The Growlers bring their comeback to The Queen on April 15

After a long pause and a 2026 world tour, the Beach Goth band adds a spring 2027 date in downtown Wilmington; tickets are on sale now.

For a few years, if you wanted The Growlers you had to settle for the records. Next spring the band will be on Market Street.

The Growlers play Main Hall at The Queen on Thursday, April 15, 2027, at 8 p.m. The date is on the band's own tour page, with tickets through Ticketmaster. A presale started Oct. 22, and general sales opened Friday, Oct. 23, at 10 a.m., so as of today tickets are available to everyone.

Wilmington sits in a run up the East Coast. The band plays The Underground in Charlotte on April 11 and Music Farm in Charleston on April 13, then the Wilmington date, then The Stone Pony in Asbury Park the next night. A Thursday night at The Queen puts Wilmington ahead of the Jersey Shore on this run, and it is an easier trip for anyone coming from Philadelphia or Baltimore than a weekend on the shore.

This is a band in the middle of a comeback. The Growlers stopped full-scale touring in 2019. In the years after, frontman Brooks Nielsen released five solo albums and played hundreds of shows under his own name, ending that chapter with two sold-out nights at the Hollywood Palladium on Oct. 30 and 31, 2025. The band reconvened for a 2026 world tour that opened at the Northcote Theatre in Melbourne, went through Europe in March and then crossed North America. When the tour reached Brooklyn Steel this April, NYS Music called it a long-awaited return.

The lineup now around Nielsen is guitarist JD Carrera, keyboardist Cole Riddle, drummer Richard Gowen, bassist Max Kaplan and guitarist Thomas Hunter. They have been building on singles, not a new album. "Crisis" and "Jack the Knife" from 2025 were played live for the first time on the tour's opening night, "Feel My Funk" followed, and the archival *Beach Goth Tape* is out too. Expect the old catalog's loose, woozy surf-rock swing with the new songs worked in among the favorites.

The Queen is a good fit for that. Main Hall holds about 900, enough for a real crowd and small enough to stay sweaty, in a restored theater building at 500 N. Market St. that has become downtown's main room for touring bands. For a band that built its reputation on sweaty, costumed, slightly unhinged nights, a room that size, with a balcony and a bar, is the right scale.

Tickets: buy through Ticketmaster from the link on the band's tour page, not a reseller.

April is a long way off. Put it on the calendar anyway: it's a weeknight, it's close to home, and the band is back.

Sources: The Growlers – Tour Dates (official) (thegrowlers.com); The Growlers Tickets – Ticketmaster (ticketmaster.com); The Growlers – Live Nation (livenation.com); The Growlers Long Awaited Return Hits Brooklyn Steel – NYS Music (nysmusic.com); The Growlers – Miami Marketta (tour bio) (miamimarketta.com); The Growlers (USA) – The Music (themusic.com.au)