Kahuna Beach Party: Mixing music, comedy and fun

About four years ago, Bill Francoeur started thinking about bringing his friends together for a band inspired by the California sound of the Beach Boys.
     "I've always loved the Beach Boys, and I just thought, 'You know, this is going to be so much fun,'" Francoeur said Monday. "I know these musicians. I know they're good musicians and good vocalists, and I thought they would have the right sound."
     Francoeur and his friends formed Kahuna Beach Party in 2006 and rehearsed for a year before launching their first tour in the summer of 2007.
     This year, the band is getting ready to visit Dodge City for the Dodge City Days kick-off concert.
     Kahuna Beach Party will join singer Jo Dee Messina for the "Boots, Beer and Bikinis Beach Party" concert, which will begin at 8 p.m. Friday at Roundup Arena. The seven- to eight-member band, which includes Francoeur's two sons, mixes beach-style music, comedy and audience participation in a show that resembles an old-fashioned beach party.
     Tickets for the concert are $20, $25 and $30, and they will be $5 higher the day of the show.
     Band representative Francoeur, who goes by the stage name "Cap'n Bill," talked about Kahuna Beach Party's sound and its emphasis on family-friendly fun during a phone interview Monday. Here are excerpts from the interview.
     DG: Would it be accurate to characterize you guys as a Beach Boys tribute band?
     BF: No. A tribute band is when you try to look like them, dress like them, even comb your hair like them. We're not into that.
     We're more — I like to say, "Beach Boys and more." We like beach music, we like surf music, Beach Boys and more. I'd say 95 percent of our repertoire is Beach Boys, but we do a few Caribbean things, a couple of originals. But I wouldn't characterize us as a tribute band. We decided that we weren't really that.
     And we're not really a Beach Boys cover band either, which has kind of a negative connotation. More of a beach sound, with the main emphasis being Beach Boys and surf music.
     DG: You rehearsed for a solid year before going out on tour. What prompted that decision?
     BF: Because of other situations that other people were in, we could only rehearse once a week pretty much. We rehearsed for three or four hours once a week.
     And part of me — I didn't want the group going out there without really being as close to the Beach Boys sound as possible. And it's difficult music. I mean, the music's not difficult, but the vocals are difficult. The vocals really take some work — not just getting the right notes, getting the right sound. It's one thing to sing the right notes, but it's another thing to produce that Beach Boys sound, that California sound.
     And so we listened and listened and worked on the inflection and the tonality and everything, just trying to sound as close as we could.
     DG: What do you want audiences to take away from a performance of Kahuna Beach Party?
     BF: I want them to feel like they've been on a mini-vacation. Like they've just had a vacation on Kahuna Beach Island, this fictitious place.

Reach Eric Swanson at (620) 408-9917 or e-mail him at eric.swanson@dodgeglobe.com.