There’s more to the Fringe Festival than just the awesome array of shows listed in our Guide. Each night, after the Fringe it’s the after-Fringe at the FringeArts headquarters at Race Street and Columbus Boulevard. Performers and audiences alike congregate at La Peg and the Haas Biergarten for drinks, games, DJs, and pop-up entertainment.

The Festival launches this Friday with the annual FREE rager, the Festival Kick Off Party with popular 10-piece band Johnny Showcase, a joyful sexy psychedelic dance funk experience, complete with heavy jazz fusion elements.

An absurdist soul outfit based in Philadelphia, Johnny Showcase is an innovative, joyful tour-de-force that toes the line between performance art and a psychedelic soul revival. Carrying the torch of funk-rock pioneers like Funkadelic and Frank Zappa, the group has gained a massive following and become something of a funky Philly folk hero legend.

The brain-child of theater artist/musician David Sweeny, Johnny Showcase is a sweaty, charismatic showman from Rhode Island who is equal parts Andy Kaufman and Prince. Surrounding him is a rag tag group of performers, including a spiritual adviser named Rumi Kitchen, two vacuous vocalists collectively called The Truth, and the knife sharp backing band the Mystic Ticket.

In 2009, they staged a sold-out run of a fantastical, unauthorized Prince inspired odyssey- Purr, Pull, Reign-as part of the 2009 Philadelphia Fringe Festival. 2011 saw the release of their debut album Love is the Message, followed up in 2012 with the self-produced EP Mystic Ticket I: The Pump Fake, 2015’s THE OCTOPUS! (hailed by Philadelphia Magazine as a “thick, sweaty psychedelic masterpiece”)m and a soon-to-be-released EP with legendary producer Joe ”The Butcher” Nicolo (Ruffhouse Records).

The Kick Off Party begins after the performance of Heiner Goebbels’s Songs of Wars I Have Seen in the FringeArts theater, around 10:30pm.

Come celebrate!