Tommy James has been performing “Hanky Panky” for sixty years now, and the remarkable thing — the thing worth noting before anything else — is that the catalog hasn’t aged into nostalgia bait. It has aged into inevitability. The songs that James and the Shondells assembled between 1966 and 1969 are so woven into the American sonic fabric that they feel less like compositions than facts of nature, and a Riviera Theatre booking this August offers western New York a rare chance to hear them delivered by the man who wrote them.
About Tommy James & The Shondells
The Shondells formed in Niles, Michigan in 1964, but their commercial story begins with a Pittsburgh DJ who dusted off a three-year-old recording of “Hanky Panky” and set off a regional sensation that delivered the band a Roulette Records contract in 1966. What followed was one of the more concentrated runs of hit-making in late-’60s pop: 14 top-40 singles in three years, including the number-one hits “Hanky Panky” and “Crimson and Clover,” and chart entries that ranged from bubblegum (“I Think We’re Alone Now”) to the lysergic drift of “Crystal Blue Persuasion.” The band disbanded in 1970, and then something unusual happened: the catalog got bigger in their absence. Tiffany took “I Think We’re Alone Now” back to number one in 1987. Billy Idol made “Mony Mony” a stadium anthem. Joan Jett recorded “Crimson and Clover” with enough menace to convince a generation they had discovered it themselves. The result is a body of work that now spans demographic categories in ways most acts from that era can only envy.
James has remained active and intellectually engaged with his own legacy — hosting Gettin’ Together with Tommy James on SiriusXM’s 60s Gold channel, preparing a film adaptation of his autobiography Me, The Mob, and the Music with producer Barbara De Fina attached, and continuing to tour at a pace that would exhaust artists twenty years his junior. The 2026 itinerary includes dates at PNC Bank Arts Center in New Jersey, the Minnesota State Fair, and Arcada Theatre in Illinois. North Tonawanda is in very solid company.
About the Riviera Theatre
The Riviera Theatre is one of the better rooms in western New York for this kind of show. The 1,140-seat historic movie palace opened in 1926, holds a place on both the New York State Register and the National Register of Historic Places, and has been maintained with the kind of care most venues of its vintage have not received. Its “Mighty Wurlitzer” theatre organ — one of only two original Wurlitzer demonstrator organs remaining in existence — is a draw in its own right. The intimacy of a room that size, relative to the scale of what James’s catalog commands, will work in this evening’s favor.
Tickets & Pricing
Tommy James & The Shondells perform at the Riviera Theatre, 67 Webster St, North Tonawanda, NY 14120, on Saturday, August 1, 2026, at 7:30 PM. Tickets are $79 and available through the Riviera Theatre event page.