If you saw Jimi Hendrix tear through Buffalo’s Memorial Auditorium in 1968, you saw Jerry Nathan’s work. Across the late 1960s and 1970s, Nathan and his partner Eddie Tice — operating as Festival East Concerts — turned Buffalo into a regular stop on the classic-rock touring map. The pair would put on hundreds of shows together, including some of the largest stadium concerts ever held in Western New York.
Festival East Concerts
Festival East rose during the era when rock concert promotion was being invented as a profession. Nathan, working alongside Tice, booked the major touring acts of the day into Buffalo’s Memorial Auditorium (locally “the Aud”), a venue that had previously been better known for hockey and boxing. The Hendrix show in 1968 — a moment that locals still describe as a landmark in Buffalo’s music history — was emblematic of Nathan’s ambition. If a band mattered, Festival East tried to put them in front of Buffalo.
Superfest at the Stadium
Nathan didn’t stop at arena shows. When the touring industry shifted toward outdoor stadium dates in the 1970s, Festival East scaled up too. The company produced multiple “Superfest at the Stadium” events at War Memorial Stadium and what later became Rich Stadium (now Highmark Stadium) — a series that put Buffalo in the same league as cities ten times its size. These shows established the city as a viable market for the era’s biggest-grossing tours.
The Buffalo Concert Architecture
The Buffalo Music Hall of Fame credits Nathan and Tice with bringing “hundreds of concerts” to the city. That phrase undersells the impact. The two of them didn’t just book shows — they built the infrastructure (relationships with national agents, the production knowledge, the trust with venue operators) that allowed Buffalo to remain on the touring map for decades after Festival East itself wound down. Every Buffalo show that has followed sits on the foundation they laid.
Jerry Nathan worked in an era before concert promotion had been consolidated under a handful of corporate names. He represents what an independent regional promoter could do for a city in the right hands: make it count.