Ryan Miller

My iPhone note “Guster tour, Pros & Cons” was becoming more and more lopsided.Our impending club tour, booked nine months ago after a COVID-halted March 2020 run, was in peril. We assumed then—it seems like a lifetime ago—that winter of 2022 would allow us plenty of time to present a tour that was safe for both us and our fans. Other bands made similar plans as our industry attempted, once again, to regain a foothold after the crushing Delta wave.

It is the view of a lifetime: a sea of 8,488 expectant faces, their collective gaze converging to a single point, which happens to be exactly where I’m standing. Behind me sit about 60 members of the Colorado Symphony; my bandmates are at my side. Our band, Guster, is headlining Red Rocks, a natural amphitheater carved into the side of a rock formation in Morrison, Colorado, and universally regarded as one of the world’s preeminent live-music venues.