Summer's Not Done: A Loaded Weekend, and a Wild Late-August on Deck
Here's the trap of mid-August: you feel summer slipping and you start pre-writing the eulogy. Resist it. The Wilmington calendar isn't winding down — it's about to sprint to the finish, and this weekend is the on-ramp.
The anchor is Saturday, Aug 15, when Gooch and the Motion play The Queen (listed at 8 p.m.). It's a groove-forward, get-off-the-wall booking for a warm August night — the kind of show that rewards people who'd rather dance than nod — and a nice palate cleanser after a summer that's leaned heavy and loud on Market Street. Bring a crowd; bands like this are only as fun as the room's willingness to move.
Around it, the free stuff keeps humming: the Riverfront Summer Lunchtime Concert Series runs its Wednesday-afternoon sets at the Hare Overlook Pavilion right up through the end of the month, so there's still time to bank one last daylight show by the water before Labor Day. And the neighborhood rooms — Trolley Square's Kelly's Logan House, Bellefonte's near-nightly Bellefonte Cafe, the folk-and-roots Arden Gild Hall out in the arts colony — keep the between-the-headliners economy alive the way they always do.
But the real reason to keep your calendar open is what's stacking up right behind this weekend. The Queen's late-August slate is genuinely stacked: emo-punk favorites Joyce Manor on Aug 18, Fat Mezz on Aug 22, alt-metal titans Helmet on Aug 27, and NYC rock-and-roll lifer Jesse Malin on Aug 29 — a run that would be a proud month for a city twice our size, crammed into two weeks in ours. That's not the schedule of a scene running out of gas. That's a scene flexing.
So treat this weekend as what it is: not the last gasp of summer but the first note of a big finish. Go move your feet to Gooch and the Motion on Saturday, then look at that late-August board and buy at least one ticket to something that scares you a little. The mistake every August is assuming the good part is over. In Wilmington this year, the good part is still loading.
Confirm times with the box office, tip the openers, and don't you dare start mourning summer yet. There's a lot of noise left in this town before September.
Sources: The Queen — Bandsintown; The Queen — Wilmington Concert Schedule (Concertfix)