The My Generation Tour brings The Lovin’ Spoonful to Ocean City on Jan. 2

The first big night of 2027 at the Performing Arts Center is a singles-era revue: The Lovin’ Spoonful, Gary Lewis & The Playboys, The Hollies featuring Terry Sylvester and Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels.

The boardwalk will be shuttered and the wind off the inlet will be sharp, but on the second night of 2027 there is a reason to drive down Coastal Highway: the My Generation Tour is coming to Ocean City.

The show is set for Saturday, Jan. 2, 2027, at 7 p.m. at the Ocean City Performing Arts Center, the 1,200-seat theater inside the Roland E. Powell Convention Center on 40th Street. The bill, as the town announced it with the center's new season, is The Lovin’ Spoonful, Gary Lewis & The Playboys, The Hollies featuring Terry Sylvester, and Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels.

That last billing is worth reading closely. This is not a Hollies reunion; elsewhere on the tour the set is billed as "The Hollies Greatest Hits starring Terry Sylvester," a singer who was part of the band's lineup. Likewise, the tour's own billing says original Lovin’ Spoonful co-founder Steve Boone appears on select dates, and none of the material we found says whether Ocean City is one of them. If that matters to you, ask the box office before you buy.

What the night promises is clear enough. Producer Jim Della Croce pitches the show as a tour through the golden singles era of pop, roughly 1965 to 1975. "This was the magic time where hit singles ruled the charts and won our hearts," he says in the tour's promotional copy. Gary Lewis & The Playboys are best known for "This Diamond Ring," and The Lovin’ Spoonful for "Do You Believe in Magic."

The format has a track record. When the tour filled the State Theatre in Easton, Pa., this spring, Lehigh Valley News reported that Gary Lewis and his four-piece band played a 55-minute, 14-song set that covered all seven of his Top 10 hits. Expect a fast-moving revue, not a long night from one headliner. Mitch Ryder's band joins the package for this run; at other stops he has opened the evening as a special guest.

The room suits this kind of show. The Performing Arts Center is a proper seated theater, not the exhibit floor next door. It is big enough to feel like an event and small enough that the back rows can still see the guitars. In January, with most of the resort closed, it is also one of the few places in town where a crowd gathers on a Saturday night. Locals from Berlin and Salisbury can make it home before the roads get slick, and anyone visiting from across the bridge can make a weekend of the off-season hotel rates.

Tickets: buy through the town's official Performing Arts Center site or at the convention center box office. Resale listings are already up and can run well above face value, so go to the official sellers first. Seated theater shows with this kind of nostalgia draw tend to sell from the front rows back, so if you want to be close, buy early.

For an audience that bought these songs on 45s, it is a chance to hear them sung loud in a full room one more time, a few blocks from the ocean, with the year barely a day old.

Sources: Ocean City’s Performing Arts Center Announces Packed Upcoming Season (Town of Ocean City) (oceancitymd.gov); Upcoming Events – Ocean City Performing Arts Center (ococean.com); Performing Arts Center – Ocean City, Maryland (ococean.com); The My Generation Tour – Foxwoods (foxwoods.com); My Generation Tour – Genesee Theatre (geneseetheatre.com); Review: My Generation Tour fills State Theatre – Lehigh Valley News (lehighvalleynews.com)