the walkmen tour 2023 uk

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The Walkmen to finally return to UK this summer with new London shows

The band are coming to London this summer

The Walkmen have announced their return to the UK this year with some new London shows – check out the dates below.

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The band, who surprised fans late last year with news that they would be reuniting for the first time in decade, will play two headline shows at London’s KOKO this August .

Tickets for the shows will go on pre-sale on January 31st at 10am, followed by a general sale on February 23. You can buy tickets for the shows here .

Check out the dates below:

AUGUST 29 – London, UK – KOKO 30 – London, UK – KOKO

The Walkmen’s lead singer Hamilton Leithauser discussed the band’s reunion for the first time last December in a new interview Vulture , including the question of whether or not there is new music to come from the post-punk revivalists.

“We haven’t discussed that. I’m working on so much stuff. I don’t see that happening right now,” he said. “I wouldn’t be against it in the future — I really love writing with those guys. Maybe after we play together we’ll be interested in that, but not right now.

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“We’re not going to turn into the  Pixies or something like that. Nobody wants to do that. We just wanted to do what was fun. We used to do this because we needed the money, and you have to get out and keep the engine running, so you say yes to things you maybe shouldn’t have. Now we just don’t need to. We’re doing only the stuff we want to do, and that’s a great feeling.”

Leithauser also said that he’s not seen any of his bandmates in person since deciding to reunite. “The funny part is going to be when everybody refuses to rehearse, which I know is going to happen — it’s the most Walkmen thing in the world.”

He did, however, reveal he is working on a new solo album. “I thought I finished it and then I stepped away to work on a documentary and I realised I wasn’t done,” he said.

He continued: “The thing I’m excited about is the big loud rock and roll I thought we did really well, which was the stuff I also got the most tired of doing. All electric guitars. I have songs like ‘A 1000 Times’, which takes as much energy as singing something like ‘The Rat’ but it’s intentionally acoustic.

“I don’t have that big power instrument. To play with Paul and Matt and Walt and Pete, it becomes this wall, this force. They’re great musicians. We did work for a very long time to come up with that sound. You may like it, you may not like it, but you really do know it’s us when it comes on.”

Bassist Peter Bauer  announced The Walkmen’s hiatus in November of 2013 , with the band playing a farewell show in Philadelphia the following month. “We have no future plans whatsoever,” he said at the time. They  performed for the last time before their hiatus in February 2014 , with a show in New Orleans.

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The Walkmen Extend 2023 Reunion Tour

By Matthew Strauss

The Walkmen finally reunited last month for a performance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert before playing a concert in Rhode Island and several at New York’s Webster Hall . They’re still on tour , and they’ll stay on tour for the foreseeable future, as they’ve announced more shows for September and October. Find the Walkmen’s tour dates below.

In a statement to go with the announcement of the new concerts, the Walkmen’s Peter Matthew Bauer said:

The last few weeks have been an absolute blast. Honestly, when we decided to get back together to play these shows, we had no idea if anyone would even show up. It’s been an incredible joy seeing all these people out there, playing these shows, getting to run into old friends from all over the world. There was a review of our first show back that said something really nice—that it felt like “time was bending back on itself.” It really has and it’s been the strangest feeling. We all flew to New York, had dinner at Hamilton [Leithauser] ’s house with his family and actually did not practice as promised. The next day we played the Stephen Colbert show live on television. I think each of us hold on to playing Letterman as a very important memory. So, to be back at the Ed Sullivan Theater and be playing this song for the first time in ten years with your friends was like an out of body experience. We are just getting going and I’m not really sure we want it to end. I will say, after being the dummy who I guess broke the band up last time saying something about an “ extreme hiatus ,” I’m going to avoid saying anything like that again. I will say, what makes it all special is when you don’t know what’s going to happen next and when you can actually wonder if this is the last time you’re ever going to get the chance to do this. Everything feels ragged and lively which is what all of us thought was good about the band in the first place. So, I don’t know what happens next but I do know these shows are just about the end of what’s happening now. We are headed west across the USA this fall. We’ll go all the way to California and the Pacific Northwest and play cities we haven’t in many years ultimately ending back east. Also, there’s still some tickets available for our UK run, so check the site and grab. We’ve got maybe one or two more in us to announce in the coming weeks. But that is it (I guess?).

Read Pitchfork’s review of Hamilton Leithauser’s 2020 solo album, The Loves of Your Life .

All products featured on Pitchfork are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

The Walkmen:

05-17 Chicago, IL - The Metro 05-18 Chicago, IL - The Metro 05-19 Chicago, IL - The Metro 05-20 Chicago, IL - The Metro 05-23 Washington, D.C. - 9:30 Club 05-24 Washington, D.C. - 9:30 Club 05-25 Washington, D.C. - 9:30 Club 05-26 Washington, D.C. - 9:30 Club 05-28 Boston, MA - Boston Calling Music Festival 05-31 Washington, D.C. - The Atlantis 06-10 Copenhagen, Denmark - Syd for Solen 08-17 Paredes de Coura, Portugal - Paredes de Coura Festival 08-17-20 Crickhowell, Wales - Green Man Festival 08-21 Glasgow, Scotland - SWG3 Galvanizers 08-23 Dublin, Ireland - Vicar Street 08-26 Manchester, England - New Century 08-29 London, Eggland - Koko 08-30 London, Eggland - Koko 08-31 London, Eggland - Koko 09-16 Nashville, TN - Brooklyn Bowl 09-18 Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue 09-21 Denver, CO - Ogden Theatre 09-24 Seattle, WA - The Showbox 09-26 Portland, OR - Aladdin Theater 09-29 Oakland, CA - Fox Theater 10-02 Los Angeles, CA - The Fonda Theatre 10-03 Los Angeles, CA - The Fonda Theatre 10-06-08 Austin, TX - Austin City Limits Festival 10-11 Toronto, Ontario - History

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The Walkmen Extend 2023 Tour Dates: Ticket Presale Code & On-Sale Info

by Francesco Marano

Published july 19, 2023.

This week, The Walkmen added 2023 tour dates to their schedule.

Billed as the 2023 Revenge Tour , newly planned North American shows are set in October with opening act Rostam on select concerts.

In the coming weeks, The Walkmen have festival performances and headlining shows in the UK and Ireland. The band returns to North America in September.

The Walkmen Tour Dates and Tickets Near You

The walkmen all tour dates and tickets, when do the walkmen 2023 tour tickets go on sale and what is the presale code.

For the new dates, the general public on-sale begins as early as July 21. Presales are currently underway for Artist and American Express cardholders. Local venues / radio presales will follow. Tickets for the previously announced shows are now on sale. Keep in mind, each date is different and details are subject to change.

The Artist presale password is BOWS . For the American Express cardmember presale you can use the promo password INGOLD , but you'll need the card to complete your purchase. Click through the individual concert links for more information about the show you're interested in.

For the most up-to-date information, follow The Walkmen on social media and sign up for the email newsletter , in addition to checking your local venue's social media and email subscription service.

For more, check out The Walkmen's Zumic artist page .

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The Walkmen 27th August 2023

Time: 19:00 - 23:00, price: £30 + bf, fkp scorpio presents the walkmen + almost nothing 14+ (under 16s must be accompanied by an adult).

The Walkmen are an influential NYC art rock band who released 6 full length albums before disbanding. Now reunited, 2023 brings their first shows together in a decade. The band is made up of five Washington DC natives: Hamilton Leithauser, Paul Maroon, Matt Barrick, Walter Martin and Peter Bauer.

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The Walkmen add UK shows to 2023 ‘Revenge’ tour

The Walkmen have added a number of UK shows to their 2023 ‘Revenge’ tour – see dates below and find tickets here .

In January, they announced their return to the UK with some new London shows. The band, who surprised fans late last year  with news that they would be reuniting for the first time in decade, will play two headline shows at London’s KOKO this August .

Now, The Walkmen have added further dates, including shows in Glasgow, Manchester and Dublin, with an additional London date. Tickets for the new dates go on sale this Friday, March 31 and can be found here .

In addition to the UK dates, the band are due to play a number of shows at New York’s Webster Hall in April. They’ll be at the venue April 24-28, before heading to Philadelphia, Atlanta and more cities in the US.

Glasgow, Dublin and Manchester – we’re headed your way in August. Sign up for presale tickets now – https://t.co/0MveHdUagR pic.twitter.com/DWgPTlQp0I — The Walkmen (@TheWalkmen) March 27, 2023

The Walkmen’s  lead singer Hamilton Leithauser discussed the band’s reunion for the first time last December  in a new interview  Vulture , including the question of whether or not there is new music to come from the post-punk revivalists.

“We haven’t discussed that. I’m working on so much stuff. I don’t see that happening right now,” he said. “I wouldn’t be against it in the future — I really love writing with those guys. Maybe after we play together we’ll be interested in that, but not right now.

“We’re not going to turn into the  Pixies  or something like that. Nobody wants to do that. We just wanted to do what was fun. We used to do this because we needed the money, and you have to get out and keep the engine running, so you say yes to things you maybe shouldn’t have. Now we just don’t need to. We’re doing only the stuff we want to do, and that’s a great feeling.”

Bassist Peter Bauer  announced The Walkmen’s hiatus in November of 2013 , with the band playing a farewell show in Philadelphia the following month. “We have no future plans whatsoever,” he said at the time. They  performed for the last time before their hiatus in February 2014 , with a show in New Orleans.

The Walkmen’s UK tour 2023:

AUGUST 21 – SWG3 Galvanisers, Glasgow 23 – Vicar Street, Dublin 26 – New Century, Manchester 29 – KOKO, London *SOLD OUT* 30 – KOKO, London 31 – KOKO, London

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The Walkmen’s ‘Extreme Hiatus’ Extremely Over With More 2023 Reunion Shows

By Jon Blistein

Jon Blistein

New York City indie rock veterans the Walkmen have added more dates to a reunion run that will find them playing their first shows in 10 years.

The band previously announced their plans to reunite with five concerts at Webster Hall in New York City, April 24 through 28 (those have already sold out). They’ve now scheduled shows in Philadelphia (May 2 and 3), Chicago (May 19 and 20), and Washington D.C. (May 25 and 26).

Tickets for the newly announced shows will go on sale this Friday, Dec. 9 at 10 a.m. local time. Fans can also sign up for an artist pre-sale, which will start Dec. 7 at 10 a.m. local time. Full info is available on the Walkmen’s website .

On top of the club shows, the Walkmen are also slated to perform at the 2023 Shaky Knees festival in Atlanta, May 7. Additional festival gigs are expected to be announced soon.

In the intervening decade, the members of the Walkmen have embarked on an array of projects. Frontman Hamilton Leithauser released a string of solo and collaborative albums, including 2016’s I Had a Dream That You Were Mine with Rostam. Guitarist Walter Martin , as well as bassist Peter Bauer, also released their own solo projects, and the latter even did some NBA playoff blogging for Rolling Stone in 2014.

Upon announcing their initial reunion shows, Leithauser said in a statement, “Back in 2013, an unnamed Walkmen band member (Peter Bauer) announced to the Washington Post that we were going on an ‘extreme hiatus.’ I assumed that meant there would be a lot of monster energy drinks and maybe that red-headed snowboarder guy would be hanging around a lot…but none of that actually happened.

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The Walkmen 2023 Tour Dates

April 24 – New York, NY @ Webster Hall (Sold Out) April 25 – New York, NY @ Webster Hall (Sold Out) April 26 – New York, NY @ Webster Hall (Sold Out) April 27 – New York, NY @ Webster Hall (Sold Out) April 28 – New York, NY @ Webster Hall (Sold Out) May 2 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer May 3 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer May 7 – Atlanta, GA @ Shaky Knees Festival May 19 – Chicago, IL @ The Metro May 20 – Chicago, IL @ The Metro May 25 – Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club May 26 – Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club

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The Walkmen

A band formed around a trio of former members of cult band Jonathan Fire*Eater. Expect traces of The Velvet Underground, 'Boy'-era U2, Jeff Buckley more...

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Past Events

Here are the most recent UK tour dates we had listed for The Walkmen. Were you there?

• Aug 31 2023 London, KOKO The Walkmen
• Aug 30 2023 London, KOKO The Walkmen
• Aug 29 2023 London, KOKO The Walkmen
• Aug 27 2023 SWX Bristol The Walkmen
• Aug 26 2023 Manchester, New Century Hall The Walkmen
• Aug 25 2023 London, Victoria Park All Points East 2023 - The Strokes Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Girl In Red, Amyl And The Sniffers, Angel Olsen…
• Aug 22 2023 Leeds, Project House The Walkmen
• Aug 21 2023 Glasgow, SWG3 The Walkmen
• Aug 20 2023 Manchester, YES The Walkmen
• 2023 Aug 17 Aug 20 2023 Brecon Beacons Green Man 2023 DEVO, The Comet Is Coming, The Delgados, Beth Orton, Dur-Dur Band…

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Are the Walkmen finally back together, or did they never break up?

Members of the beloved early-'00s rock band talk about their first tour in a decade, and why they hit pause.

WESTERLY, R.I. — Let’s get one thing straight: The Walkmen never broke up.

You’d be forgiven if you thought they had. The New York-via-D. C. rockers — consisting of first cousins Hamilton Leithauser and Walter Martin and their childhood friends Paul Maroon, Peter Bauer and Matt Barrick — did stop playing shows and releasing new music in early 2014. But they’re adamant they never broke up. Would that even really be possible for a group of guys who played music together and apart in various iterations and various bands (Jonathan Fire*Eater, the Ignobles, the Recoys) since they were teens bumming around the original 9:30 Club in Washington?

So, no, they never broke up. But, in a 2013 interview with Express , The Washington Post’s now-shuttered commuter paper, Bauer said the band had “no future plans whatsoever. I’d call it a pretty extreme hiatus.” It led to a slew of headlines like AltWire’s “The Walkmen Pretty Much Just Broke Up.” “Slow Burn, Slow Fade: Inside The Walkmen’s Final Days” offered Stereogum.

“Pete spilled the beans to The Washington Post. I never thought we were breaking up,” says Leithauser. “It turned into one of those viral news stories.”

Whatever it was, it’s over. On April 18, the band roared back to life playing their hit song “The Rat” on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” its first public performance in almost a decade.

Now the Walkmen are touring the United States and abroad, but it’s not a reunion tour. Pick a different seven-letter word beginning with R. It’s called the Revenge Tour. Whom are they getting revenge on? Who knows. Maybe us, for printing Bauer’s words so long ago.

“We never meant to break up! I wish that story would catch fire,” says Leithauser. “It started in The Washington Post. Maybe it can end there.”

O n a chilly Friday morning a few days after the Colbert performance, the quaint, quiet streets of Westerly fill with the sudden, pummeling and potent sound of “The Rat,” thundering from the United Theatre a few blocks away. “The hell? …” says an old man walking up the steps of the YMCA building as he whips his head around.

“We’re loud,” Leithauser later says. “We’re still loud. We’re one of the loudest bands going.”

The Walkmen, whose members mostly trace their beginnings to their time spent as students at Washington’s elite St. Albans School (one went to Maret), formed in 2000, amid the New York rock revival that produced the Strokes, Interpol, the National, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the Hold Steady and seemingly a thousand other guitar-and-drum-driven groups.

“They were the greatest band to come out of that new wave of rock-and-roll,” says the National’s Aaron Dessner, citing the Walkmen as the biggest influence on his band. “We were always the Midwestern, uncool, turtle version of the Walkmen, in a way.”

Their song titles (“Little House of Savages,” “Woe Is Me” and the aforementioned “The Rat,” which was named the 20th best song of the 2000s by Pitchfork) suggest a kind of music best listened to when 2 a.m. gets a little fuzzy and the edges begin to blur. Leithauser’s signature howl and Barrick’s insistent drumming often contrasted with Martin’s and Bauer’s warm organs and plinking pianos, while Maroon’s jangly guitars could attack and comfort in equal measure. They make earsplitting rockers alongside atmospheric dirges and follow their muse anywhere, such as re-creating, in full, Harry Nilsson and John Lennon’s “Pussy Cats.”

In 2012, they released “Heaven,” arguably their warmest album, filled with songs about finding, well, heaven in friends and family and bandmates. No throat-scorching fury here, just a collection of pretty songs to listen to by daylight.

They lived across the country at the time — New Orleans, New York, Philly — had wives and kids and were growing wary of life on the road. “When we were really doing it, we struggled. Always. From the beginning through the highest parts,” Martin says. “Just to keep it going. It’s five people. A lot of time five people living in New York City. A lot of time with families. It was hard, carrying our own stuff and being in the van.”

“Being in a band definitely does a lot of problematic stuff to your psychology. Makes you a mess in like 90 different ways,” Bauer adds. “I think that was one thing for us as adults. Like, why are these five guys driving around in a van? It’s f---ing weird.”

After releasing “Heaven,” they were finally out of fuel and ready for something new, hinted at by the first lines on the record: “I was the Duke of Earl, but it couldn’t last. I was the Pony Express, but I ran out of gas.”

“We just felt like we didn’t need to make another record at that point. We just reached a very logical place to stop,” says Maroon. “We were just exhausted. We were about to turn 40, all of us. We all had little kids, and we didn’t want to be touring so much.”

“We didn’t want the Walkmen to be our entire lives,” he adds.

Bauer started a management company and put out a few records. Barrick tried photography and video work for a while, but soon returned to music as a session drummer for artists like Fleet Foxes, Sharon Van Etten and Craig Finn. “Eventually I wanted to travel less and keep making music, so I decided to build my own studio in Philly,” he says.

Martin, who says he “doesn’t fancy myself a singer,” wanted to write music he could sing (perhaps in the vein of Randy Newman) and found a niche making children’s music. After the death of his friend and Jonathan Fire*Eater bandmate Stewart Lupton, he made contemplative adult music often infused with childlike wonder.

Maroon began writing scores, including the one for the Oscar-winning documentary “Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405,” and classical music, first focusing on piano compositions with pianist Jenny Lin and moving on to string quartets. “It wasn’t satisfying to write rock-and-roll anymore. I wanted something I’d be comfortable doing when I’m 75 or 80,” he says. “I wanted something I could sit down and do on my own schedule until I drop dead.”

Leithauser, meanwhile, began scoring movies and podcasts but mostly continued down the rock-and-roll path — often with collaborator, fellow D.C. native and former Vampire Weekend member Rostam Batmanglij — though it wasn’t always an easy road, partially thanks to that whole “extreme hiatus” quote coming out right as he released his first solo album. “Then the whole breakup story became a bigger story than my solo record that I’d been working on for so long,” he says, adding that it overshadowed “everything I was doing for at least two years.”

All anyone asked him about was the band. During his first European tour, “people would say, ‘Oh you’re the guy from the Walkmen! I didn’t know your name, but then I heard your voice.’ I got that message over and over. Nobody knew my name, but they sort of knew the sound of my voice. It was a lot more like starting over than I ever thought it would be.”

Y ears piled up, and the band’s manager regularly floated the idea of a tour, but no one was particularly interested. “I don’t want to be negative, but no, I honestly didn’t really miss it,” Martin says of the band during those years, a sentiment every member echoed in one way or another.

But as time went on, a pull began forming, and a decade felt like a good time to revisit the band, or reunite, or doing whatever this is. About a year ago, Leithauser’s mom died. “The first time the five of us had ever been in the same room was at her funeral,” he says. “I had the guys come over afterward, and we were all sort of standing there. And then it was funny, we were like ‘Oh my God, it’s the Walkmen.’ We hadn’t even thought of it until it happened. It was just nice to see everybody.”

It sparked something. “Everything changes when something like that happens in your life,” he says. “I remember thinking, ‘I know that my mom would have been really psyched to hear the Walkmen.’ I sort of suggested it to my dad and sister and stuff, and they were like, ‘That’d be great! We’d love to see the Walkmen.’ And my little nieces and my daughters, they don’t even know what the Walkmen is, really. I was just thinking about my family and I thought it would be really fun for them to all see it. I think that’s what changed my attitude, to be honest.”

One by one, every member of the Walkmen — planted firmly in middle age, 40 in the rearview — agreed to a tour, though in typical Walkmen fashion, they never discussed it among themselves. “We have a text chain where we send dumb jokes to each other, and we continued to not talk about it,” Bauer says. “Eventually we had a Zoom meeting or something dumb like that.”

Which soon brought them to Westerly.

T hat late-morning surprise of “The Rat” ringing throughout Westerly like an air-raid siren was perhaps the band’s first-ever true rehearsal. Certainly the first in nearly 10 years. Which might strike you as odd, given that they played the song on national television only three days earlier, but that’s pretty much what you need to know about the band. They insist they never plan.

So, before the Colbert appearance, “We did not rehearse,” Bauer says. “We had dinner.” Backstage, they just went through their catalogue and named their worst songs. “I didn’t remember half of them,” says Barrick.

The performance went off without a hitch. “We walked right in there. And it was a little messy,” says Maroon. “But I feel like that’s who we are. It’s nice to see a mess every now and then.” Days later, they decided to rehearse. Why not? There’s a first time for everything.

It’s hard not to think it’s all a bit, but that lack of planning becomes obvious while I’m interviewing them. A couple of guys have a camera crew set up to film the interviews for a short documentary about the band (kind of but not really) reuniting. There’s a spotlight and a tripod and everything. It’s very “60 Minutes,” and leads to a version of this convo with the band members:

“Is The Washington Post filming this?”

“Uh, no … those are your guys.”

“Really?! I wonder what for!”

That lack of planning is partially the reason they chose to hold their first show in nearly a decade in this charming, quiet beach town with signs everywhere announcing the following weekend’s rubber-duck race. It’s where Taylor Swift bought that giant seaside house and wrote her umpteenth hit “The Last Great American Dynasty” about it .

Westerly offers a nice juxtaposition to the Walkmen in that it was actually planned, at least somewhat, by a wealth manager named Chuck Royce, the chairman of the board at Royce Funds, who has a passion for revitalizing small towns. “I very much believe a downtown is critical to the success of the entire town,” he says. Though investment, donations and leadership, he’s brought to Westerly restored hotels, independent bookstores, bespoke cocktail bars, high-end restaurants and an enormous education center.

At the heart of the revitalization is the United Theatre, the movie theater and events space where the band’s Revenge Tour begins. Attached to the venue is a cafe named the Café that serves dishes like plump baked oysters under a bed of crusty parmesan and breadcrumbs, well-balanced smash burgers and toastettes topped with chicken liver mousse and pink ribbons of pickled red onions. The kind of place where a Leithauser song pops on, moments after I’ve interviewed him in a corner booth.

T he band begins Saturday’s show with “They’re Winning,” the first track on their first album and closed the encore with “We’ve Been Had,” the first song they ever wrote, one of their more recognizable tunes. Onstage, Leithauser still banshee-screams like a wolverine is clawing its way out of his throat. Barrick’s drums still boom louder than the march of an encroaching army. Maroon’s guitars still batter the audience.

“It’s fun. We sound exactly the same,” says Maroon. “I didn’t know what to expect. Honestly, I thought it would be a little bit strange. But being back with the guys is just so comfortable.” The others agree. “It’s like a time capsule,” says Martin. “It’s like I suddenly have my pizza delivery job that I had when I was in college again.”

After Westerly, the band played five nights at Manhattan’s Webster Hall before heading south. Will there be new music? Maroon: “I think this is what it is.” Martin: “I think it’s ‘We’ll see.’ We don’t really plan, and we’ve never talked about doing new music.” Barrick: “There has been no talk of new music. … Who knows what will happen?” Leithauser sidesteps the question. Off-the-record? Bauer: “I don’t care about off-the-record at all. I think probably all four of them would say no, and I would keep it cagey.”

Let the record show that the Walkmen also know when to keep things quiet.

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