Sister Hazel has been doing this for 33 years — same five members, roughly 120 dates a year, the kind of touring commitment that either grinds a band into a nostalgia act or clarifies exactly what it was always built on. The Gainesville quintet played the Clayton Opera House in northern New York on Aug. 6, part of a late-summer run that lands at Universal Preservation Hall in Saratoga Springs on Friday, September 25, at 7:30 p.m. Bands from their ’90s adult-alternative peer group, Hootie & the Blowfish and the Gin Blossoms among them, largely pulled back from road-dog status years ago. Sister Hazel, quietly, did not.
About the Show
The band traces back to Gainesville, Florida in 1993, where vocalist and guitarist Ken Block, Andrew Copeland, Ryan Newell, Jett Beres, and Mark Trojanowski came together out of the city’s club and coffee-house scene. The name honors Sister Hazel Williams, a local nun who ran a homeless shelter and left a mark on Block in his youth. Their commercial breakthrough came in 1997 with “All for You,” which topped the adult alternative charts and brought Somewhere More Familiar to platinum status; the song is the moment most audiences know them by. Nine-plus studio albums followed, through 2020’s Elements, which compiled three EPs (Water, Wind, and Fire) they’d put out between 2018 and 2019. What sets them apart from the standard career arc of their generation is the lineup stability: those original five members have stayed together for over three decades without a reconstitution — a genuine rarity for any band operating at their touring scale. Their sound moves across folk-rock, country-rock, and Southern rock, with harmonies and acoustic guitars at the center. No support acts have been announced for the Saratoga Springs date.
Venue & Logistics
Universal Preservation Hall is a transformed 1871 church at 25 Washington St in Saratoga Springs, a room with enough history in its bones to suit a band that has been building its own for three decades. Sister Hazel performs in the Great Hall, with the show beginning at 7:30 p.m. The venue draws from across the Capital Region.
Tickets
No ticket price was available from sources at the time of publication. Tickets can be purchased online at atuph.org, in person at the Proctors Box Office, or by phone at (518) 346-6204 (Tuesday through Saturday, noon to 6 p.m.). Groups of 10 or more should contact group sales at (518) 382-3884, ext. 139. Buy tickets