The Harvest Jazz & Blues Festival announced today that Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats have regrettably cancelled their Friday, September 14 appearance at the Festival. This is due to a death in their musical family that necessitates them being at a funeral the day the Harvest show was scheduled to take place.
The band is as disappointed as festival organizers and Harvest patrons alike at the unfortunate circumstances, but they have committed to headlining Harvest in 2019. In the meantime, festival organizers are quickly working to find a replacement to headline the Moose Light Blues Tent Friday night and are expecting to make an announcement as quickly as possible.
“Richard Swift was one of the great musical minds of our time. I was honoured to call him producer and mentor on both Night Sweats’ albums and even more honoured to call him one of my closest friends,” Nathaniel Rateliff said in a statement to the festival. “I am very sorry to the Harvest fans who were looking forward to seeing us at your Festival. We were looking forward to it too. My heart will be broken for a lifetime by Richard’s passing and I need to be elsewhere this September to give him the send-off he deserves. I promise we’ll make it up to you next year. Until then, Harvest.”
“We are sad that Harvest fans of Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats will have to wait another year to see the band live on the Harvest stage, but we understand that sometimes tough but necessary choices must be made to be with loved ones at difficult times,” said Festival Programming Director, Brent Staeben. “Ensuring this year’s festival is still the best it can be is our first priority and so as soon as we found out about this postponement, we started working to find the best possible replacement. This certainly isn’t our first rodeo with headliner cancellations, and we’re confident that we will once again deliver a top notch act our patrons will be excited about.”
The refund process for individual show tickets and Friday Night Passes will be announced concurrently with the announcement of the replacement act for Friday night’s show. Harvest is working to make this announcement as quickly as possible. Please follow us on social media for updates.
“We ask for your patience and understanding while we work to secure a new headliner,” said Staeben. “We’ll keep patrons up to date on social media as information becomes available.”
For more information, please contact:
Lucas Hicks
Managing Director, Harvest Jazz & Blues Festival
(e) lucas@harvestjazzandblues.com
(p) 506.454.2583