[music]

Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It. I'm Kousha Navidar, in for Alison Stewart. Hey, thanks for dropping by this afternoon. We're glad to have you with us. Coming up on today's show, we'll talk about wedding music with DJ Karin Fjellman. She's got some advice for how to craft the musical arc of a wedding celebration, from the romance of the couple's first dance to the party jams you'll want so everyone's on the dance floor till the venue kicks you out. We'll also hear the latest on Kendrick Lamar's public beef with Drake. Vulture's Craig Jenkins is here to share the history of the diss track and how it's evolved over time. We're also going to take your calls for that one. If you've got opinions, get ready.

Plus, we'll hear about the Pulitzer winning play Primary Trust with playwright Eboni Booth and star William Jackson Harper. That's the plan, and let's get this thing started with some Stereophonic.

[music]

Last week, the new play, Stereophonic, made history, becoming the first play to ever receive 13 Tony nominations. Now, let's celebrate with the creative team responsible for bringing this show to life. The show is set in 1976. It follows a band on the rise coming together to record what they hope will be their big hit album. Like any band, the group is full of talents and ego. There's lead singer Diana, whose solo songs are rising on the charts. Her romantic partner and lead guitarist Peter, seems slightly jealous of her success. Keyboard player Holly is in a troubled relationship with alcoholic bass player Reg. Drummer Simon, he just wants to finish the record so he can get home to his kids.

Engineering, it all is Grover, who has lied to get his job, but finds himself growing more confident and assertive, even as the relationship between the band members, it starts to fracture. The intricate and intimate script is written by David Adjmi, who makes sure to give each character a moment to shine. The incredibly catchy original music that's written by former frontman for Arcade Fire, Will Butler, and directing all of this madness with ease is Daniel Aukin. All three are Tony nominated for their work on Stereophonic, which is running now at the Golden Theater, and they are all three with us right now in studio. David, Daniel, Will, welcome to All Of It.

Daniel Aukin: Thank you.

Will Butler: Hello.

David Adjmi: Thanks for having us.

Kousha Navidar: Absolutely. It's such a pleasure to have you all here. David, I want to get started with you. What first inspired you to write the story? Did you realize immediately how ambitious it would be to actually stage it?

David Adjmi: I didn't know how to do it when I first got the idea. I first got the idea when I was on a plane ride, going to a conference, and I listened in the inflight radio. They were playing a Led Zeppelin song called Babe I'm Gonna Leave You, which was a cover. I knew it because my brother used to play the chords when I was a little kid, so I just knew the basic skeleton of that music. There's something about the way that just the intensity of the vocals were so profound, and because I was trapped on a plane, I was really forced to listen to it and experience it.

I just immediately visualized this studio, and I tried to picture the scene, and then suddenly I went, "Wait a minute, this could be a play." I didn't know what the play could be because that would be boring to just have people in a studio recording an album. I knew the sonic possibilities of using something like that as a dramatic landscape, like a recording studio. I thought, oh, I could do something really cool with it, but I didn't know quite what it would be.

Yes, I knew it would be a vicious, and I didn't know anything about recording or analog recording or any of that stuff. I'm not that much of an aficionado of music. I love music, but not to that extent. It was definitely a learning process, and it took years and years for me to get really granular and detailed about it.

Kousha Navidar: I was going to ask you about that because one thing that really stuck out to me in the script is how granular the music terminology is and how intricate the music is to that. How did you get that fluency to put it into the script so naturally?

David Adjmi: It was a weird thing of fake it till you make it. I was watching a lot of documentaries and reading stuff, and then cribbing phrases or just trying to write down whatever I could figure out in the moment. Then I made a-- It's almost like scratch vocals in music. This is temporary. Maybe this makes sense. Then my director, Daniel, knew real engineers who worked in the period and would say, "That doesn't make sense. That doesn't make sense. Try that. Try that." It was like a trial and error thing that went on, literally, for years.

Kousha Navidar: Will, when did you get started on this project? What's the story behind that?

Will Butler: I met David a decade ago, in November 2014. A friend of a friend was like, "This playwright is working on a play about a band in the studio. Do you want to go and meet him and maybe write songs for it, maybe just talk about it, maybe consult?" We had lunch in the diner and hit it off and just-- David was furiously working for many years, and I was casually working for many years, and then furiously working for many years after that. It's been about 10 years.

Kousha Navidar: What was it that drew you into it?

Will Butler: I just instantly got the whole image of it and just that it would be in a studio. As David was saying, just the dramatic landscape of that is so ripe with possibility. Then the shape of the music was pretty clear, not the specific songs, but that you hear a demo and you experience a moment of transcendence that can't make the record because you couldn't capture it again or recaptured it in the wrong way. Then yelling at the sound engineer because it's actually because of your relationship with your father, but you're mad at how it sounds. Just the whole emotional landscape of the music and the bits and pieces of it were instantly compelling.

Kousha Navidar: I'm listening to all of these elements that really bring the play into some visceral form as soon as you start to read it. Daniel, for you, I wonder, that is a lot to wrap your arms around. Not only are we hearing about all the musical terminology and having to bring in sound engineers, but also the set and just all of the intricate dialog that we hear. How did you react when you first read the script, and where did you even want to begin in order to get a grip on this thing?

Daniel Aukin: Well, yes, it was a huge undertaking. To get to a place where, I think this goes for the music, too, even though I had little to do with that aspect of it, but to get the actors to do all this stuff with a feeling of ease just takes a lot of time and a lot of repetition. We're just blessed with this extraordinary cast, but there's no substitute for just doing things over and over and over and over again. Eventually, things start to sink in and it starts to feel natural. This really intricate written script starts to feel alive in their mouths and not forced, and has a documentary feeling about it.

Kousha Navidar: If you're just joining us, we're talking about the show Stereophonic, which is running right now at the Golden Theater. We're lucky to be joined by David Adjmi, who's the playwright, Daniel Aukin, the director, and Will Butler, the music and lyrics. Hey, heads up, guys. This has been nominated for 13 Tony Awards, including Best Play. Daniel, you mentioned the repetition and the cast being a big part of this. What were you looking for when you were casting the show? Was musical ability a big part it?

Daniel Aukin: Certainly, Justin, our music director, and Will were a huge part of the casting process, and we had to cast people who we credibly believed, once we cast them, either already had or would have enough musical ability to get them to a place where they could be this credible band. Then the acting challenge of it is huge, too. The rough rubric I said was we have cast actors who would be excited to see in a Chekhov play. It has that kind of demands on an actor. It's really a very dreamy cast. They had to be up for both, and they all were.

Kousha Navidar: Will, I read in the New York Times that you invited this group to play as a band, as an opening act for you at Elsewhere in Brooklyn. Why did you do that? What did you hope to bring out of it when you're doing that for them?

Will Butler: Again, they're great actors, and they're just such sponges for experience. Part of the experience of this was just building them as a band. They needed to be a credible band, and in order to do that, they actually had to be a band. You learn so much by going on stage. The different thing about performing at a rock show is it's either yourself or a persona of yourself facing out into the crowd. It's very scary in a certain sense, particularly for an actor who's used to playing a character and used to having a fourth wall and all these things.

I just wanted to give them a taste of that. Almost the most important part of it was they sat down at soundcheck and they started playing, and they were like, "Oh, it's too loud." They accidentally left the volume too loud. They're like, "No, that's how loud you are. That's how loud music is. That's how loud a drum is. That's how deep a bass is. You play the bass and you feel it rumble." Because in the theater, they're on headphones and they're in the studio, and studio work is a different thing, but I wanted them to have the feeling of just like making an earthquake in a space and seeing people respond to it.

Kousha Navidar: Was there any element when you were reading the script where you thought, "Man, this is an element of me as a musician and my life as a career musician that's really speaking to me." Maybe a specific character, maybe just one element where you thought, "Man, this is something that really picks up on what it's like behind the scenes."

Will Butler: Yes, it's horrible.

[laughter]

No, it's like offensively close to my life. I was like, "Oh, I can't watch this. This is too real." There's a scene where Holly loses it, and throws her headphones off, and screams at the engineer, and it's because of other things in her life. I've just had that experience of getting mad at something technical, and you blame it on some technical aspect but it's because of your life. It's because of your love, and your relationships, and your family, and all these things, and you're trying to take it out on something technical. You're trying to do a technical task while you're swimming in this ocean of emotions.

Kousha Navidar: David, it makes me wonder, the characters are really what drive this show in addition to the music. Of all the characters, who took you the longest to really figure out?

David Adjmi: Well, Holly, because I still don't understand her. She's really, really private, and she's private even from me. I feel like there was a wall with that character, and I tried penetrating the character. At some point, it just became fake. I was like, "No, she does not want me to know her up to a certain point," and so I have to respect that. All the other characters were totally transparent to me. I could get it every single one of them except for her. That's weird.

Kousha Navidar: That's so interesting. You just left, you were like, "This is the barrier. This will be how that character is."

David Adjmi: I just felt that sometimes it was like a puzzle that I was determined to solve, and then I felt like there was something perverse about me trying to solve it, so I was like, "I'm going to leave her alone. I think this is as far as she wants me to go."

Kousha Navidar: Will, you have this daunting task of writing the songs that sound like they could have been recorded in 1976. Let's listen to one and talk about on the other side. This is Masquerade.

[MUSIC - Will Butler: Masquerade]

Got my ticket to the masquerade

Sold this soul, and the money paid

I've been here so long, and

That's where you have gone, so

Grab my bag and I'm on my way

Young man told me that I shouldn't know

There are things I couldn't know

Kousha Navidar: Will, the music in this play is so captivating. While I was watching last night and listening, I was thinking about your strategy for writing a song in 1976 in a way that felt authentic but not like a parody or a copycat. It felt fresh. Can you walk us through that, how you approach that?

Will Butler: Yes. The biggest task was writing a good song and writing enough good songs that you could have good songs, and then taking a good song, and making it better, and making it a very good song, because if you have a good song, if you have a great song, it can support many interpretations. If you have a great song, you can play it in 1976, you can play it in 1982, you can play it in 1995, you can play it in the year 2000, and it still is alive.

You could play a rock and roll, you could play a Chuck Berry song today and people would respond to it, and you could make it sound like 2024. It was primarily just write a great song and then immerse it in the material culture, and have it come out of a guitar amp from the '70s, and have it hit tape, and let the material culture drive the sound but really just focus on the songwriting.

Kousha Navidar: For you, before you thought about this is a song that would be played in the '70s, you thought this is what a good song would be that comes to me, and then this is how they would approach it in the '70s. Is that fair?

Will Butler: This is a good song that would come to Diana. This is a good song that would come to Holly. It was a little bit method writing in some way where you're trying to let it emerge from the script, emerge from the characters, and then just trying to craft it to the best of your ability, and having David there the whole time also is as really editing it and producing it together. It was just like song, song, song, lyric, song, lyric, just refining, refining, refining.

Kousha Navidar: That's wonderful. Well, we're going to go take a quick break, but when we come back, I want to talk more about the set of this stage, and then how we actually pulled it all together. Maybe hear a little bit more music. We're talking about Stereophonic, which is running now at the Golden Theater. We're with David Adjmi, the playwright, Daniel Aukin, the director, and Will Butler, who did music and lyrics. This is All Of It. Stick with us. We'll be right back.

[music]

This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar, in for Alison Stewart. We're talking about Stereophonic, which is running right now at the Golden Theatre. We've got David Adjmi, who is the playwright, Daniel Aukin, the director, and Will Butler, who did the music and lyrics. This show was nominated for 13 Tony Awards including Best Play. That's the most Tony Awards for any show in the history of the Tonys, I believe, and it is just a fantastic experience.

Daniel, one of the biggest in pieces of enjoyment for me during the show was the set. You've got this split-level set, a sound booth on the top part of the stage, a console, huge console, and the recording part in the bottom. I'm wondering, how did you want to play with that split-stage design, especially since it almost has a quality of having the band beyond display the whole time?

Daniel Aukin: Until we did the first production of it at Playwrights Horizons, we didn't know, for sure, how well it would work. We'd done workshops of it before but it was all just like, "Put up a screen and pretend it's soundproof and pretend you can't hear each other." Until we were really doing it for real, we couldn't know, but we had intuitions about it. We had a theater behind us, Playwrights Horizons, who really gave us the resources and the time to find that stuff, and it took a long time to go, "Okay, I know this works on paper, but is this going to work in reality," and we figured it out slowly.

Kousha Navidar: Is it correct for me to say that the console on stage actually controlled the mixing that we heard during it? Because it seemed like when the engineer Grover was playing with faders, it was actually affecting the music that we heard.

Daniel Aukin: There are places where that is true.

Kousha Navidar: Okay, got it. I guess what I really want to ask here is, what was a big challenge that you faced with controlling that kind of set that you had to figure out either in terms of how you blocked or how you phased?

Daniel Aukin: It was a combination of sonic and compositional balance, and trying to serve the legibility of what the story we were telling in that particular moment, and so how somebody is moving when somebody says something, and the sonic quality, it's just a big extra layer than you would typically have to deal with in a play, but also an enormous area of play and enormously rich palette to play with.

It's just like doing it again and again and say, "Oh, that didn't work, let's try it a different way, and just what is the legibility of this? Can I follow it? Does this feel alive? Does this have a very improvisational feel to it?" There was a funny story of one of the actor's friends who saw it twice, and the second time, they said, "Oh, I didn't think you were going to do it the same way the second time." They thought it was improvised. It was the greatest compliment.

[laughter]

Kousha Navidar: That repetition that you talk about reminds me so much of what we see in the show which is, this is how a piece of music gets recorded, it is done over and over again. That sense of improvisation leads me to think about that naturalistic approach to the script, which David, I really want to talk to you about. You have people talking over one another, fiddling with instruments while they talk to each other. People aren't properly introduced at first.

A lot of this show I noticed is about the relationship, maybe even the conflict between bandmates. The audience in my show was so responsive and engaged not to just what was said but the silence around everything that was said. I feel like it was a masterclass in how to write good arguments on stage. I guess my question to you is, how do you write a good argument? How do you make it feel so natural?

David Adjmi: I think for me, writing a good argument on stage in a scene is about tracking the characters and just letting them say what they need to say, or if they feel blocked, letting that block register and become legible. There's a big scene in the middle of the play rather it's maybe the middle of the first half where Peter and Diana have a big argument, and it goes on a really long time. You think it's going to end and then it starts to unfold in some new way, and that just happened in the writing. I just followed them where they went with it and I didn't censor them.

I think sometimes playwrights end their scenes too early. I like to let it go a little bit longer than it should just see what happens. I love it because there are all of these dimensions, they're both right in different ways and they're both wrong in different ways. I didn't want to do a play where someone's a villain or someone's an angel. It's just so boring to me. I wanted people to get lost in the grisaille in this gray area and just swim around in that because I love ambiguity in plays. I think people are just so complex and I really wanted to draw that out.

Kousha Navidar: How do you know when a scene is over?

David Adjmi: It's all intuition. It's really all intuition, but I do like to let my scenes go on a little bit longer, and then I'll just snip them later if it's just too much.

Kousha Navidar: Yes. I thought a lot of the humor came from letting things go a little bit longer, too, especially the silences that we hear. Just so much humor and just people holding their reactions on stage. It was really, really lovely. You mentioned a lot of the tension Diana and Peter. Will, a lot of the tension in the show revolves around these two characters. Peter, the lead guitarist and producer on the album. Diana writes these beautiful songs that she's very protective of and has a hard time when Peter wants to change something about them. Let's listen to one first, the way she presents it to the band. This is one version of the song Bright. Here it is.

[MUSIC - Will Butler: Bright v1]

I was dreaming of a love song

Though what good is love if the wind starts blowing

Nothing forgotten, nothing forgiven

When the nights comes to an end

Kousha Navidar: Now let's hear the version that Peter wants, which is sped up. Here's that same song recorded a different way.

[MUSIC - Will Butler: Bright (Fast)]

Kousha Navidar: Will, what went into crafting this particular song, which becomes so much of the tension in the play? Do you think either of these characters are creatively right or wrong about the best way to record it?

Will Butler: Then there's a third version after this where Peter, much like David, is working off intuition a lot of the time. I think Peter does have good instincts and I think Peter is a good producer. Again, I think a good song can support numerous interpretations, but there is some that are more right than others. No, when I was writing the song, I was sitting at the piano, and the character Diana can play piano, but is not a piano player, has limited piano ability. I just sat at the piano and tried to play something simple and tried to put myself in the mind of this character and just a little bit turn off the conscious brain and open up your lizard brain, and see what emerges.

I honestly think that's what Peter is doing a lot of the time when he's producing the record. Your unconscious mind can really get you places, but also if you're not thinking of the people around you, it can start to rub up against them. Yes, the way they work together and the way that Peter works within the band feels very real. It feels like the bands that I've been in and feels like everyone is trying to serve the music. In a good band, people are trying to serve the music, and there's no right or wrong, but there is a flow to it and it's mysterious. It is a mysterious process of creation.

Kousha Navidar: You almost find out about it, seeing the reactions of other members in the band. It seems like that was an element of the show too. When people are presenting, "Hey, how does this feel?" There's just the electricity in the air. There's this one specific moment that I'm thinking of that I'm not going to ruin anything, but it is that sense of, "Oh, as a group collective, we recognize the way that things feel good." Right?

Will Butler: The strange thing about making a record is you have those moments and then sometimes you go back and listen to it and you're like, "Oh, it didn't make it through the microphone, but I felt it. We all felt it and yet it somehow didn't happen." I'm just talking about my life now, not the play, but there is this mysterious thing that happens between people on a very spiritual level, and it is its own separate creation.

Kousha Navidar: Suffice to say, I always mess that up, suffice to say, there is this sense of audiences really resonating with it. Daniel, 13 Tony noms, the most one play has ever received, how did you feel getting that news?

Daniel Aukin: I'm still digesting it. Yes. It's a lot to process, and we're all enormously grateful for the response and just taking deep breaths. [chuckles]

Kousha Navidar: Have you noticed there being any added energy since getting that news? Do the shows feel different? Does the cast just bring it and then that's what's made people feel good about it all long? How's that been for you?

Daniel Aukin: I think every show has its own fragile thing. This is a very challenging show to be in, and with anything like this, they really have to really bring it every night. They do, but it's also something that I have to watch regularly because it's just like anything. It's fragile, too.

Kousha Navidar: Stereophonic is running now at the Golden Theater. It is up for 13 Tony awards, including Best Play. We've been joined by playwright David Adjmi and director Daniel Aukin. Thank you two so much for joining us.

David Adjmi: Thank you.

Daniel Aukin: Thanks.

Kousha Navidar: Will, we're going to talk to you for another minute about the public song project, while David and Daniel are very patient and sit here and be a cheerleading squad for both of us while we do this. Will, you're one of our guest contributors for the Public Song Project this year. You and your band, Sister Squares, recorded a cover of George and Ira Gershwin's The Man I Love, which I know has some personal significance for you and your family. Can you talk about your relationship with that song a little bit?

Will Butler: Yes. My grandparents were jazz musicians. My grandma was Luise King, and she was in a group called The King Sisters, with all her sisters, and my grandpa was a man named Alvino Rey. He was a guitar player who moved to New York 100 years ago and lived in the Hotel Pennsylvania while they were building the Empire State Building. It was one of the first jazz guitarists ever, because jazz was new, and the electric guitar didn't even exist yet. Yes, my grandma and her sisters sang The Man I Love and my grandpa was taking music lessons from the guy that taught Gershwin. It all felt of a piece of the history and a piece of New York history as well.

Kousha Navidar: We have a clip of the song. Let's hear Will Butler's grandma King Sisters, The Man I Love. Here it is.

[MUSIC - George and Ira Gershwin: The Man I Love]

Some day he'll come along

The man I love

And he'll be big and strong

The man I love

And when he comes my way

I'll do my best to make him stay

Kousha Navidar: Your version of The Man I Love sounds pretty different from the classic versions that listeners might be familiar with. I'm thinking of the likes of Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. Can you tell me what inspired your approach to the song?

Will Butler: Yes. Part of my approach was just approaching it very tired. It was like, "I'm so tired and I'm thinking of the man I love." [chuckles] Just trying a very weary version of it and just open to the melancholy of it because how my grandma sang it as a very-- Again, a great song supports many interpretations, but it works as an upbeat toe-tapping, I'm walking through New York and I'm thinking about the man I love. There was something probably in response to that where I was like, "I want to hear it as a contemplative, as something deeply melancholy within it."

Kousha Navidar: Where did the melancholy come from? Is it something that you heard in the lyrics or is it something that you heard in the music or just you thought this is a different aspect of that frame?

Will Butler: The music and lyrics. This person's thinking of the man I love, and it's not real yet. You know it's a dream. It's a dream that you're having and you know it's a dream, and you're a fool for having the dream and yet you keep having the dream.

Kousha Navidar: You change one verse in the song for your version. Instead of, he'll build a little home just meant for two, you sing, we'll build a little home in Brooklyn Heights. Why that change?

Will Butler: That was actually from my grandma's version is they have a jokey verse about Brooklyn Heights. I couldn't even find the attribution. I don't know who wrote it or if it was just the arranger came up with it one day, and I was like, "Actually, I'm going to keep that." Then I tweaked that verse about Brooklyn Heights just because it felt, I don't know, it felt nice to talk about Brooklyn. I live in Brooklyn so I was like, "Oh, yes, let's put a little Brooklyn in there."

Kousha Navidar: A song of New York, like you're saying. Yes. There might be some listeners out there still on the fence about submitting to the project. They have until May 12th to send in a song. You can go to wnyc.org/publicsongproject. Last question for you, from your own experience picking and recording a song, what would you say to somebody deciding whether or not to get involved?

Will Butler: Do it and just dig into the public domain. Oh, I love the public domain, and there's so many beautiful songs from 100 years ago. I'm so glad more and more songs are entering every year now. Yes, there's just some beautiful stuff. All the Berlin, not all of it, but a lot of the urban Berlin. Anyway, it's wonderful. Just go listen to a bunch of old stuff and start playing it.

Kousha Navidar: Take it from Will Butler. He just told you what to do. We've been talking to Will Butler about his new show, Stereophonic, and his participation in this year's Public Song Project. Will, thank you so much.

Will Butler: Yes, thanks for having me.

Kousha Navidar: Here's Will Butler and Sister Squares with The Man I Love, written by George and Ira Gershwin, and published in 1924. Let's take a little listen.

[MUSIC - George and Ira Gershwin/Will Butler and Sister Squares Cover: The Man I Love]

Kousha Navidar: That was Will Butler and Sister Squares with The Man I Love for the Public Song Project. The final day to submit, it's May 12th. Go to wnyc.org/publicsongproject for more info.

 

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