The super-sessionman project known as the Fab Faux makes its 14th annual appearance on the Count Basie stage this Saturday night, with a recreation of two landmark Beatles albums. (Photo by Michael Weintraub)
His three-decade gig as bandleader Paul Shaffer’s bass-playing lieutenant on David Letterman’s late-night talkfests may have come to a bittersweet end, but there’s no Faux finish in sight for Will Lee, the in-demand session man whose passionate pet project The Fab Faux has become a favorite annual attraction here on the Beatle-crazy banks of the Navesink.
The bassist teamed with another walking musical encyclopedia and fellow talk-show stalwart, through his years with Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Vivino as founding Faux-fathers for a band that transcends the wigs-and-costumes Beatlemania approach in favor of a thrillingly detail-intensive homage to the Beatles recorded legacy. Together with fellow NYC session aces Frank Agnello, Rich Pagano and Jack Petruzzelli, the fab fivesome has been a headliner-quality act in theater-scale venues like the Count Basie Theatre — and this Saturday, June 13, the band returns to Red Bank for a fourteenth consecutive late-spring concert, this one saluting a pair of pivotal albums from the Liverpuddlians’ catalog.
Tipping its hand with the title The Rubber Soul and Magical Mystery Tour, the 8 pm event revisits the 1965 album that for many fans marked the dividing line between the hard-touring Moptops of the Shea Stadium/ Sullivan years, and the ever-evolving innovators who retired from the road to become masters of the studio. Rockers like “Drive My Car” share the grooves with lushly layered pop (“Nowhere Man”), new adventures in instrumentation (“Norwegian Wood”) and Continental influences (the Grammy winning “Michelle”). Then there’s Magical Mystery Tour, the soundtrack to a 1967 British TV film that was considered a rare misfire for the Fab Four at the time — but has since cemented its place in the pantheon, through psychedelic pop epics like “The Fool on the Hill,” “I Am the Walrus” and the added singles “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “All You Need is Love.”
The Fab Faux will be joined by their frequent collaborators the Hogshead Horns and Creme Tangerine Strings for a note-for-note salute to music that John, Paul, George and Ringo never toured with back in the day — a live presentation that “completely up-ends the concept of a Beatles tribute band.” Take it here for tickets ($69 – $99).
