The Guess Who at SPAC | July 14, 2026
Twenty-three years is a long time to wait. The last time Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman shared a stage as The Guess Who, the reunion tour they’d launched in 1999 had finally run its course and gone quiet. What followed was more than two decades of legal fog over who, exactly, owned the right to the name — a dispute that didn’t resolve until a September 2024 settlement returned the trademark to the band’s two founding architects. The Takin’ It Back Tour, which lands at SPAC on Tuesday, July 14 at 7:30 PM, is the direct result of that settlement. It is also, in every meaningful sense, the real thing.
Don Felder, formerly of the Eagles, opens the evening.
About The Guess Who
Formed in Winnipeg in 1965, The Guess Who earned their place in the canon with a directness that was almost confrontational. “American Woman” reached #1 in 1970, making them the first Canadian band to top the Billboard Hot 100 — and the song’s opening riff remains one of the most recognized in classic rock four decades on. The catalog runs deeper than most casual listeners remember: “These Eyes,” “No Time,” “No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature,” “Share the Land,” “Laughing” — enough hits to fill a set without padding and without apology.
Bachman has been candid about what audiences should expect. “We do a set list of about 30 hit songs,” he told American Songwriter, “and it’s probably gonna be a two- or three-hour, Springsteen kind of marathonic show.” That is not a modest promise. Whether the band can deliver at that scale is exactly the kind of question worth showing up to answer.
Cummings has framed the reunion in terms of obligation rather than opportunity. “When we go out on stage, our goal is to truly honour the music,” he said at the tour announcement. The distinction matters. There are legacy tours and there are legacy tours — this one has the principals, the catalog, and a long-deferred reason to finally do it right.
SPAC
The Albany / Capital District region’s biggest stage is the right room for this. The 25,000-capacity amphitheater — 5,200 sheltered seats backed by one of the most generous lawns in the Northeast — has enough classic rock history baked into its grounds that The Guess Who’s arrival reads as continuity, not novelty. A July evening on that lawn, a crowd that grew up with these songs: “American Woman” sung in unison stops being nostalgia somewhere around the second chorus and becomes something harder to name.
Tickets
Tickets are on sale now for The Guess Who at SPAC on Tuesday, July 14, 2026. Showtime is 7:30 PM. Get tickets here.