COVENTRY, Vt. (AP) – Tickets for Phish’s “Coventry” festival – the popular jam band’s last concert – sold out on Friday.

The two-day event in the band’s home state in August was expected to sell 70,000 tickets. Spokesman Adam Lewis on Friday could not say exactly how many tickets were sold. Interest in the festival intensified when Phish announced in May that the band was splitting up.

Fans will descend on the Newport State Airport and surrounding fields in Coventry on Aug. 14 and 15. No tickets will be sold at the gates, and anyone without a ticket will not be allowed to enter, Lewis said.

“To those who have purchased tickets, please discourage those without tickets from coming to Coventry,” the band’s official Web site said. “Ticketless travelers compound the traffic congestion, add unnecessary stress to our staff, the police and the local community, and ultimately diminish the quality of everyone’s experience.”

Phish, which was formed in Burlington 20 years ago, has held six weekend festivals that drew crowds of between 50,000 and 70,000 in states including New York and Maine. According to the concert industry publication Pollstar, Phish was one of the top-grossing concert acts for 2003, with ticket sales earning $35.8 million.

The Phish concert will be the largest in Vermont since the Grateful Dead played in Highgate, another rural northern town, in 1995.

AP-ES-06-19-04 1410EDT