The Queers bring 45 years of pop-punk to Laughing Sun's Sun Stage

Joe Queer's long-running New Hampshire band plays Laughing Sun Brewing with The Vexed on Saturday, February 20, 2027, for $15.

Fifteen dollars, a pint from the tap, and a band that has been playing three-chord love songs since 1981. That's the deal at Laughing Sun Brewing in February, and in Bismarck in the dead of winter it's a good one.

The Queers play Laughing Sun Brewing on Saturday, February 20, 2027, at 8 p.m., with The Vexed opening. Tickets are $15 through The Ticketing Company. The show was announced Oct. 26. When the band headlines elsewhere it usually plays rooms of about 300, so a brewery stage in Bismarck is about as close as you can get to them.

The band's story starts in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1981, with guitarist and singer Joe "Queer" King, bassist Tulu and drummer Wimpy Rutherford. Their first record, the 1982 *Love Me* EP, was a self-pressed run of 200 copies on their own Doheny label. That lineup broke up in late 1984, and King rebuilt the band from scratch in 1986. He has been the only constant through every lineup since.

The break came by way of another band. The Queers' 1990 debut album, *Grow Up*, released on the English label Shakin' Street, reached Screeching Weasel's Ben Weasel, who talked Lookout! Records owner Larry Livermore into signing them. Their Lookout! debut, *Love Songs for the Retarded*, came out in 1993, and the band became one of the label's defining pop-punk acts, with six albums there in all.

That relationship ended badly. In 2006 the band pulled its master rights back from Lookout!, citing unpaid royalties, and signed with Asian Man Records later that year. The episode is part of why the band's catalog is a touchstone for a generation of punk fans who care about who owns the records as much as how they sound.

A brewery stage in Bismarck is about as close as you can get to them.

Laughing Sun, at 1023 E. Front Ave., is a good fit for that spirit. The brewery hosts live music on its Sun Stage on Friday and Saturday nights and holds an open mic on the first Tuesday of the month, and a local magazine has called the stage one of the best places to see live music in the state. In 2025 the owners told KFYR they were looking at expanding the space for entertainment, which tells you how seriously the place takes its music.

What you'll get on the night is simple: short songs, big singalong choruses, and a frontman who has been doing it longer than most of the crowd has been alive. Get there in time for The Vexed, grab a beer, and find a spot near the front. At $15, the only real risk is waiting too long and missing out.

Sources: The Queers — Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org); Love Songs for the Retarded — Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org); Laughing Sun Brewing Co. (laughingsunbrewing.com); Laughing Sun owners looking at potential expansion for entertainment — KFYR (kfyrtv.com); Faces of Bismarck-Mandan — Spotlight Magazine (issuu.com); The Queers at Laughing Sun Brewing — JamBase (jambase.com); Tickets — The Ticketing Company (theticketing.co)