The last time Tucson native Tony Kishman brought his Beatles tribute band, Twist and Shout, home for a show, it sold out in three hours. That was in March at Desert Diamond Casino, where there was hardly an empty seat to be found once the house lights dimmed.
"It was amazing. I was shocked, because when the tickets went on sale, they were promoting it for about three weeks," Kishman said during a phone call from the airport in Portland, Maine, last week. "The day the tickets went on sale, they sold about 1,800 seats at the Diamond Center, which holds about 2,400. By the time I went down there (that afternoon), there were only a few seats left in the back. I thought, wow, my hometown loves me."
He and the the rest of his critically acclaimed Fab Four re-enactors — Kishman as Paul McCartney, Jim Owen as John Lennon, Tom Teeley as George Harrison and Carmine Grippo as Ringo Starr — will find out if the hometown love can repeat itself when they play at the historic Fox Tucson Theatre on Friday.
Kishman, who has played the role of McCartney in tribute bands and in the smash Broadway show "Beatlemania" for more than 30 years, should be used to the warm hometown reception by now. In 2005, he thrilled a packed house at the Tucson Music Hall when he and the Liverpool lad look-alikes brought their "Classical Mystery Tour" to the Tucson Symphony Orchestra. The experience bordered on the surreal; the audience resembled a mixed generational stew of fans, dressed in everything from evening wear to tie-dyed T-shirts and faded blue jeans. Long-haired men with their locks in pony tails whooped and hollered next to finely dressed ladies in their 60s recalling a day when it was perfectly respectable to scream and swoon over the dreamy Paul McCartney.
That sense of nostalgia is perhaps the biggest selling points for bands such as Twist and Shout and Rain, a Beatles tribute band headlining the Tucson Music Hall with Broadway in Tucson the first week in December.
"I think a lot of it is the Beatles music. People identify with the group," said Kishman, a graduate of Canyon del Oro High School.
Twist and Shout has been around since 1992 and is regarded as one of the top Beatles tribute bands in the country. Kishman, who was a member of the 1970s Tucson cover band Cheap Trix, has been impersonating McCartney since the late 1970s.
"I've been playing Paul longer than Paul's been playing Paul," he joked.
Kishman said his group's distinctive package — mop-top dos, Brit-pub accents and spot-on singing — sets it apart from other tribute outfits.
"Those are the things that really kept us going for so many years, that we really are doing the characters," the single father of two girls explained. "I think that's what puts us apart from the rest of groups. . . . If you really sing and you really play and you really make it your own, then you're really doing justice to the music. If you're up there doing it like you're the fat Elvis guy, he doesn't deserve to be up there."
In addition to its yearly mostly sold-out concerts in 1,500- to 2,000-seat theaters, Twist and Shout jets around the country with its "Classical Mystery Tour" and makes a yearly trip to Germany for "All You Need Is Love," a show that traces the Beatles history. In July, the group will squeeze in a trip to Australia.
Kishman, who has released solo albums in the past, said he doesn't mind spending his life imitating the outsized star that is Paul McCartney.
"If that's the worst thing that happens in my life, I'm a lucky guy," he said.
If you go
Twist and Shout
• When: 7:30 p.m. Friday.
• Where: Fox Tucson Theatre, 17 W. Congress St.
• Tickets: $27.50-$35 through Fox, www.fox tucsontheatre.org
Rain — A Tribute to the Beatles
• Presented by: Broadway in Tucson.
• When: 7:30 p.m. Dec. 2-4, 8 p.m. Dec. 5 and 2 and 8 p.m. Dec. 6.
• Where: Tucson Music Hall, 260 S. Church Ave.
• Tickets: $23-$63 for adults, $11.50-$31.50 for children, through www.ticketmaster.com; discounts available.
