This Weekend: A Three-Generation Bill Hits the Riverfront

If you want a single show that explains why the new amphitheater is remaking Richmond summers, look at Sunday. On July 26, Allianz Amphitheater at Riverfront hosts O.A.R. with Gavin DeGraw and Lisa Loeb — a triple bill that essentially annotates three decades of adult-alternative radio in one evening on the James.

Start with the venue, because it's the story of the summer. With Friday Cheers dark for 2026 during the Brown's Island renovation, Allianz — the roughly 7,500-capacity shed that opened in 2025 and is now in its second full season — has become the default gathering place on the water. Its calendar this year runs from mid-April clear into late September and swings across rock, country, pop, R&B, and electronic. Sunday's bill is the venue in its natural habitat: a big, sing-along-friendly evening pitched at a wide crowd.

And what a crowd this one's built for. O.A.R. Of a Revolution — are the jam-adjacent headliners whose "Crazy Game of Poker" and "Shattered" have been festival-lawn staples for twenty-plus years; they're a band that turns a general-admission field into a chorus. Gavin DeGraw brings the piano-soul radio catalog ("I Don't Want to Be," which an entire generation associates with a certain teen drama). And Lisa Loeb opens the whole thing — the woman whose 1994 single "Stay (I Missed You)" famously hit No. 1 with no record label attached, in cat-eye glasses that launched a thousand imitators. Three artists, three distinct eras of earnest melodic pop, one riverfront lawn.

It is, admittedly, not the cool-kid bill of the summer. Nobody's calling O.A.R. a discovery. But that misreads what this show is for. This is the comfort-food concert — the one you take your college roommate to, the one where you know every chorus and don't have to pretend otherwise, the one that ends with a few thousand people yelling the same words at the same river. There's a reason venues program nights like this. They're the ones that turn casual attendees into people who come back.

For the crate-diggers, the weekend has texture elsewhere, too. Richmond's club rooms don't pause for anybody, and the calendar around this date reportedly includes bigger touring stops at The National and a Bob Dylan riverfront date earlier in the week. Chase the show that fits your temperament. That's the luxury of a functioning scene — on a given weekend you can pick your decade.

But if you want the sure thing, Sunday's the sure thing. Get there early enough to catch Loeb, because openers of her stature don't usually open, and a 1994 chart anomaly sung live in 2026 is its own small time machine. Stay for DeGraw's piano. Lose your voice during O.A.R. Walk back across the bridge into downtown with your ears ringing and the river going dark behind you.

Here's the quiet truth of the no-Friday-Cheers summer: Richmond didn't stop gathering on the water. It just moved uphill to a bigger room and kept singing. Sunday, it sings in three-part harmony across thirty years. Bring the roommate.

Sources: Riverfront Music Returns! Allianz 2026 lineup — RVA Mag; The BIG Richmond Summer Music Field Guide 2026 — RVA Mag