Phillyist Playlist: Fooling April Plays Abbey Road at World Cafe Live

In June 2007, we were privileged to attend WXPN's Philly Local Lonely Hearts Club Band, featuring the likes of Jim Boggia, Kuf Knotz, and Andrew Lipke. The show was also our introduction to a young New Jersey-based singer-songwriter with whom we've become mildly obsessed over the past couple years: Matt Duke. It was, and remains today, one of the best shows we've ever been to. And one of the main acts that we have to thank for that night—its house band—has become another favorite of ours in their own right. We're talking, of course, about Fooling April.

Thankfully for us, Fooling April had almost as good of a time paying tribute to Sgt. Pepper as we did watching them do it. So they've decided to give the Beatles tribute thing another go-round on April Fool's Day this year. This time around, it's the Beatles' penultimate (or ultimate, depending on whether you're measuring by recording date or release date) masterpiece, Abbey Road. We're naturally amped up for this show, as is Fooling April. We had a chance to ask the band's frontman, Brian Kenneth, a few questions about what's in store for us Thursday night. So read on, check out the details of the show at the end of this post, and head to World Cafe Live Thursday night as a great local band pays tribute to what may just be, without exaggeration, the perfect album.

A few years ago, you guys helped organize the Philly Local Lonely Hearts Club Band show, in tribute to Sgt. Pepper. Now you'll be celebrating Abbey Road. How did the idea to do these tribute events come about?
Helen Leicht at WXPN championed this whole idea. She wanted to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper back in 2007. She first saw us at the Wilmington Flower Show, where we cameo'd "A Day in the Life" during one of our own songs and I think that helped make us a strong candidate for the job. When she asked us to be the house band, we of course jumped at the opportunity. We did about half the album on our own and then accompanied other Philly-local XPN singers on a few more. It was probably the best show we had ever been a part of from top to bottom, and people still ask us about it today. Late last year, we had the idea to do it once again and Abbey Road came up as the natural choice. Five months, 36 arguments, two fist fights, and nine additional musicians later, here we are. By the way, there weren't really any fist fights; we aren't really man enough for that.

The Sgt. Pepper show had some interesting, unexpected interpretations of Beatles' songs. Can we expect any re-imaginings this time around?
The interpretations in '07 were more from bands that are from a different genre. For example, Kuf Knots and the Hustle are a hip-hop group, so it was only natural that they'd juice-up "Good Morning" the way they did. But we are really going all out here to give you a deadly accurate rendition of these songs as they are heard on the original album. Nothing at all against those other great bands—they had to make the music fit into their genre—but we are already somewhat close in sound stylistically to The Beatles. I feel like it's harder to duplicate what the Beatles did rather than just play what comes out at the first practice and call it "our version". So if it's in the record, you're gonna hear it on April 1st—[be it] wind, crickets, Yoko moaning in the background... You get the idea.