Wayne Catania remembers those underpaid years as a drummer, playing the clubs in bar bands.

People kept telling him he looked like John Belushi.

"So I bought 'Briefcase Full of Blues,'" Catania said, referring to a 1978 Blues Brothers record starring Belushi and "Saturday Night Live" castmate Dan Aykroyd.

"The minute I put it on, I could just see it," Catania said recently from his home in Toronto. "I've never looked back since."

Catania and stage partner Kieron Lafferty, also of Toronto, open a 10-show run of "The Official Blues Brothers Revue" at the Omaha Community Playhouse on Friday, part of a 17-week national tour.

A seven-piece band of local musicians and singer Arnae Batson, singing Aretha Franklin tunes, will join them for the free-wheeling concert. Expect some audience participation and interaction.

Catania and Lafferty first played the Blues Brothers in 1998 as part of the Legends in Concert act in Las Vegas, doing a 15-minute set. In 2004 Belushi's widow, Judy, and her second husband, Victor Pisano, hired the pair for their own full-length Blues Brothers show, which Aykroyd co-produced. They've been partners ever since.

Lafferty described Jake and Elwood, whose backstory was expanded in the 1980 movie "The Blues Brothers," as sociopaths with a heart of gold.

"They have a mission: the shortest route from A to B. When you're on the road as a musician, you get a little bit of that."

Catania said the audience should expect to have fun and dance a little in the aisles if they feel like it while the band performs songs from the album, from the movie and from the greatest-hits songbook of rhythm & blues and soul.

"This is a family show," he said. "Kids who weren't even thought of yet in 1980 now know Jake and Elwood. So do people in their 80s and 90s."

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