Tag: Edie Brickell

BGS 5+5: Heather Taylor

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Artist: Heather Taylor
Hometown: Rochester, New York
Latest album: Undercurrents
Personal nicknames (or rejected band names): HT, HTCreates

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

I was playing a long gig, the PA was giving us trouble and it eventually stopped working. We still had a good chunk to go, though we could have stopped and gone home. Instead, we unplugged and asked everyone to gather close. Happily the audience did and the room turned to magic! We gave it our all, playing and singing and dancing away, totally unencumbered by any tech. I tried different things with my voice and ways to approach the songs. I was raw and felt so much back from the audience members. I can still feel moments in the night when I decided to take certain leaps.

Do you remember the first moment you wanted to be a musician?

There fortunately have been many stages that I’ve rededicated my life to music. My parents were both musicians and it’s been engrained since I was little. The first moment as a young adult when I started to “get it” had to be when I was in high school traveling with an orchestra in Italy (I played classical flute through college). We got off a plane ride and within a few hours went to play a concert.

We were tired and disoriented, but through the concert we could see something happening; the audience members were engaged and emotionally present. There was one particular Italian man who was moved to tears and thanking us for our musicality and passion. I remember I was blown away. I saw that music helped connect us to people in a faraway land, in an intimate and real way. It helped me realize music was a bridge or universal language and I easily wanted more.

If you had to write a mission statement for your career what would it be?

I’ve thought about this a lot and I’ve tried on different mission suits! The answer usually comes back to cultivating connection to the self and bridging the gap to others. Simply enough I’d like to make good music and continue creating cool things. If that sparks collaboration or inspiration in someone else that would be the best!

What is your dream pairing of a meal and musician?

Sushi, wontons and miso ginger soup with Rhiannon Giddens would be inspirational and delicious!

What rituals do you have either in the studio or before a show?

I usually have a good amount of conversation with myself throughout the day, which varies from coaching my mind into relaxation if I’m super excited, to hyping myself up if I’m feeling tired. There’s always a sweet spot I like being in that I can access the music better. I do this through a quick yoga session, breath-work, listening to someone inspiring, connecting with someone or reminding myself to just get into the feeling of the music and have fun. I also make a point to think about the listener, keeping in mind I’m coming there to share something with them.

Photo credit: Emily Nichols

Bright Star Does Right by Bluegrass on Broadway

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Broadway, lately, has been kind to the chorus it never saw coming, to adventurous works that look beyond traditional theater tropes and highly trained vibratos for a hook that lasts long after that curtain goes up. Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s revolutionary hip-hop musical sensation, is the poster child of this: With its explosive performances and Roots-produced, Grammy award-winning soundtrack, it set a new standard for what the modern musical could do in terms of reconnecting theater with popular culture and keeping that life line intact. Waitress, the new musical based on the 2007 film starring Keri Russell, holds that pop connection close, as its music and lyrics were penned by Sara Bareilles of “Love Song” fame.

While shows like Les Misérables, Wicked, and The Lion King continue to draw crowds to their respective spots in Times Square every night, Broadway’s audiences are clearly clamoring for the current hits whose soundtracks make for seamless additions to their Recently Played iTunes playlist. They want an experience that banks on the music before the drama — and that’s how Bright Star gives its audience what it’s looking for.

Bright Star, the musical collaboration of Steve Martin and singer/songwriter Edie Brickell, brings Americana into this conversation. Set in the hilly sprawl of North Carolina in the wake of World War II, its story follows Billy Cane, a newly anointed veteran who’s trying to find his voice as a writer having just returned from the battlefield. Shortly after he makes his way home, he’s off again, heading to Asheville in the hopes of securing a byline at the Asheville Southern Journal. Alice Murphy — the paper’s tough, terse, and hawk-eyed editor — reads one of Billy’s stories and pays him for his work, but doesn’t publish it: She offers Billy the opportunity to pitch her ideas until one sticks, and he spends the majority of Bright Star working toward that goal. Through flashbacks, we learn more about Alice — where she came from, the loves and losses that shaped the bubbly teenager who somehow turns into the stern woman Billy meets at the Journal — and that her life’s story syncs up with Billy’s in a way that neither one of them sees coming.

While the plot of Bright Star bounces between the aspirational journey of Billy’s and Alice’s painful trip down memory lane, the music is what lays a firm foundation for the folklore. With down-home arrangements, plenty of opportunities for its singers to showcase their ability to belt the hell out of a long-held high note, and the steely twang of the bluegrass band onstage throughout the program, the music of Bright Star is the anchoring force of the production — the backbone that keeps the decidedly PG storylines from broaching cheesy, try-hard territory in a venue that’s more than susceptible to that kind of family-friendly fun. This isn’t "Bluegrass by Disney" or anything, either: The arrangements are tight, the vocal lines are tough, and the accents steer clear of caricature territory (for the most part). By treating the band as a living, breathing set piece — and keeping them visible and active throughout the performance — Bright Star makes the importance of the music known, sending the not-so-subliminal message that the pickers and players backing the actors are just as pivotal to the story as Alice and Bobby are themselves. Carmen Cusack, as Alice, can summon hope and warmth (“Sun Is Gonna Shine”) as effortlessly as she can channel grief and despair (“Please, Don’t Take Him”), and the bright banjo riffs and sad bass lows do so in kind.

Bright Star may not break new ground, as far as its story goes, and the music, while lovely, isn’t especially earth-shattering, though it’s great to see an acoustic guitar and mandolin treated so venerably on the Great White Way. But like Hamilton, Waitress, and other musicals that have audiences rethinking the role popular music has to play in storytelling, Bright Star succeeds in working music — in this case, of a folkier, bluegrass ilk — into its fabric while pushing boundaries and expectations for both the genre and the artform. Broadway’s finally down with beats and poppy hooks. It’s about damn time it picked up the banjo, too.