Phish will bring their massive annual summer festival to an upstate New York commercial airport with enough room to hold about 80,000 people, and a local government seemingly eager to welcome them.

The festival, which was previously held in Limestone, Maine, as the Great Went in 1997 and Lemonwheel in 1998, will move this year to Oswego County Airport in Volney, N.Y., over the weekend of July 17 and 18, according to Frank Hale, executive director of the Greater Oswego Chamber of Commerce.

The rest of the improvisational-rock band's summer tour is to be announced Friday (March 12), Phish publicist Reyna Mastrosimone said Thursday. She said the band's management would have no comment on the airport show until Friday's announcement, and she would neither confirm nor deny that the concert would happen.

But Hale said the Vermont-based quartet's promoter, Great Northeast Productions, inked a deal with county officials last week to use the airport.

While previous Phish summer festivals have lasted two days, Hale said the band currently is scheduled to play July 17 only. But, he said, a second show could be added the next day.

Hale said the county expects between 30,000 and 50,000 people to attend, although the commercial airport could support a crowd of around 80,000.

The airport's size is what ultimately prompted the band to choose that site over Fulton County Airport, a smaller strip 130 miles away in Johnstown, N.Y., about which the promotion company had also inquired, according to Hale.

More than 60,000 fans have attended each year. Phish's loyal fans, called Phishheads, often follow the band from venue to venue, listening to such concert staples as

"Birds of A Feather"

(RealAudio excerpt) and "Bouncing Around the Room."

"They found Oswego County Airport to be more accommodating to their logistical needs," Hale said.

In February, the Fulton County Board of Supervisors gave Phish permission to use another airport. "We were very disappointed they chose another site," Jessica Smrtic, director of tourism development for Fulton County, said Thursday.

But Jon Stead, the supervisors' clerk, said the board was aware the band was considering other venues even when its promoters were negotiating with Fulton County. "So it wasn't a total shock," he said.

Oswego County is well equipped for a major festival event, Hale said. The county will be sponsoring its annual Harborfest, an event that usually attracts 300,000 people over three days, the week before the show. And the week after Phish play, Woodstock '99 will take place only 50 miles away, at Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, N.Y.

Phish began holding an annual festival in August 1996, when they played six sets over two days at an abandoned Air Force base in Plattsburgh, N.Y.; that event was dubbed the Clifford Ball. The event moved to Limestone the next year. Traditionally, the band has ventured out into the crowd during the night in the middle of the festival to play a set on the back of a moving truck.