The String Cheese Incident returns to Belly Up Aspen in March

The Colorado jamband's 'Say Cheese' winter tour lands in a 450-capacity Aspen club, with Sunday, March 7 closing out a two-night stand.

Some traditions in the Roaring Fork Valley follow the snow report. Others follow The String Cheese Incident. The band has put Belly Up Aspen back on the calendar, and Sunday, March 7, 2027, is the second of two nights in the 450-capacity club.

The dates were announced Oct. 27 as part of the band's Say Cheese Winter Tour 2027. The Aspen run is Saturday, March 6 and Sunday, March 7, and tickets are sold through Belly Up's own site. The night before, March 5, the band is booked at WinterWonderGrass in Steamboat Springs, so the Aspen shows come right off a festival stage and into one of the smallest rooms on the whole tour.

That contrast is the whole appeal. String Cheese is a Colorado institution that spends most of its year playing amphitheaters and festival fields, and seeing them in a room that holds a few hundred people is a different experience entirely: the bluegrass roots up front, the jams stretching out, and nobody more than a few strides from the stage. The tour's winter opener comes in January with a Southeast leg, then the band heads home to the mountains.

Aspen has become a regular stop. Belly Up has hosted the band for multi-night runs before, including Feb. 28 through March 2, 2023, a stand remembered for the band rotating bass players, and again March 6-8, 2025. Those runs have given the valley a bit of a late-winter ritual: ski all day, then line up for a jamband that usually fills far bigger rooms. Both of those runs were livestreamed, a sign of how much the band's wider fan base cares about these nights.

Seeing them in a room that holds a few hundred people is a different experience entirely.

Belly Up is the reason this works. It's the valley's main club, small enough to feel like a ski-town bar and serious enough about sound and booking to land national acts that would normally play arenas. With a capacity of 450, a String Cheese date there is one of the harder tickets of the winter, and with two nights on offer the Sunday show is the one to watch for anyone with a Monday-morning flight or a day off to burn.

Tickets go through bellyupaspen.com; follow the link on this page and keep an eye on it. Sellouts here tend to be quick, and the resale prices on a 450-cap jamband run are not for the faint of heart.

Then plan your Sunday around it. The mountain will still be there on Monday.

Sources: The String Cheese Incident Details Say Cheese Winter Tour 2027 - JamBase (jambase.com); String Cheese Incident 2027 Say Cheese Winter Tour - TicketNews (ticketnews.com); Photos: The String Cheese Incident rotates bass players, Aspen 2/28/23 - Live For Live Music (liveforlivemusic.com); The String Cheese Incident Details Home-State Concerts For 1st Dates Of 2025 - JamBase (jambase.com); The String Cheese Incident livestreams Aspen - JamBase (jambase.com); String Cheese Incident at Belly Up Aspen - Aspen Chamber (aspenchamber.org); Belly Up Aspen (bellyupaspen.com); JamBase listing (jambase.com)