Concerts return to BankPlus Amphitheater with Dave Matthews Band

Bob Mehr, Memphis Commercial Appeal
·2 min read

Music is finally returning to the BankPlus Amphitheater at Snowden Grove.

The Southaven venue has announced a May 24 performance by Dave Matthews Band. Tickets for the show will go on sale Feb. 17 via Ticketmaster.com.

The return of concerts to BankPlus — which has not hosted regular music events since 2019 — follows a period of uncertainty for the venue following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dave Matthews Band will perfrom at the reluanched BankPlus Amphitheater in Southaven, Miss. in May.
Dave Matthews Band will perfrom at the reluanched BankPlus Amphitheater in Southaven, Miss. in May.

In July 2021, the DeSoto County Convention & Visitors Bureau and the City of Southaven announced they were formally partnering to manage BankPlus. The amphitheater has since undergone a series of improvements and updates.

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The venue originally opened in summer 2006 as the Snowden Grove Amphitheatre, with a performance by Southern rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd. Over the next 14 years, the 10,000-plus capacity venue — which was renamed BankPlus Amphitheater in 2014 — hosted a wide and notable array of artists from Willie Nelson to ZZ Top.

For the first decade of its existence, the late Memphis promoter Jim Green, of TCB and Green Machine Concerts, was tasked with booking the amphitheater. In 2017, Southaven entered into a three-year deal with national concert powerhouse Live Nation Entertainment to handle the venue's operations.

BankPlus Amphitheater at Snowden Grove in Southaven, Miss., on July 1, 2021.
BankPlus Amphitheater at Snowden Grove in Southaven, Miss., on July 1, 2021.

The contract with Live Nation expired at the end of 2020. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the shutdown of the concert industry, Live Nation closed a number of its regional business units, including its office in New Orleans which oversaw BankPlus Amphitheater. Additionally, Live Nation decided that, moving forward, it would only manage venues that it owned or co-owned.

With Live Nation's involvement over, in early 2021 Southaven Mayor Darren Musselwhite began discussions with Todd Mastry, executive director of the Landers Center — which is owned by the DeSoto County CVB — to take over as BankPlus Amphitheater executive director, overseeing booking and operations for both venues.

Southaven and its board of aldermen also announced plans for “extensive improvements” to the amphitheater, including changes to its layout and capacity, which historically has held roughly 10,800.

Construction began in the fall of 2021 and was completed late last year. The Dave Matthews Band show is the first of what is expected to be multiple summer concert announcements for 2023.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Dave Matthews Band to play BankPlus Amphitheater in Southaven