Peter Wolf blew away the crowd at The Somerville Theatre last Thursday night. — Photo by Matt Stone

By Daniel Sullivan

When I heard that Peter Wolf, front man for the legendary J. Geils Band, would be performing at the Somerville Theatre on Thursday night, May 12, I got tickets right away.

Wolf just released his latest album, A Cure for Loneliness, which has received great reviews from a couple of other Boston papers.

Wolf, who just turned seventy, has formed a new and highly touted tour band, The Midnight Travelers. Any thoughts I might have had that Peter Wolf has slowed down even a little were quickly dispelled. High-energy does not begin to describe the one hour and forty-five minute show. As they say in the biz, he crushed it.

Wolf began the show by mixing in some of his new songs with R&B standards.  After his new bluesy and soulful ballad Some Other Time, Some Other Place drew warm and lasting applause, we heard those unmistakable first four chords of Lookin’ For A Lover and the house party was on.

For the next hour the show became raucously and delightfully interactive as Wolf belted out old J. Geils hits including Give It To Me, I Musta Got Lost, and his own Lights Out. After two songs into his encore, amid wild applause he said, “I can’t leave you now,” and gave us two more.

I had more fun at this concert than I have had in a long time. If there is any doubt in anyone’s mind, old Woober Goober has still got it.