And The Writer Is...with Ross Golan - Ep. 75: Jason Robert Brown

Episode Date: November 4, 2019

He is a composer, lyricist, conductor, arranger, orchestrator, director, and performer – who has been hailed as “one of Broadway’s smartest and most sophisticated songwriters since Stephen Sondheim” (Philadelphia Inquirer). Best known for his dazzling scores to several of the most renowned musicals of his generation, including the generation-defining ‘The Last Five Years,’ his debut song cycle ‘Songs for a New World,’ and the seminal ‘Parade,’ for which he won the 1999 Tony Award for Best Score, he also received two Tony Awards for his score for ‘The Bridges of Madison County,’ a musical adapted with Marsha Norman from the bestselling novel. A film version of his epochal Off-Broadway musical ‘The Last Five Years’ was released in 2015, starring Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan and directed by Richard LaGravenese. His musical ‘13,’ written with Robert Horn and Dan Elish, is now in production with Netflix to be adapted for the small screen. For the past four years, he has been the artist-in-residence at New York’s SubCulture, where he offers a sold-out concert every month with stars of Broadway and the music world. He is the winner of the 2018 Louis Auchincloss Prize, the 2002 Kleban Award for Outstanding Lyrics and the 1996 Gilman & Gonzalez-Falla Foundation Award for Musical Theatre. The New York Times refers to him as “a leading member of a new generation of composers who embody high hopes for the American musical.” And his songs, including the cabaret standard “Stars and the Moon,” have been performed and recorded by Ariana Grande, Audra McDonald, Kristin Chenoweth, Billy Porter, Betty Buckley, Renée Fleming, Jon Hendricks, and many others. And The Writer Is…Jason Robert Brown!This episode is sponsored by ABKCO. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Season 5 of Anne the Writer is with your host, Ross Golan. Before I get my spiel, I want to acknowledge the music army that listens to this podcast every week. Since starting this, the And The Writer is community has literally changed the history of the music business by helping pass the music modernization act, gotten songwriters added to album of the year for the Grammys, and still is advocating for positive changes for our industry. industry on a daily basis. So thank you and congrats. Now, as you know, I've written with hundreds of artists and writers over the years and my favorite part of each session is the first hour when we catch up about life, the industry, politics, composition, whatever. So this is a journey of learning why people write songs, how people write songs, and most importantly, who the people are who write the songs. I'm producing this with the Great Joe London, Big Deal Music Publishing, and

mega house music management. If you want to listen to the songs we discuss in this podcast, follow us on our socials, find out about special live events, or buy that merch, aka that hat I always wear, go to our website www. And The WriterIs.com. This episode is brought to you by Abko Music, a proud independent music publisher and advocate for the songwriter and artist community over six decades. worldwide. Abco is home to iconic songs and writers of the 20th century, including Sam

Cook, Ray Davies, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Bobby Womack. And into the 21st century, with chart breaking hits like Mariah Carey's We Belong Together and More. Find out about Abko by visiting their website at www.abco.com. Welcome to And The Writer is. I am your host, Ross Golan. Today's multi-talented, multi-tony award-winning, multi-hyphenated composer, director, singer, and orchestrator has evolved from

prodigy to staple in the Broadway community over the past two decades. He's... Written by a true librettist. Is that a word? It is, right? He's crafted scores including parade the last five years.

Urban Cowboy, Bridges of Madison County and honeymoon in Vegas, and yet he doesn't just stop at the Broadway world. Oh no. In fact, this guy gave Ariana Grande her big break. His musical 13 was her first introduction to the world of entertainment. They even co-wrote a song for the album Dangerous Woman. He's had shows adapted into movies. He's released solo albums, but this overachieving New Yorker still is a successful family man. And the writer is the notorious J.R.B. Jason

Robert Brown. Thank you. Okay. Well, hi. That was a lot more energy than I expected. I'll try and match that at some point today. I kind of get the feeling that you and I have a similar tone of relaxation. So if it's sort of a Zen

vibe in this room right now, also the room really is pretty zen vibey, but I'm good for it. So man I have so many questions what's cool about this episode is that I feel like you have an opportunity

to teach a lot of our writers what the life is what your life is like as a composer in the Broadway world I think what happens is that everyone always feels like they can do both you know there's always the

pop writers who want to write a musical there are musical writers who want to write pop songs, there's people who've used songs in different ways, and you've actually done a bit of all of it. So I want to get into all the accomplishments, but I want to start from the beginning because you're born in New York State? I was, yeah, just out of New York City.

And were your parents' musicians? No, we have no musicians anywhere in my family. I'm sort of the weird guy. How young were you when you started? I think I was like, seven, and I said I really want a piano, and my grandfather had one hidden in the basement of his brownstone in Brooklyn someplace, and so they dragged it out and put it in my living room, and I just started playing the theme from Star Wars. Crazy.

And you just started figuring it out, and it was just natural. You just got it. I mean, I was never, and I'm still not, like, a prodigious pianist, you know, in the sense that, like, I can just whip through Beethoven and knock that all out. I was always developing whatever my own specific style. was and that's still the way I play. Yeah. You went to school for music though. You went to... I did. I went to Eastman.

I didn't stay for very long, but yeah, I went there for college. And I did... You know, I was there as a composition major which mainly involved, you know, sort of like horn-rimmed glasses and a lot of pencils and, you know, a lot of people screaming about serialism. But after that, I left and I really... Even while I was at Eastman, I thought, no, I want to do this musical theater thing. That's the thing that I feel like I understand the most. On an emotional level, I understand it, and on a technical level, I felt like I got it.

When you were little, did you want to, what kind of music were you listening to? I listened to everything, but, you know, I'm a Jewish kid from the Northeast who grew up in the 70s, so everything comes down to Billy Joel, I think, ultimately. But, you know, it was Billy Joel, and it was Paul Seim, and it was Carol King and it was ultimately there was Johnny Mitchell and a lot of that

but there was at the same time it was all the things that a reasonably cultured middle class family was supposed to listen to so there was a lot of Leonard Bernstein in my life and there was a lot of

Stephen Sondheim and there was a sort of healthy dose of what we'd all call sort of culture and so I had a lot of that and that started seeping in fairly early why didn't you end up writing like Billy

I mean, there's some influences that you hear, obviously, throughout your scores. But why did you not try to pursue being an artist first, or maybe you did? But why did you not pursue being an artist? Why did you not pursue songwriting when you're listening? Carol King, you're listing Billy Joel. You could have done those things too.

I think I could have then. I don't know that I had a lot of confidence in myself as a, as a brand you know somebody who was going to put myself at the front and say this is me and I want people you know I liked singing and I like playing the piano and I like the spotlight but I

guess I felt like I just had more interesting things to say in the theater I was worried that as a pop writer I was going to kind of run out of ideas pretty fast when you leave Eastman usually we don't skip this far ahead this fast

but you leave Eastman and you want to want to do musical theater, you moved to the city? I didn't. First I went to Miami because I had to make a living. So I taught at the New World School of the Arts Out There. Oh, interesting. Is that where the title of the...

No, it's a weird coincidence that I didn't even notice at the time. And then like about a year later, I was like, well, that's silly. But, yeah, I had a girlfriend in Miami, so I just went to live with her. And I taught at the high school for the arts there. And after a year, I was like, well, this is silly. I'm supposed to go to New York City, so I should go to New York City. How do you move to New York City as a musician? Like, how do you survive?

I was a fairly facile piano player, so I did a lot of playing for auditions and for concerts and recitals, and ultimately a lot of piano bar, which was more of a thing then than it is now. But, you know, I would just show up at, you know, bars in Greenwich Village and, you know, sit down and play a whole lot of show tunes for a lot of old gay men and they would all throw

money at me and that was I you know I survived yeah I'm not sure if I got to the city today at 20 years old I'm not sure that those avenues are still open but you know this was 30 years ago how did you know the you know the the standard business the the all of the musicals that you'd have to play to be a piano player I know that sounds really ridiculous but when I walk into a piano bar and you say to a piano player, hey, do you know how to play? Name the song. And they say, sure, of course.

They just play it. Do you have that kind of memory that you can just do it? Or is it something where, how does somebody have that kind of brain capacity to know how to play piano like that? I can only speak for myself that the brain capacity is directly related to how much I'm exposed to something and how much I care about it. And I was an actor at the same time that I was a, you know, never in New York, but all through high school.

even a little bit in college. I did a lot of acting, and that was my wheelhouse, as I was a singing actor. So I knew what the repertory was. And if you have a reasonably good set of ears and a reasonably good set of fingers, you can make your way through a lot of musical theater stuff.

I mean, it's not Brahms. So, you know, I could make my way through pretty much anything at a certain point, as long as I had it in my ear. And if I didn't have it in my ear, I had to know how to read it really fast, which I learned how to do. Yeah, I imagine learning all of that material is really good for a compote.

posing. You know, I mean, because you then can, you know, my problem when I would practice growing up, as someone would give me a material of practice, I would take the chord changes and start writing my own song and not even bother practicing, which is why I'm a shitty instrumentalist. Well, but I think it's all sort of the same thing, because I did that also. I've never been particularly good at practicing, but I just, I loved playing. I loved the physical sensation of making music by hitting an instrument and having sounds come out of it. And I need to to make a living. So, you know, I got good at it. I think that the trickiest thing about all of that is the question about whether what you're doing is actually helping your music by absorbing all

of this other stuff or whether you're in fact sort of squashing your music or diluting it in some way by having all of these other sounds coming around it. And I think, you know, for me, I've just had to make my piece with, it is what it is. I mean, you know, you do what you do. I happen to have a very wide taste in music. And so a lot of different influences come creeping in. And so what I like to think is that the end result, whatever mishmash of influences is, oh, okay, that's what I sound like. I sound like, this is the thing that I love about this,

and this is the thing I love about this, and I pull that, and I pull that, and ultimately what comes out, what gets baked is the sound of me, even though the ingredients were not necessarily mine. I don't know anybody who could sort of invent a chord, You know, it's all just stuff you pull from the universe. But there's a division in our business, you know,

between people who are amazing arrangers and people who are amazing writers. And I am a very good arranger, I think, but there is a real thing you can tell what's arranger music. And arranger music sort of comes from the head, and it's really about manipulating stuff instead of emotionally allowing stuff to emerge. Wow. I think you can always tell arranger music when you hear it.

And you can tell in Broadway shows when the arranger came in to try and save the score. I mean, maybe you can't. That's a thing that I tend to notice when I'm sitting there. I'm like, oh, see, the writer wasn't up to it. They needed the arranger to come and save them. And you can hear sort of when stuff is just manipulated so much because the raw material wasn't strong enough.

But you have shows, and we'll get into some of them, but you have shows where you wrote the book Lyric music and orchestrated it. Are there times in there where you saved your own score? Sure. Are there times where you were a better writer and you didn't score it well? Or you didn't arrange it well?

No, well, because to be honest, if you write it really well and the arranger can't screw it up. Yeah. You know, something that's really, I mean, almost everything is in the middle ground. Almost everything needs, you know, arrangement. It needs a little bit of love. It needs a little bit of sort of massaging and editing

and just, you know, general, what that is. And the question of where one side of my brain stops and the next side begins is sort of an open question. And, you know, again, a lot of Broadway writers who don't do their own arrangements, it's much easier to find out where one side stops and the other begins. But, you know, I really...

Your relationship with your arrangers, your orchestrators, your musical directors is very much like a director's relationship with, you know, the editor and with the, you know, with all of that. that you have to have to have to have a team that helps the stuff come to life there are just times when it has been most efficient for me to be the whole team

but I don't I wouldn't say that I want to live my whole career like that yeah in this segment what would Alex Lackmore ask J.R.B he says one of the things I admire about J.R.B. songwriting is that it is always so tight he never waste a note or lyric or chord change nothing ever feels superfluous and the melodies in line are always carefully constructed. There's a true craft and story present at all times. Where did that finesse come from?

Is there a lot of toiling in the process, or do the ideas come more or less fully formed? The ideas don't come fully formed. Everything to me is about structure first. I need to know how a piece is structured from one into the other. As in like the whole musical or the song? Like, what do you think? Well, both.

There's a structure. You know, there is an architecture to everything that I write. And so before I start writing any of the songs, I need to know what the whole show looks like. I need to know, you know, what is the story? How does the story work? And what is the vocabulary of the story? And sometimes you have to develop that vocabulary as you go along. But there's a basic sense that I haven't really gotten started writing the songs until I know what the rules are,

until I really know what are the blocks, how am I going to start, how am I going to finish, what am I getting to? It is true that you discover a lot of that along the way, but just for the purposes of discussion. It's good to know what the goalposts are. And then within that, there is still going to be 18, 16, 22, whatever there is, songs, little spots along the way. And I want to know before I write any of those songs,

what spot they're supposed to fit in and what they're serving. So you outline the whole show. Yeah, of course. Yeah. How do you pick your material when it's a book or something that's not something you wrote? It's almost easier if a book comes in to find the points of where the songs belong, no?

Not necessarily because a musical architecture is not the same as a novels architecture or anything like that. And I don't just mean a musical theater architecture, but music has its own architecture anyway. I mean, you would find that. And so trying to figure out an overarching musical architecture for a two and a half hour long piece,

it's not going to be the same thing as what you do for a novel. A novel has a much different and windier path, you know, and novels have a lot more bespoke direction in terms of which way they go. Musicals all sort of have the same shape, you know, the way you do it within that two and a half hours or that 90 minutes or however you're choosing to do it, there's a lot of freedom in there. But, you know, you're not going to write a seven and a half hour long musical unless you're, you know, really like, okay, I'm going for it.

Yeah, it's experimental that point. But, you know, if you're writing sort of a basic commercial musical, you know, about the two and a half hours to go. And so within that, how are you going to structure that two and a half hours? Where are the highs? You know, are you ending up and are you ending down? Is the middle up, is the middle down? Are you taking an intermission?

If you don't take an intermission, then what is the structure, you know, are you basically doing a three-act structure and just not taking any breaks? Or is it that it's a two-act structure and there's a natural place in the middle for everything to stop? Or is it a one-act structure where everything really just wants to keep pushing? And if you interrupt that flow at all, everyone will feel it. So what you want to do is just push, push, push until you get to the end. And that's how you end up with a 90-minute piece or, you know, maybe 5-minute piece. And then within that, all right, so I'm going to –

So if I get presented with a book, you know, and someone says, here's a novel that we want to adapt, here's a movie that we want to adapt, I can't just say, oh, great, send me the screenplay and let me just spot out where the songs are. What I instead have to do is I have to figure out what's the musical of art texture? How does this entire thing sing? Who are the voices that sing their way through this piece? And what happens to them from one end to the other? In movies, what I've found all too often,

and it's really hard when you adapt movies, movie characters tend to have things that happen to them. And they can be very passive. And there's a lot of times where all you have to do is take a shot of their face and they tell you a whole lot about their emotional lives. but they never have to express things verbally necessarily because a lot of the time it's just sort of stuff occurs to them and they have to react to it.

But musicals have to be driven by people who want a thing. There has to be a thing that they want to do. They're trying to achieve a character has to be moving forward in space because that's what motivates songs. You want songs to be active, not inactive. It is the primary difference between pop material and theater material is keeping material active, keeping a character

who always wants a thing I want to move forward, I want to do this, I have to do that, I got to get there. I am trying to get something from a person, so I'm singing this song to them.

Pop materials, obviously, not necessarily, it doesn't have to be active in the same way. In fact, in a lot of ways it's better if it's passive. You state what you want in the first A section,

and that's your song, and then you're just going to sort of reiterate that material over and over again. In a musical, you can't really do that the same way because the audience is ready to move on with the story. The audience is hooked into the story. You're hoping that along the way of the story,

they're enjoying the songs. But what they're hooked into is this character is trying to do a thing. And so the songs have to keep that character moving. And so as I'm looking at this movie, as I'm looking at this book, I'm thinking, all right, so this is the story of this person and this person is going to take this walk along this path, and it's going to end here. So even once I do that, all right, fine, let's jump ahead to the point where I finally planned out what the 17 or 18 moments are that. somebody sings, that the ensemble sings, that there's a dance number, whatever it all is, that happens to push this story along. And I'm going to look at that, what let's presume, is a between

two and a half and six and a half minute sequence song thing. And, you know, a song is a song. We all know what a song is. There's a lot of leeway in terms of what the structure of a song is, but essentially there's A, there's B, there's A, and then we all go home. And, you know, you can mess with that however you want to, but an audience is going to perceive a song once you start you know rolling down the hill the audience knows which way the ball is going and so i've got my a and my a and my b and my a all right what am i going to do now i've got musical ideas that i have to carry through and i've got lyrical ideas that i have to carry through and these characters have to follow through a song can really only be about one thing so all right i know what the setting of the

show is because i know everything about place matters to me everything about where is the show set? It's set in New York City in 1975. I think that show sounds different than it's set in Paris in 1896. I think that show sounds very different than it's set in Vienna in 1896. I think that should is very different

than it's set in Iowa in 1996. So all of those things matter. What is the character? How do these people sound? They should sound like something that is relative to where they are. So I've got all that information. And then, is it a young person?

Isn't an old person? Because a 17-year-old sings different. than a 70-year-old? Is it a man? Is it a woman? Where does their voice sort of live? Are they very verbal people? Are they not very verbal people?

Are they very expressive? Are they not very expressive? All of that, that's information that I need. That information is actually the musical information that I need. That doesn't tell me anything about the lyrics yet. But the musical information I need is all about setting and character. What are they going to do? So a lot of people talking about Broadway,

when they're talking about music, they talk about purists and they talk about then there's these jukebox musicals and there's all these things looking at something like Mulan Rouge which is

you know a hundred plus years ago in Paris but really there's only one number that's almost relevant to the music of that time

when you when you watch you know and also when we're talking about the difference in pop form and Broadway form and what a good song is in Broadway versus in, I guess we didn't say a good song

but the general song You know, you have so many jukebox jukebox musicals are all based in these pop songs that have been adapted to be on stage for the most part I mean I'm just not in the jukebox musical business It doesn't have anything to do with what I do So you know I

It's I can look at them and decide whether they're effective pieces of theater on their own level but in terms of being written pieces of musical theater, I just wouldn't know how to analyze those or understand them. But you've written songs outside of musical theater. And I think that that's one of the interesting parts of your career. And I still want to go through some of the pieces that you've done. But, you know, the idea of somebody who's started in this world

and then has this world being the Broadway world, but having the ability to write songs outside of it, How do you address writing songs for your solo stuff? How do you address writing songs outside of a theatrical purpose? Do you address them differently? Sort of. I mean, there was a period of time about 10, 15 years ago where I got signed to a publishing contract out in L.A.

And the idea was, I thought pop songwriting was a certain thing because I was the age that I was. And so in 1979, pop songwriting was a very different game than it is now. And so I got into it and I was like, oh great, I'll sit there with my piano and my demos and I'll make, you know, these songs and I'll sort of tell stories and I'll do all of that. And I learned quickly that that just isn't the way that any pop song sort of functions these days, which was fine, but I was also like, I'm not sure I want to do it the way that everybody does it. Sure. So I'm still, in terms of the way that I approach my solo writing material or when I'm writing for anything that's outside of a show, I'm still sort of functioning according to principles that I think governed.

pop music 35 years ago, you know, but it's really in terms of the harmonic energy of a song, in terms of this sort of the rhythmic motor of a song, in terms of the way that it sort of goes, you know, for better or for worse, I think most of my songs would sound not at all out of place on, you know, a Carly Simon album, you know, in 1981, which I sort of, I had to make my piece with after a while. I just, I never entirely felt like I dropped well. into the world of lead lines and beats. And, you know, that I just felt like I don't really listen to this kind of stuff. So I don't really know how to write it because I just don't, I'm not passionate about it.

Yeah. Let's go to the sort of the beginning of your professional career. What's the first show that you write that really, that gets a production? Is that parade? No, the first thing was songs for New World. Right, okay, right. Oh, that's right. I had come to New York and I had written like a couple of songs.

that were very definitely character pieces, even if I, I mean, some of them came from shows that were never going to amount to anything, but there were songs that were character pieces, and I felt like I had a language that was mine. I felt like there was something I was saying musically that nobody else was saying, which was good. I was probably wrong, but I believed it, which is hard.

And so I came to New York, having a couple of songs and just thinking, I just want to keep writing songs. There was a show called Closer Than Ever, which was a review. that was off-Broadway at a little place called the Menetaline. No, it was the cherry-line. And guys named Malteby and Shire wrote it.

Malteby also, he wrote the lyrics for Miss Saigon, but Malpsey and Shire together, wonderful writers who had written for Barberstrizan early in their careers and things like that. But they did a review of their theater songs, and I went and saw that, and I said, see, I could do that. That's what I'll do with my songs. I'll sort of put them together. And so I began a very gradual process of assembling songs,

and I ended up writing a lot of songs solely for No. world but i assembled songs into this template of i've got four singers there's a band there's sort of a a thematic narrative but i was very clear that i didn't want there to be a literal narrative i didn't want there to be like you had to follow these characters on a story all the way through i wanted there to be an emotional story that you were following and maybe you didn't even understand why you felt a certain thing but the songs got you there um and so i worked on that and i was working out for a couple of years and And then I met Daisy Prince and Daisy was at one of the piano bars I was working at at the time. And Daisy and I just ended up talking about the piece and what we wanted it to be and how it could grow into something.

And that collaboration ultimately is what turned into songs for New World, which is really 14 songs that all, they're not, none of them are related by character or by story, but they are all related in some sort of weird thematic way, which I will define. as I'm 24 years old and this is where my head is. Let's go to Parade. Game Changer. Well, sure. I mean, by the Time Songs for New World premiered, I was already working on Parade, which was Daisy's dad was Hal Prince. And so I... Explain who Hal Prince is, who is, you know,

one of the late Hal Prince's biggest icon in the last, maybe in Broadway history. There's not a major musical from 1950 to 2000 that didn't in some way have his imprint. on it. I mean, he was, you know, Phantom of the Opera is still his direction and it's still running, you know, 30 years later. And, you know, everything's West Side Story and Fiddler on the roof and Sweeney Todd and damn Yankees. And it's really, it's endless to me. You know, when I would walk in his office, you'd just pass a wall that had all the posters to all of his

shows. And it was the most thrilling wall and also the most intimidating. It was just sort of like, oh, right. So you walk in and Hal says, I like this. I mean, how do you go up? I mean, it's the Steven Spielberg of this world. It's the, you know, it's the Paul McCartney. It's as big as you get. And here, this guy is sort of tapping you on the shoulder, and you're in your 20s. Yeah.

Oh, I was 23. And Hal said, I was working on this show with this. I had this idea, and Stephen Sondheim was going to write it. But Steve doesn't want to do it. So let's get you on board. Which was a senseless statement. it reflected that Hal had a lot of faith in me and Hal liked working with young people

that made him very happy to be around and to get to work with exciting new ideas and to hear new voices. So he really, you know, he picked me out of the crowd and he said that, I like that work. And we started working on what was obviously a very weighty, very complicated show. It was a show about a lynching.

You know, it's a true story. It takes place in 1913 about the Leo Frank case, which is still, you know, 100 some odd years later, is still very volatile to discuss in Atlanta where it took place. And I started working with Alfred Uri, the playwright, who had written Driving Miss Daisy. And again, both of them were, you know, at least a generation older than I was.

And we just started the process of writing a show. And it was amazing to think back now, especially, it's not that they didn't hold my hand through it, but they really did count on me to just come up with it. they were expecting me to come in every week and have the material and do the stuff. And, you know, I think I rose to it. It was hard, but it was exactly the kind of stuff I wanted to write. It's a fiercely ambitious piece.

This episode is brought to you by Abko Music, a proud independent music publisher and advocate for the songwriter and artist community over six decades worldwide. Abko is home to iconic songs and writers of the 20th century, including six. Sam Cook, Ray Davies, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Bobby Womack. And into the 21st century, with chartbreaking hits like Mariah Carey's, We Belong Together, and more. Find out about Abco by visiting their website at www.abco.com. You know, obviously you won a Tony for it. Was your impression going through that, you know, when you come.

come across a new writer in any world that has just massive success or massive names behind you, that it's so jarring because here you are working in a piano bar and then you're doing a show with Hal Prince. Did you think it was going to be an easy career? Did you have different expectations for your career than what has turned out? I've obviously won more Tony since that and done so many more shows. No, but I've definitely, I've been doing the slow ride. I did not get on the express elevator. I mean, in some ways, obviously, parade was the express elevator, but where it dropped me off was not sort of where I thought.

Where did it drop you off? Well, I went right back to working in the piano bar. I mean, you know, the show closed very quickly. So I, you know, I didn't make any money from it. It just sort of came. And the specifics of sort of how I handled my career in that moment and the relationships that I didn't know I was supposed to make. And, you know, there's a whole business around the business

that I was too young to really know about. And it wasn't, it was nobody's job really to tell me about it. So I came out of parade and just sort of felt dazed. I was a little like, oh, well, I did this thing. And no, I'm not doing anything. Yeah. Was it because you, like, you didn't have an agent or even yet? I didn't have an agent.

I didn't have an agent. And I think I was with a lot of people because they were so established, they just sort of assumed that I also had it all lined up. And so they all took care of themselves, which was fine and which was perfectly appropriate. But there was nobody who stepped in and said, oh, here's what you're going to need. Which, again, I was not entitled to it. But I think the vagaries of getting the show up and the best of the show up and the business itself.

It was just a dazing time. And there was a lot about the fact that this show was, in some respects, very well received, and in other respects not. And I was not prepared for people to be sort of so dismissive of it because it was really hard. I mean, at the very least, it was a lot of work. And I thought people would at least say,

oh, it was a lot of work. And some people did. But like I said, I think my main response coming out of it all was dazed. and I think that lasted for a long time. Are you a fast rider? I was, I'm not now. What I say often is that I think nobody tells writers

that they have all their good ideas when they're like 22, that all the good ideas you're ever going to have are actually in your brain when you're 22 and you have to be very careful not to use them all because you're just going to have to figure out new ways to say them as you get older. And so I find that if I say,

down at the piano now to write or if I sit at the guitar or whatever it is that I'm trying to do, that I have to sort through the 150 or 200 versions that were easy to write. Because I've already done that, because I've already written that and I don't want to do it again. And so, you know, for me to continue finding new facets to the diamond, for me to continue seeing new ways to look at something and new angles, it's now it just it takes exponentially longer every time I sit down to do it

not I will say not so much with the solo songs because they're generally written for a character known as me and so as I change I know what my character is and it's easier to drop into that but for the musicals I find that it takes a long time for me to absorb that

why don't I co-write so much of our of the podcast is about co-writing and look the wrong man is not co-written I have collaborators

as lack and all these other you know but but it's I like the suffering in a really weird way but in my in the pop world

I almost exclusively co-write yeah well I wouldn't know how to do the pop world unless I co-wrote but why don't people why is it it is very it is very siloed

in in this world in a very positive way too I mean people are really encouraging like you said how expected you to show up the next day or the next week with new material and you they encourage you

but why don't people collaborate why don't you co-write? Yeah I think it's just about me I can't speak to what anybody else's feelings are I will say that for me there is this thing about I mean it's ego of course

but there is a thing about having a musical identity that is mine, that I get to say, there's a reason I am on the earth, and it was because I'm the only person who could have done that thing. And there is a real pride in looking at the body of work that I have and knowing that it is mine. And it doesn't diminish the work that I write with other people, because I have one show where I wrote only the music and someone else wrote the lyrics, and that's sort of fine. What show is that? That's Mr. Saturday Night, which is coming up.

That's a good collaborator too. Yeah. We'll get to that. But I think there is a general sense that what I can do when I'm doing something entirely on my own is that I create this world and I know how it moves. I know all the rules in it and I know all the places

not to go and all the bad neighborhoods but I also know that, you know, the sort of good restaurants. I've built this. place and there's a lot of comfort for me in wrapping myself up in just that and I feel like when you're working with collaborators you have to be open to it's not ideally I guess you'd be creating a world together but I don't my experience has not been that's how it works it really is that you have two worlds and you're sort of trying to join them like Siamese twins and just figure out some way that the two worlds coexist it's just hard it's balancing um yeah I guess as far as

the collaboration goes that you've had in your career that's really worked out is when sometimes when you're not also writing the book. You know,

that's still collaborating when you listen to somebody else's story. You're in their world. You envision, you know. Well, it's like reading a book before the movie's made and you're making the movie.

I mean, the question is, what is my art? My art, I feel like, is this telling stories with songs that, you know, over the course of an evening, over the course of an event,

telling a story with songs to do that. So I don't feel like my art is about the dialogue or that my art is necessarily about the visual pictures. My art really is about the way the music moves through the event. So I need collaborators to do the other stuff. I've done it and it's fine, but I don't wake up in the morning dying to go write the book to a musical. I wake up in the morning ready to go write songs.

That's what I do. when, you know, probably the most, the most autobiographical musical that I feel like you have is the last five years, right? I mean, maybe there's more. But that feels like that, you know. I mean, it's the one where the inspiration was clearly my own life, yeah. So it certainly resembles me.

But, you know, doesn't every writer say they're all, you know, everything comes from me because where else would have come from? Was that easier to write or harder to write because it was, it's, you know, it was a weirder to have, I mean, that was made into a movie, it had a whole other thing, but. They're all hard to write for their own reasons, right? I mean, it was easy to write in some ways

because without even having to ask, I knew what the boundaries of the characters were. You know, I knew things, well, they would never say that. That, you know, I didn't have to worry about that. What is the tone that these people live in? I thought, no, I know exactly. the tone, which is harder with something like the bridges of Madison County, where those people were not me at all. You know, those were sort of taciturned Midwesterners, and I thought,

I don't, I have to figure out how they talk, how they think. So the last five years was easier that way. But, um, but hard just because, you know, I place a lot of importance on technique and rigor and making everything line up and lock up and making sure that when the puzzle, gets put together that all the pieces are exactly in the right place. And that's just hard. There are easier ways to do the work. There is plenty of work out there where the puzzle does not end up being very even and the pieces sort of are all over the place and they're still very effective pieces and they're very popular pieces. I literally don't know how to write that way. I try writing that way and I just get to, when the rhymes aren't exact rhymes, I start shaking

because I'm like, no, I have to just fix it and just get it to work. It's funny. Jagged Little Pill is, there's no rhyming in Alanis Moriss that songs. Right, yes. And even in the wrong man and in a lot of pop music, a lot of it is the sound of the vowels is the rhyme, more so than the actual rhyme. But if I listen to Bridges of Madison County,

those rhymes are rhymes. like clear that that that is something that is that's important even I mean a lot of your music the rhymes are exact and the way you lead up to it often has the color in the sentence you know

is that something that you that it has to be intentional oh of colors and I think in a lot of ways pop music is it would be harder for pop music if all the lyrics had to lock in that way because I think in a lot of ways you don't want to get caught on the lyric

when the lyrics are as tight as mine are you have to listen to them they're done that way because you're asking the audience to follow the lyric they need to catch every line of it and I think in pop music you don't want that by the time you know you get to the bridge of a pop song you really want the audience to just be in it

they want to be in the groove and not sort of hanging on what's the lyric how is that rhyme going to connect up to the next thing. It doesn't really matter by them. But in theater songs, you have to keep it moving, moving, moving forward. There's some story where Bridges of Madison County, you win the Tony again

the Tonys. Oh, I like the Gens. Agains. There was something where it's you know, the worst part about winning a Tony is that you start to expect it when you get nominated for those who are, I've heard this

from people who have multi-nominations. I can't really relate to it. But in Urban Cowboy, you get a nomination and you don't win that year, but the next year you win, do you start expecting, after parade, were you starting to expect that when you finish scores, do you start thinking of, you know, is this worthy of an accolade?

Is this worthy of a... You have to, I mean, because I want a Tony Award fairly early in my career, I was relieved of the pressure of sort of worrying about when was I ever going to get one. And once I stopped worrying about it, the awards become a thing that is very useful to the business, but not particularly useful to me. So I participate sort of very warily in all of the awards chasing.

But, you know, Broadway's a very, very small community, and it's a very tiny little place. And you're usually, I mean, what are there, maybe 30 shows that open in any season, and there might be three original musicals if you're lucky. And so you're up against three people. You know everybody who's involved. The odds of you winning are really based on, you know, what?

It's these arbitrary criteria. So, you know, you're supposed to go out there and, like, really chill for your show and go meet all the voters and do all of that stuff. I find it exhausting. And it's not because my work is never commercially successful, which I say sort of with, you know, quotation marks around it, but just the fact that my shows don't make a lot of money

and they don't run for very long, which is fine. But because of that, I don't, I just write them, I write them the ones that make me, that make me feel something really powerful. Why, aren't they? I don't know. It's interesting, like, the, you know, I've spent the last two years coming to New York regularly and being in rehearsals and being in, you know, I've just been to so many different workshops. just so embedded in this community and your name is set at such a high level people talk about

but behind your back I don't know how they talk to you to your face but behind your back it's always you're referenced all the time so it's interesting when you know the idea of commercially successful I don't know what that is because what is that what is the word

commercially successful when from my point of view as somebody who's a newcomer in this business, your name is brought up all the time. That seems like something that would be massively. Hopefully I'm artistically successful. Commercially successful, I think, is a pretty clear definition. It's like shows that run a long time and make a lot of money. Yeah.

I mean, on some levels, you know, it's interesting to see where shows like, you know, the reason why I brought up Ari's, you know, she had a lot to do with a lot of our listenership. successes including my own and you know were you involved in casting her this is in 13 and this really is what breaks her career and you know not to spend too much time on it

no but I always say that you know no one was going to stop Ariana from being Ariana so that was you know I happened to be in the way and I'm happy that I got to do it you know she came in for an audition she opened her mouth and she sang when she was 14 years old she sang like she sings now and And we were like, oh, well, that's the greatest singer we've ever heard. We have to put her in the show. So we put her in the show.

And then the minute we put her in the show, sort of people started coming to the show specifically to see this one number that she sang at the end of the show. And we were like, oh, there's a lot of energy around that person. And all of a sudden she was doing the TV show, and then all of a sudden she was becoming Ariana Grande. And, you know, it was nuts. Her releasing the song on Dangerous Woman that you guys did, is that, how did that come about? I was in L.A., I was doing the tour of Bridges of Madison County,

so I was conducting it out there. And she called me, and she said, you want to come over and work on a song for the album? I think they were in the ending stages of the album at that point anyway. She said, do you want to work on a song? So I said, yeah, sure, why not? I'll listen to Ariana sing. And like I said, from my experiences in having my publishing contract thing,

whatever that was, I thought, I'm not going to write a song the way that Ariana usually does it, so maybe that's what she wants, is something that's sort of weird and different. And so I went and I sat at the piano and Tommy Brown was there most of the day and really just sort of trying to figure out what the hell I was doing. And, you know, I only wanted to play on the piano because they had a keyboard but it didn't even like have a pedal on her.

So, you know, he'd like grab some vocal mic and he put it in the piano. And she just literally, she sat next to me and she would sing lines and I would just play this chord progression and we sort of came up with an idea. And ultimately what we came up with was kind of a melody and a structure. and then suddenly some bell rang off in the palace and off she went and that was the last I saw of her for a while and then she like three weeks later she said all right we're going to put the song on the record

can you write some lyrics and I was like okay and I was like you're sure you don't want to write them because they're really going to sound you know they should and she said no you do it so I wrote something that she had talked about how much everyone was busting on her about her ponytail and I was like well all right we'll write a song about

what it is to be that person And I wrote it and I sent it during, she changed like four words. And all the changes she made were things that I knew would sound better coming out of her mouth. She had a really good instinct for that. And then Tommy was supposed to produce the track and just make it work. And I think he was busy with the rest of the album. And there was no question that what I had done didn't fit into the rest of the worldview of the piece. And Ari would, you know, she'd send me these texts where she was cursing about fucking Tommy.

And I'd be like, I think he's, you know, he's trying to his. best but I did throw you a big curveball. She said, you just do it. So my record producer, Jeffrey Lesser, and I went into the studio with a bunch of musicians and we did it and Tommy had recorded her vocals so we just used the vocal text that Tommy had

brought down and he had found this great bass player who had laid down this just so we kept the bass player and we kept the vocal and that was it. And by the time all of that had gotten done the master for the album had already been delivered and so she said can we put it on as a bonus track? And I said, any way you want to release a song of mine is going to make me perfectly happy whatever so she said great so they put it on as a bonus track on the

album uh the real honestly the real surprise was uh when uh we did phallon like a year later she called me she said that's the song i want to do on phallon and i can't imagine there was a single human being at the record company or in her management or anywhere who was like oh that's a great idea but uh but we did it and i had just the best time making music with her and singing with her it was fantastic i think that's that's so much of what you know The question that I've been talking to people about is like when I went to Northwestern to do a theater program and the first question they asked was,

what's a play? Sort of typical sort of theater one-on-one question where you think you know the answer and then you realize you can't answer this thing. And you could say the same thing about what's a pop song. Yep. And I think I understand that it's Schubert times three

repeated that's your verse pre-chorus chorus chorus you know it's like it's you know short sonata form you know that's a pop song but it's also an argument of like well what's a good

what's good musical theater and what's a good song in musical theater and I love these questions and I love that you know you challenging that what you think an Ariana Grande song is by just being yourself

it wasn't like you went there and were like I'm gonna try to write what everyone else is writing for Ari and then you go and you write their song you just write yourself no she's sitting in her room with you or with next Martin she doesn't need me to do that that's you know that's what you guys do but I think it's great I mean I think it's you being you

but I want to ask a few more questions because I actually think we're running low on time but two questions I had I know you were working on King Kong in the beginning. Why did you not... I would have been perfectly happy.

They had done the show in Australia and they wanted to do a new version and so they hired a playwright, Marsha Norman, who had written Bridges of Condeson County with me and they said, will you work with Marsha? And just write like a couple of songs. They wanted to keep a bunch of stuff

that they had done in Australia but would I write a couple of new things. And so Marsha and I tried to work on it and it's very hard to write a show where the main character doesn't speak or sing. And so we did our best with it, and we went through a couple of drafts. And I wrote, I think, ultimately 13 or 14 songs, some of which were really good and some of which weren't.

But we did a workshop of that version of the show. And then the director got fired and Marcia got fired. And I kept waiting for them to say, I was getting fired also. And ultimately, the producer called and said, we would love to keep some of your stuff, but we just don't know how to do it. I said, it's really, it was fine. And when I saw the show, as I felt with Moulin Rouge, I thought, this isn't the kind of show I would know how to do.

I was in the middle of writing King Kong, but I see if the King Kong that was up on Broadway is the show they wanted. I'm not even talking about the quality, but just the aesthetic of it. I don't know how to do that. That wouldn't have been my thing. So it was very nice of them to pay me as well as they did for as long as they did to try and write the show. But it was very clear that was not a world I belonged to in, especially.

The amount of bullets songwriters dodge by accident, you know? Most of the bullets that you take are like, you're okay with. But the ones that you dodge, those are the wins. So many of the victories you know you put in the effort, you got the victory. But sometimes... I don't know. I don't know that I would have even considered it a dodged bullet. If my songs had made it to Broadway, it's not like the show would have run any longer.

You know, it might have gotten worse reviews. It might have gotten better reviews. It would still have been a show about a gorilla. You know, it was what it was. I got treated well. It was literally a project I got hired to do. And so I, you know, I need a job as much as the next guy does. So I did it.

But there are the differences between the jobs and the things that really matter to you. King Kong was never going to matter to me. Mr. Saturday Night, Billy Crystal. Yes. How the hell are you working with Billy Crystal? Crystal on Mr. Saturday Night. It's really cool. I wish I had something to do with it, but in fact it was Amanda Green, who's writing the lyrics, and Amanda and Billy had known each other.

I think Mark Shaman had been Billy's music director and scored his movies for 30 years, and Mark was supposed to write it, and then Mark's schedule just got so full that there was no way he was going to have time to do it, and Amanda and he were going to be collaborators, and all of a sudden Amanda was without a collaborator. and she we met actually at an event and she said to me would you ever write just the music

and I said you know what sure she didn't tell me what it was for and I said yeah sure I mean it would be fun and then she said it's for Billy Crystal I said well then yes of course oh god why didn't you leave with that and then I met Billy and I you know we worked on a couple of songs so that he could hear it

and I could hear how his voice would work around my music and since then it's been a lot of fun He's, you know, he's a very, the hardest thing is there are times where he sometimes starts singing or he starts speaking the lines and he sounds like the character from Monsters Inc. And I have to just remember that he's not, in fact, that guy. But he's, you know, it's, there are a couple of times, I think as I get older it happens more and more where you just get to work with the people who really shaped your consciousness of the world. And Billy Crystal very much, you know, he shaped the way that I look at the world and to get to work with him now. That's really cool. Just incredible.

When does that start previews and stuff like that? I mean, all that shit is above my pay grade, but I think it's a year from now we start rehearsals from Broadway. But I say that, and I'm not entirely sure. Is that something that can be performed away from him? Yeah, right? I think he hopes so. I mean, I would certainly hope so.

You know, none of us want to just write it. But he's going to be performing. But he's going to start in the Broadway. How crazy is that, man. It's pretty wild. You know, it's just, he always says things like, well, I'm not a real singer. And I'm like, you may not be a real singer, but you have sung in front of millions and millions of people live on television every year for a long period of time, which a lot of people who call themselves real singers never do. So I'm not so much worried about it.

You'll get there. This is sort of a basic question after all this, but, you know, do you set hours? Do you just go and sit at a piano and say? No, I wish I could. I have two kids, so everything is you grab the minute whenever you have it. And if you're lucky enough at the moment that you have a minute, you happen to be inspired and you happen to be near a piano. I mean, I spend in a given week maybe five hours really writing,

like actually working on music, and that's if I'm lucky. That was one of the other lack questions when I texted him was, hey, you got any questions? You know? And that was sort of what he was asking is, how much do you write at the piano versus away from the piano? I tend to It depends on the project

There's one show I'm writing Which is an opera that's all set in China And it's all peaking opera stuff And if I start at the piano It all sounds wrong Because that just isn't the instrumental life of that So I do have to write that away from the piano And just sort of

Try and imagine what the ideas are And then I can sit down at the piano and work them out Whereas if I'm doing solo material stuff Or if I'm writing for a more pop show And then I'll sit at the piano or the guitar And I'll do that but usually I try and spend as little time as possible actually at the instrument because I feel like I could get stuck there

because I just start improvising and playing and I'm having a good time and all of that and the writing has to happen in a different place than the playing. So I'll sit down and I'll play for like 10 minutes and I'll like get the ideas and then I have to get up and go away from the piano and go write it. Great too. Okay, in this next segment we're going to do five for five.

Okay. And then just list five things. you can tell me. Something about them. Let's start with Stephen Sondheim. Really set the example for me of what a theater writer was supposed to do and what a theater writer was supposed to be. And, you know, he was a very difficult, he was very clear that he was not a mentor

because I met him early on, and he made clear that that was not the position he wanted to have with me. that was partly because Hal, who was, you know, his closest collaborator was really my mentor. And I think Steve was saying, you don't need me to do that for you. And so it took us a long time to have a personal relationship. But eventually we really did and we found a common ground in terms of our, really our respect for the rigor and the discipline of the work. Billy Joel. Billy Joel, I remain mystified really. Actually, that's not true. I think I'm not mystified.

by why he stopped writing. You know, he was so important to me. All of it, the piano playing was important and the singing was important and the attitude, the whole sort of like, I'm a rock and roll guy and I don't care if you don't think I am a rock and roll guy, that's what I am and this is what I do. And you're sort of all of that stuff.

I mean, you see those early interviews and that chip on his shoulder is unbelievable, but it's like that's what he needed in order to get through. That was his method. But I really do see. you were at a certain point, you try to turn on the tap, and it's just so hard to get anything to come out. And, you know, his songs, he was a really disciplined writer

and a really rigorous writer. And, you know, I can see being Billy Joel and looking at the way the charts work now and saying, well, I wouldn't know how to write any of that kind of stuff. And so he just sort of turns off the tap. It's interesting. It's interesting that he still has a sort of public life and a public career when he doesn't want to write anymore.

Do you think you would ever turn off the tap? I'm tempted, but I think I don't have the income stream. Wow. I mean, I have to say, I love making music. I really do. I love the making of music and the working with other musicians. And I love writing. But I think the pressure to do something that's going to be the next hit,

the pressure that this record has to do better than the last one, all of that, I don't really have that pressure to begin with, whereas I think Billy Joel did all the time. and I think that every time you turn in an album and it sold, you know, a thousand less copies than the last one. Everyone at the label is looking at you and sort of, oh, are you too old? Is it past your time? And I can see where you, after a certain point, you'd be like, well, the hell.

Eastman School of Music. I was not cut out to be a institute of higher learning for a very long time. It was really important for me to be around smart musicians for the two years that I was there, and I was around smart musicians and smart composers. and I learned a lot about what the capabilities of virtuosos are, which I think I wouldn't have known for a lot longer. In musical theater, a lot of people are not virtuosos.

I don't mean the professionals, the professionals are. But when you're doing amateur musical theater, it generally tends to be sort of people who can basically get it done. And being around virtuosos, being around people who, like, they practice, they learned, and they were brilliant at what they did. That was so important to me. And that's a big part of, I think, my writing now is I write for people who really can do it. Yeah, I think that's the difference.

I've had some people who've been guests on this show who've come to rehearsals and seen us work on a piece. And one friend said, how did they all learn the music? You know, did you record demos with all their parts? I said, no, I mean, you know, then this guy went to Berkeley, you know, very accomplished musician, producer. And I just said, no, no, like sheet music. all the singers here read sheet music,

just like we did when we were in college. But when you get used to working in the pop world, there's often somebody who's very talented but has no education at all in it. So you're trying to assist them in becoming professional and you make the best of what you can with their performance versus the lowest on the totem pole in a Broadway show or off-Broadway show,

show is somebody who studied their instrument, even if they are a dancer first and a singer second, they still know how to read music. I think in professional musical theater, there's so much of a premium on time. Time is so expensive. And so I think what you need is what is the most efficient way to do anything. And once I'm out of this rehearsal, you have to figure out the way you're going to do it. And so I have to give you the tools to that. So a piece of sheet music remain sort of the most efficient way for me to say, this is what you have to sing. I'm going to play it for you once,

put it on tape, do whatever I have to do, then go learn it, and then you'll come back tomorrow, and you'll have it down. Your wife? Georgia Stitt is my wife. I was married once before to an actress, and that did not work out all that well. And so I said,

whatever I do next time, I want to be with a musician. I want someone in the house when I speak in a musical language, they know what I'm saying. And I ended up getting so much more than I bargained for. But it's, you know, so I'm married to a brilliant composer.

But I, you know, there's just such joy in being able to pass music from one side of the house to the other. And now to pass it through our kids, which is totally weird. Because, again, I didn't grow up in a musical family. And just to have this house that sort of all speaks in this very common language of music is amazing. And, you know, I couldn't do that if Georgia wasn't as brilliant as sure. shoes. The piano is number five. I like the piano. When I first got to, I'll tell you, when I was

working on parade, the orchestrator was a guy named Don Sebeschi, genius, brilliant orchestrator, but he tended to take all of the stuff out of the piano and give it to everybody else to make sure that all the instruments were playing something. And I kept saying the piano part, most of what I'm doing is superfluous because somebody else is playing all. He said, yeah, well, the piano is not a great color. And I said, I'm not sure that I agree with that. But I do understand how over the course of an evening, if you rely on that color too much, it does sort of get hammery.

It does get dull. But I've always looked at the piano. I think the way that a lot of people now look at their samplers and their synthesizers and their racks of sounds, but all I ever had to do was the piano. So I know how to hear in my head the sounds that I want, even if what comes out of the piano isn't what I'm hearing up here, I know how to use the piano for that.

I know how to use the pitches and the percussiveness of it and also how to play against all of that. It's really, it's my closest collaborator is that instrument. I know how to speak with it more even than my voice. The piano and I have a really good relationship. and technically I'm not a particularly good pianist but I again I'm really I know how to get around it really well

and I know how to write on a piano so I think in terms of all of my tools it's the one that's the most reliable for me and because of that I also that means I have to get away from it a lot of the time but if you left me alone and say you know all right you've got to write a show and you don't have a piano to write with

you would be taking away sort of my best tool well thank you for doing this episode of Anne the Writer is. You know, for somebody who's looking up to the people who've done it well before and when I say done it well, when you say artistic success, that's all any creator

that I've ever looked up to has done. So, you know, you've done it so many times and in so many ways. And it's really impressive to see you, you know, somebody who's developed a whole career. It's so hard. It's so easy for people to have moments.

You know, people have a fluke. Yeah. But they don't have 20 years and are still working and are working even now at, you know, the same level or higher when you're working with the Billy Crystals of the world. But you're doing it, you do it well, and you have, you know, the fact that you're known as JRB, the fact that you have, you know, you have this ability to influence so much of this industry

because of your talent is impressive, it's inspiring, and thanks for leading the way. You know, there's a phrase that I really hooked on to a couple years ago was this idea of the body of work. And I love the idea of building a body of work. And I feel like I've been doing it, you know, since I was really 20 years old. And now that I'm, you know, 50, that body of work keeps getting bigger. And the way that it moves out into the world. God willing, it inspires people,

God willing it entertains people. But most importantly, I think it looks like me. And I guess that's what I'm here for. I'm supposed to create that point for. Love it. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of And The Writer is. If you want to hear music from this songwriter I just interviewed, be sure to check out our Spotify playlist.

Or visit our website at and The WriterIs.com. If you like what we're doing, please subscribe to us. You can also like us on Facebook and Twitter. And The Writer Is, is produced by Joe London, edited by Miles Bergsmah, and published by Big Deal Music. A special thanks to David Silberstein from Mega House Music and Michael White. Until next time, this is Ross Golden.