The Cowsills bring the family harmonies to Riverhead's Art Deco palace

The '60s hitmakers behind "The Rain, The Park and Other Things" and "Hair" play the Suffolk Theater on Sunday, Nov. 15.

Some rooms are built for a certain kind of song. The Suffolk Theater, a 1933 Art Deco movie palace on Riverhead's Main Street, was made for harmonies that fill a hall, and on Sunday, Nov. 15, it gets a family that has been singing them since the 1960s.

The Cowsills play The Suffolk Theater at 7 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 15. Tickets are sold through the Suffolk Theater, and the house holds 900. It's a Sunday-evening show, early enough to get home on a school night and late enough to make a dinner of it downtown first.

If the name rings a bell but the songs don't, the songs will come back fast. "The Rain, The Park and Other Things" climbed to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1967, with mother Barbara singing backup. "Indian Lake" followed in 1968, and in 1969 their version of "Hair," the title song from the Broadway musical, went to No. 2 as well. The group started as four brothers; Paul, Susan and Barbara joined later, and by the time they signed with MGM they were seven strong. It's no accident they're often called the real Partridge Family.

These days the act is siblings Bob, Paul and Susan Cowsill, and they've stayed busy. This summer they were back on the Happy Together tour, the package of '60s and '70s hitmakers that in 2026 also carried The Association, The Troggs, Jason Scheff, Gary Puckett, The Fortunes, Ron Dante and The Vogues. A New Jersey Stage review of the run's Morristown stop had the Cowsills opening the night.

There's new music coming too. At the Erie County Fair stop this summer, Bob Cowsill told News 4 Buffalo that the band has an a cappella record in the works, set for a Record Store Day release, and that they felt lucky to be picked for it. For a group whose whole calling card is voices locked together, an a cappella album is a fitting move. No title or date has been announced yet.

The room deserves its own paragraph. The Suffolk opened in December 1933, and local press of the day called it the "Radio City Music Hall of Long Island." It showed movies until it closed in 1987, then sat dark for years after the Town of Riverhead bought it in 1994. Dianne and Bob Castaldi bought the building in 2005 and spent years restoring it, down to its original color scheme, before it reopened as a performing arts venue on March 2, 2013. It's now described as the last large Art Deco theater left on Long Island.

What to know: this is the kind of crowd that buys early and shows up on time, so don't wait on tickets, and get there before 7 to find your seat. The Cowsills also have a Houston date on Dec. 10, but for the East End, this is the one.

Plenty of '60s acts tour on nostalgia alone. A family still making new records, in a room someone spent years bringing back to life, is a better reason to drive out east on a November Sunday.

Sources: The Cowsills (Wikipedia) (en.wikipedia.org); The Rain, The Park And Other Things (Songfacts) (songfacts.com); The real Partridge Family: the Cowsills are still happy (Beat Magazine) (beat-magazine.co.uk); Happily together at Ruth Eckerd: Susan Cowsill and her brothers (St. Pete Catalyst) (stpetecatalyst.com); Bob Cowsill talks Happy Together tour at 2026 Erie County Fair, new records (News 4 Buffalo) (wivb.com); 'Happy Together' Tour stops at Rose Music Center (Journal-News) (journal-news.com); The 2026 Happy Together Tour live at MPAC (New Jersey Stage) (newjerseystage.com); A spectacular gala reopening for Riverhead's Suffolk Theater (RiverheadLOCAL) (riverheadlocal.com); How the Castaldis saved Suffolk Theater (Dan's Papers) (danspapers.com); Suffolk Theater's second act (27east) (27east.com); Suffolk Theater (Cinema Treasures) (cinematreasures.org); Suffolk Theater (Art Deco Society of New York) (artdeco.org); Suffolk Theater tickets (suffolktheater.com); The Cowsills at The Suffolk Theater (JamBase) (jambase.com)