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For nearly two decades, the nostalgia-filled summer package "Happy Together" Tour has brought together chart-topping bands from the '60s and '70s.
The 2026 lineup features The Association, The Troggs, former Chicago vocalist Jason Scheff, Gary Puckett, The Fortunes, Ron Dante (of The Archies and The Turtles), The Vogues and The Cowsills. The tour stops at Rose Music Center on Saturday, Aug. 22.
Among this year's performers is Susan Cowsill of The Cowsills, the family band that inspired the hit television series "The Partridge Family." The group's best-known hits include "Hair," "Indian Lake," and "The Rain, The Park & Other Things."
"The '60s and '70s were kind of a real highlight for music in general," Susan said. "The music that we were all making at that time was very hopeful, most of it very positive. It was a time when we were longing to feel better about what was going on in the world. People were writing songs that were feel-good songs, kind of writing against the times."
This marks either the band's 12th or 13th year on the "Happy Together" Tour.
"We have discrepancies," Susan said with a laugh. "Even though there's numbers involved, which are pretty finite, memories are not."
Susan said a new generation has increasingly discovered the "Happy Together" Tour over the past few years. While the "Flower Power" generation still makes up a majority of the crowd, younger folks, who likely discovered the music by way of their parents or grandparents, are coming out too.
"We're in a time in the world where times are hard," Susan said. "We want to feel better. This music, once again, is kind of a salve to our universal woes. It's magic."
The concert poster promises "an outrageous concert." That slogan dates back to the tour's origins, when founding Turtles members Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan - later members of Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention - infused the show with their trademark comedy. Volman died in 2025.
"We are still quite outrageous this year because there's eight acts," Susan said. "As you will see, we can barely fit all of us on a stage for a bow at the end of the night, which is my favorite part because it's ridiculously hilarious."
For the finale, all of the performers join together to sing The Turtles' 1967 hit "Happy Together."
"It's really palpable on an emotional level," Susan said. "To me, the whole show is because of the mutual experience we're having with the audience. By the end of it, we're all maxed out. We just feel like we're all riding home from the beach in 1969. Memories and emotions of a life lived are real things. They get illuminated at a 'Happy Together' Tour. You feel it for days."
The Cowsills open the show each night, then spend the remainder of the evening watching the other acts from the wings.
"When you get a group of folks together for a like-minded moment, that energy is already amazing," Susan said. "And the moment is just joyous songs that we've sung all our lives. Music is medicine for the soul. But when you compact that with a giant group, dude, there's nothing like what you’re gonna experience."
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