tylerphillipsmusic.com Blog

I enjoy taking two things I like and putting them together so that they are one thing.

• I like soda and ice cream = I like ice cream floats.

• I also like tigers and cotton candy = The zoo is fabulous.

• I’m all about rock and roll and musical theatre.  So is this guy, Andrew Heyman.

Andrew is an exciting new theatre writer with a Jersey punk/rock background.  I dig his stuff so much, that I asked him to share the stage with me at the next Name’NLights Cabaret Show.  Don’t miss “Rock-Away Beech“, an evening of original theatre rock, this coming Monday at the Laurie Beechman Theater.

Back in the day, (now we’re talking Dick Rodgers, OH2, Berlin, and the bros Gershwin)  Broadway WAS pop music. Somewhere along the way, that slipped away – Probably the fault of those rock and roll rebels with their slicked back hair and crazy, hip-shakin’ dancing… As much as I would’ve liked to have heard Sondheim on MIX 96.1 growing up, I just think it’s safe to say that more people were jamming to Boyz II Men than “Passion” on their portable CD players in the early/mid 90’s.  Look, the great American art form is a living, breathing thing.  It is going to grow.  It is going to change.  Lately though, I feel like B-way has been kickin’ it old school in a fresh new way.  With the breakthrough of shows like “Spring Awakening”, “Passing Strange”, and “American Idiot”, we are seeing the return of popular music styles to the Broadway Stage.

These types of shows are opening up new realms of possibility for theatre writers who grew up with their hands wrapped around the rosewood neck of a six string rock machine.  My good friend Andrew, is a great example… I sat down with him to ask a few questions about his personal journey from overdrive to overture.

You grew up in Jersey – a stone’s throw away from Broadway and also the birthplace of some killer rock music.  Can you describe your earliest experiences with rock and with musical theatre?

I have two older brothers, both of whom ensured I spent the first ten years of my life listening to U2, Styx, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots and ABBA almost exclusively.

Around 1994, my brother did “Pippin” at Stagedoor Manor. I’d seen a fair amount of musical theatre by that point, but I’d never heard anything that combined modern pop sensibilities with theatrical music. I fell in love with a lot of the songs in that show, and I spent that entire school year listening to only the “Pippin” original cast recording and Green Day’s “Dookie.”  I guess that explains a lot, doesn’t it?

When did you decide that you wanted to write theatre music?

I played in a punk band throughout high school, and it never occurred to me to even try to write theatre songs until I got to college. The social scene at Princeton is built around these co-ed frat-type things called Eating Clubs. I was distraught when I didn’t get into the one I wanted, and I decided to get involved with as many other things on campus as I could to try to, well, find a place where I belonged. While on that quest, I applied for and was accepted into the writers’ workshop of the Princeton Triangle Club, the school’s student-run musical comedy group.

That was the first time I saw that musical theatre could provide a more expansive storytelling landscape than the pop and rock and punk songs I’d been writing up until that point. So I decided to try to combine them all.

Are there any rock bands that you feel have a theatrical sense of composition?

Of course, there are tons. The two that spring to mind as particularly influential for me are Iron Maiden and AFI.  There’s so much that’s theatrical about Maiden, from the guitar solos to the stage shows, but their songs also tell stories in ways that most pop songs don’t. Bruce Dickinson is the mouthpiece for these crazy tales about satanic rituals and dead soldiers and native americans.

AFI’s exactly the opposite: their frontman portrays himself as the modern equivalent of the Byronic Hero, and that’s pretty damn theatrical right there. And there’s so much storytelling going on just through Jade Puget’s guitarwork, it’s fantastic.

To me, the term “rock musical” has always seemed so ambiguous. What musicals, would you consider “rock musicals”?

To be perfectly honest, unless you’re Freddie Mercury or maybe Ben Folds, I think it’s very difficult to write *real* rock without the guitar as the driving instrument. I mean, the advent of rock and roll corresponds directly with the rise of the electric guitar. There’s a reckless and wild quality inherent to the instrument that the piano lacks, and that quality is essential to rock and roll, I think. To that end, the rock musicals that seem the most “authentic” to me are written by songwriters whose background is in the pop idiom and whose main instrument is the guitar – shows like Hair, Tommy, Passing Strange, and American Idiot.

As someone who writes exclusively on guitar, do you feel limited in any way by the piano-based nature of musical theatre composition?

Well, I’ll tell you this: for some reason, you never think to use recit when you write on guitar. I don’t know why, but I think there’s something about the instrument that doesn’t lend itself to that. But I don’t think that’s a “limitation.” I wouldn’t say there are any real limitations to writing musical theatre on guitar – it’s just…different. Writing for piano and writing for guitar require very different approaches, and you will always get very different results. You don’t have that left hand available on guitar; if you want a bass line, you either have to hear it in your head while you’re writing or go back and create it after the fact. But honestly, I find that sort of liberating. The nature of writing on guitar allows me to focus on what is to me the single most important aspect of a song: the vocal melody.

You are quite the guitar aficionado.  Tell us about your collection…

I guess you could say I collect electric guitars, if five is a collection. They all have names that begin with “A.” I didn’t do that on purpose with the first few, but once I saw the pattern it was too late to turn back. I’ve got a Gibson Les Paul Standard (Andriana), a Gibson Les Paul Junior (Andromache), a GPC Matt Skiba Signature (Aurora), a Danelectro Dano ‘63 (Alicia), and a Danelectro DC-12 (Anastasia). I’ve also got an electric mandolin that my girlfriend insists on calling “Amanda.”

Your musical “Together This Time” is an inspiring an exciting new blend of rock music and theatrical storytelling.  Where did the idea for this show come from?

Both Zac Kline – with whom I collaborated on this show – and I are big fans of Haruki Murakami’s novels, and I’ve always been fascinated by the way Murakami uses the trope of dual worlds in his writing. Like in “Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World,” for example. One world seems real, the other fantastical. But as the story progresses the lines blur and the worlds begin to intersect. We wanted to examine this idea through the lens of a creator moving back and forth between his real world and that of his creation, and to use it as a springboard to explore the toll it would take on his relationships with his family and friends. Zac has this weird penchant for writing about writers, so we decided to make our protagonist a novelist. Write about what you know, right?

My musical goal with this show was to make it as naturalistic as possible. That is, we wanted these characters to be real people, and I wanted them to sing the types of songs that real people would sing. I tried to make the score accessible to a modern audience raised on pop and rock, and I hope it serves as a means for them to connect with the characters.

Are you currently writing anything new?

I’m working on various projects. I’m always looking for ways to combine my interest in Greek mythology and Classical literature with music, so I’m working on a song cycle based on the Homeric Hymns to the Olympian gods as well as a musical adaptation of Sophocles’ “Ajax.” I’m also just beginning work on a couple film adaptations, but it’s too early to really talk about those.

Call the Laurie Beechman Theater @ (212) 695-6909 to make your reservation for ROCK-AWAY BEECH (full description below)

ROCKAWAY BEECH
March 1, 2010 Monday, 9:30PM
Laurie Beechman Theater
407 W. 42nd St, NYC
call for reservations 212-695-6909
$5 cover (+$15 food/drink minimum)

A Jersey punk and a Texas rocker take the stage to share some showtunes that really rock! With the help of a truly rockin’ band, some of the composers’ favorite vocalists kick it up a notch to light up the Laurie Beechman Theater. Don’t miss this one-night-only exploration of character and drama through the timeless and expansive sounds of pop/rock.

featuring the vocal talents of Elysia Segal, Kasey Marino, Kristy Glass, Paul Wyatt, Amanda Savan, Shira Kobren, Chris Gleim, Derek Carley, and Sebastian Fabal

Feb252010

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