Alabama Shakes at Bethel Woods | September 4, 2026
When Alabama Shakes takes the stage at Bethel Woods on the Friday night of Labor Day weekend, there will be a particular weight to the moment that even a 16,000-person amphitheater might struggle to contain. The band spent nearly a decade in silence after the Sound & Color cycle wound down circa 2016 — not broken up, exactly, but gone. Their return last July in Chicago was their first full live set in eight years. Bethel Woods, built on the same Catskill hillside where rock and roll discovered its own mythology in 1969, seems like the only logical stage for a band that sounds like they emerged from that same earth.
With Mavis Staples confirmed as very special guest, this September 4 show is not merely a reunion concert. It is a passing-of-the-torch moment between two generations of American roots music — a living icon of the civil rights era sharing a stage with the act that most convincingly carries that lineage forward into the present.
About Alabama Shakes
Formed in Athens, Alabama, Alabama Shakes built their reputation on the raw, gospel-drenched power of frontwoman Brittany Howard — a singer whose voice lands somewhere between Aretha Franklin’s authority and the unhinged conviction of early soul. Their Grammy-winning catalog spans Boys & Girls and Sound & Color, the latter arriving in 2015 to near-universal critical acclaim. Then, with very little warning, the band stepped back. Howard kept working — solo records, collaborations, including a recent appearance on Miley Cyrus’s Something Beautiful — but the Shakes were quiet for the better part of a decade.
That changed in summer 2025, when the band released “Another Life,” their first new music in roughly ten years, followed by “American Dream,” the title track of their new album. The 2026 tour is the full statement of intent: Alabama Shakes is back, and they appear to mean it. Bonnaroo, Red Rocks, Alexandra Palace — the booking choices alone tell you this is not a nostalgia circuit. Bethel Woods, on Labor Day weekend, is the Northeast anchor of a tour that has been drawing the kind of crowds bands earn by being genuinely missed.
About Bethel Woods Center for the Arts
Bethel Woods sits on 1,000 acres in Bethel, New York — the same land that hosted the 1969 Woodstock Music & Art Fair, the same hillside that has carried more symbolic weight per square foot than almost anywhere in American popular culture. The venue itself opened in 2006, giving the site a proper permanent stage to hold all of that history. The Pavilion Stage holds 16,000 and is roughly 90 miles north of New York City. For a band steeped in the soul and blues of another era, it is a room that suits the occasion far better than most. The Hudson Valley does not often land a show this weighted with meaning.
Tickets & Pricing
Alabama Shakes at Bethel Woods is on sale now. Ticket prices across the 2026 tour run approximately $120–$308; Bethel Woods-specific face value pricing may vary. Buy tickets here.