The moment of truth has finally come. Former J. Geils Band frontman and Metro Times cover boy Peter Wolf, still riding the wave of his bestselling 2025 memoir, Waiting on the Moon, is ready to man the bandstand once again Friday night in the Motor City.
The Bronx native and former late-night Boston radio DJ known as “the Woofa Goofa” has long been a towering figure in the annals of Detroit rock ’n’ roll history.
From the Geils Band’s slew of high-energy shows at the Eastown in 1971 to their raucous 1972 gigs at the Grande Ballroom to their ever larger shows at Cobo Arena in the late ’70s and at Pine Knob in the early ’80s, Wolf has made an indelible mark on his adopted hometown over the last 55 years.
But it was 1972’s frenzied Full House album, recorded live over two sweat-soaked nights at Detroit’s Cinderella Ballroom, that really captures what the Geils Band was all about. To commemorate these storied shows, Rhino Entertainment earlier this month issued the much-anticipated vinyl re-release of Full House, which includes some new liner notes from the Woofa Goofa himself.
“This recording encapsulates the energy and spontaneity we always tried to give our audiences,” Wolf writes. “What you hear is the true, raw, unfiltered sound of the J. Geils Band, performing what we did every night.”
The Geils Band’s signature live album still rocks after all these years, and, man, does it roll. Or as Wolf told us last summer, “It just goes like a steamroller.”
Wolf fondly recalls the passion of Detroit rock ’n’ roll audiences in the 1970s. “They got crazy, and we got twice as crazy,” he says. “We’d get twice as crazy, and they got three times as crazy — it was like a real love affair.”
Over the last year, Wolf has celebrated the release of his riveting memoir with well-received book events all along the East Coast, and his fans in the Motor City are hopeful that he’ll be back in town later this year for a proper Detroit book breakdown.
Now with a new solo album nearly complete, Wolf has been makin’ the rounds and sharing new sounds out east in recent weeks, but on Friday night he’ll be back onstage in Detroit, along with his unindicted co-conspirators, the Midnight Travelers.
Wolf and the band will be performing classic jams from yesteryear, as well as some of his heartfelt new material. And the frenetic frontman, who just celebrated his 80th birthday, is showing no signs of slowing down.
That’s only fitting because whenever Wolf touches down in Motown, he can’t help but put his pedal to the metal.
“Even if we were on the road for weeks doing one-nighters,” he says, “by the time we got to Detroit … our adrenaline just picked up. It was like makin’ love — once you start, you just didn’t wanna stop.”
Peter Wolf and the Midnight Travelers are set to blow your face out live Friday night at the Fillmore. Doors at 7 p.m., showtime at 8. The Fillmore Detroit is located at 2115 Woodward Ave., Detroit. Tickets are available at ticketmaster.com or stubhub.com.
This article appears in April 15-28, 2026.
