(CelebrityAccess) – Billboard is reporting that organizers of the Woodstock 50 festival have released all artists scheduled to perform at the festival from their contracts.
According to Billboard, festival organizers emailed agents representing artists booked to perform at the festival and informed them that the festival would not attempt to enforce performance contracts.
The letter noted that while artists were invited to perform at the event which organizers now hope to stage at the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, MD, they were no longer under a contractual obligation to do so.
Enforcing the contracts would have likely been a legally challenging proposition in the wake of the attempt to relocate the festival from its originally announced location at Watkins Glen, NY to the Merriweather, which is more than 300 miles away.
Some artists on the lineup, including Jay-Z and John Fogerty, have already indicated that they are dropping out of the event.
“Michael Lang called me a week ago about doing the show in DC proper but, on this short notice, there really wasn’t anywhere to do that. I suggested Merriweather would be a low risk option and is considered DC. Plus it has a similar historic legacy,” Hurwitz told Billboard’s Dave Brooks. “We made a deal quickly contingent on him putting a show together and dealing with the fact that we have a show booked on one of those dates. So now I’m just a venue waiting to see if the promoter with the hold is going to confirm.”
