Tyler Childers performed the first-ever country concert there last year, and there will be more “firsts” around the corner.
Strasburg declined to say how much it cost AEG to rent Folsom over Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, but in 2016 the promoter spent at least $250,000 to rent Folsom for a pair of Dead and Company shows, according to a CU campus spokesman at the time. The CU Athletic Department made $695,373.52 after expenses for the shows on July 2 and 3 that year, including from the stadium rental.
“It’s a very expensive undertaking to put on concerts at this level, whether it’s Red Rocks or Dick’s or Folsom,” Strasburg said. ” … I don’t take anything for granted, but hopefully there will be more next year.”