The Growlers book Chelsea's Live in April, their first Baton Rouge show since 2019

Back on the road after six years away, Brooks Nielsen's band plays the 578-capacity room on Monday, April 5, 2027.

The last time The Growlers played Baton Rouge, it was Aug. 7, 2019, at the Varsity Theatre. That turned out to be one of the band's final stops for a long while. The same year, The Growlers stopped touring full-time, and for six years the band didn't perform live together. Now they're back, and the Baton Rouge return comes in a much smaller room.

The Growlers play Chelsea's Live on Monday, April 5, 2027, at 8 p.m. Tickets are through Ticketmaster, and the room holds about 578.

The comeback started this year. The Growlers' 2026 run began in Australia in January, their first live shows as a band in six years. Coverage of the return pointed out that Brooks Nielsen kept the project going creatively during the break, and that the comeback also comes with new music. The band brought the tour to North America this spring. NYS Music covered its "long awaited return" at Brooklyn Steel in April. A West Coast run this fall ended with a hometown show at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles on Oct. 3, and the year was set to close with a fall tour of 11 shows and a date in Mexico.

The current touring lineup is Nielsen, guitarist JD Carrera, keyboardist Cole Riddle, drummer Richard Gowen, bassist Max Kaplan and guitarist Thomas Hunter.

The size of the room is what makes this booking notable. In a year when the band played the Greek and Brooklyn Steel, a 578-capacity stop in Baton Rouge is close and personal by comparison. The crowd that saw them at the Varsity in 2019 gets them in a smaller room this time. Anyone who discovered The Growlers during the years they weren't touring gets to see them up close.

It's also a Monday, which deserves a mention. A Monday show in a room this size often fills up with the people who wanted it most, the ones willing to take a slow Tuesday morning for it. For a band coming back after six years, that's not a bad crowd to play for.

Practical notes: the show is still five months away and the room is small, so buy early if you know you want to go. There's no opener on our listing yet, so check the Ticketmaster page as the date gets closer. An 8 p.m. start on a Monday means you'll likely be out at a reasonable hour.

For local fans, the six-year gap since the Varsity is the story. When the band stopped touring in 2019, nobody knew whether these songs would be played live again. The answer came this year, and on April 5 Baton Rouge gets its turn to hear them.

Sources: The Growlers Long Awaited Return Hits Brooklyn Steel (NYS Music) (nysmusic.com); The Growlers 2026 Australian tour: dates, venues and more (Soap Central) (soapcentral.com); The Growlers (Glide Magazine) (wpcms.glidemagazine.com); The Growlers (Omaha Magazine) (omahamagazine.com); The Growlers (Nederlander Concerts) (nederlanderconcerts.com); The Growlers regresa a México (Grupo Animal) (grupoanimal.mx); The Growlers at Chelsea's Live tickets (Ticketmaster/TicketWeb) (ticketmaster.evyy.net); The Growlers at Chelsea's Live (JamBase) (jambase.com)