Episode 1: Opening doors

Meet your hosts Brian Strohmetz and Zoe de York. Their new podcast Making a Musical takes you from the blank page to Broadway… maybe. They’re still working on that last part. Brian and Zoe are both musical theatre creators who had their first original shows produced in 2024 in New Jersey and Brussels – where they each live. 

Brian is a music teacher by day and a composer by night. A Holiday Homecoming debuted in December 2024 in New Jersey. He shares his experience collaborating with the show’s book writer and lyricist. Listen to the music from A Holiday Homecoming.

Zoe is a content producer by day and a songwriter by night. Knocked, the show she co-created with the Brussels Musical Creatives premiered in November 2024 and is running again on 23-25 October in Brussels, Belgium. Get your tickets now!

If you enjoyed our show, make sure to rate and review it and subscribe to receive our next episodes in your preferred podcast platform.

Find us on Instagram @MakingaMusicalPod and @BrianStrohmetzMusic.

Episode Transcript

(Theme music) Brian 0:01
Hello and welcome to Making a musical a writer's journey from the blank page to Broadway. Well, maybe, hopefully, we'll see what happens. I am your host, Brian strometh, and today we wanted to make sure we took the time to introduce you to our newest podcast and your new favorite hosts of any podcast anywhere, if I do say so myself, but I'm not biased. So firstly, let me introduce you to my co host, the one and only. Zoe de York,

Zoe 0:27
Hey, Hi, Brian. Thank you so much. Isn't this exciting? It is. I'm excited. So this podcast started because you and I have been on this wild journey of writing and staging our first original shows last year. So you came to me and said, How about we do a podcast? And I was all in some of these episodes will be just you and me talking about our shows and what we've sort of discovered going through this process. And then in other episodes, we'll have musical theater insiders, we'll have writers, we'll have producers, we'll have orchestrators. Hopefully, you know, the sky is the limit at this point, and we'll just get them to talk to you about what it's like to take a show from the very beginning of an idea to the lights of Broadway. So strap in everybody. We're going to La La Land.

Brian 1:15
Here we go. I'm excited.

Brian 1:18
Hey, Zoe, how you doing?

Zoe 1:19
I'm good. So today, I thought we would take the time to introduce ourselves to our audience and talk about our journey. And sounds good to me. If you're ready, Brian, I'm gonna ask you a few questions.

Brian Strohmetz 1:29
I was born ready, or at least I woke up ready.

Zoe 1:33
I'm glad, because at least you're up. All right, so last year you you staged, as I've mentioned, your first musical in New Jersey, where you live and love and learn. So can you tell me about a Holiday Homecoming?

Brian 1:49
Yeah, so the show was called a Holiday Homecoming, as Zoe said, and I wrote, I wrote and arranged the music, and I worked with our friend and the amazing lyricist, Jessica Strongwater on awesome the lyrics and adapting the lyrics. So I was brought onto the project last June by two friends I went to high school with, because this show was actually written by another friend that we went to high school with, who has since passed unfortunately, and they were reviving the show, rewriting it and kind of updating it, adding more material to it. And they brought me on to do the music. And so the score ended up being a mix of original songs by Jess and I, as well as public domain songs that we updated, arranged, adapted, changed lyrics to to make them fit the plot, et cetera, et cetera. So that was a lot of fun. It was a whirlwind of a project. So we were brought on the end of June last year, and we premiered the first weekend of December last year. And in that time, first draft of the score was written by August 15, which was our reading for approval from our friends family, since they controlled the rates to the original project. And then from there, we updated the score. I orchestrated the score. I music directed the show. We recorded an EP which is streaming now anywhere you can listen to music, so be sure to check it out. There's some good stuff there. And along the way, we learned a lot. And it was a really exciting project, a whirlwind project. Learned a bunch about writing. Learned about a bunch of things I just I'm itching to do again. Learn some things I don't want to do again. But you know, that's what learning is all about.

Zoe 3:40
Are you going to write the next show in the same six months?

Brian 3:43
No, no, I don't want to do that again. I would like a little bit more of a runway. And, you know, Jess and I have started on our next show, and we have plenty of runway on that.

Zoe 3:57
Well, that's, that's a really good teaser as well, because as

Brian 4:00
really feel free to read into that, because that's that is a teaser for the show. That show is that show will fly? Yeah, it it's sure to take off. It's about trains, folks.

Zoe 4:13
So you wrote this in six months, which is fully nuts. How many songs do you write? How many were how many of them were originals, and how many were the public domain one?

Brian 4:23
Yeah, I honestly don't remember off the top of my head how many cues and stuff we had at the end of the run. I think we were up to like 30 something, maybe with the sing along and all of that and reprises and interstitials and all the all the little things that come along. But the first draft of the score that I delivered was 25 songs on August 15, and then obviously we added stuff

Zoe 4:49
like two two months after you got hired. Yeah, and I

Brian 4:53
want to say this out there as a PSA, I am not bragging, and I do not recommend any of this. I. But if the opportunity, you know, comes Carpe Diem, you know, yeah, do you but it is fortunately, because I'm a teacher, I was, they came right at the beginning of my summer vacation, and I worked good. I probably wrote a good 10 hours a day, every day, to get all that done. Yeah, it was, it was a lot. It was a lot. Fortunately, also, like when it came to orchestration, I was able to hire a lot of my friends and write some shorthand for them, and they handled a lot of that heavy lifting.

Zoe 5:27
What was, for you the most challenging piece of writing when you were going through this

Brian 5:32
it was it was figuring out, because it was just Jess and I's first collaboration. So it was figuring out how our creative process work together, because we don't live in the same area, so we were working virtually together. Fortunately, we lived close enough where we could drive out and meet up with each other. But we did that two or three times, but most of the score was written over zoom and sharing Google Docs back and forth and kind of figuring out where each of our boundaries are. And you know, we've since also had stepped back with our new project and talked about, okay, how do we want our collaboration to change? Because obviously, it was a whirlwind project. It was our first time, and had that open and conver open and honest conversation with each other, because we went through one, okay, we want to keep working together? What needs to change, what needs to stay the same, what worked well for us? So that was one of the largest learning opportunities that existed from this show, which was really invaluable,

Zoe 6:33
right? Well, you touching on something that is, and I'm sure we'll come back to this later on, but like, collaboration in musical theater is, is probably what every musical theater writer has had to do at one point or another in their lives, and it's so important to find a good collaborator, someone you jive with and but it's not. It's not intuitive or all the time. It can be, I'm sure it can be, but my experience is you need to work at the relationship as much as work at the music and, you know, the show definitely okay. How, how was the show received? What was the what was it like

Brian 7:11
we we got a lot of good praise. You know, personally, I received a lot of positive feedback in addition to the production. So that was really meaningful, and it was kind of a nice validation for me that I'm kind of on the right path, because this is a very different path than I have initially set out for in my life. You know, I'm a I'm a high school music teacher, and I was like, that's what I'm gonna do. And for lack of a better term, this all this writing stuff, collaborating, writing for musical theater, writing and arranging for orchestras and bands like I do, has kind of just started to bubble up. And I'm kind of riding the wave right now, so, but it was validating that, like, Hey, you should be on this surfboard. Yeah, to, you know, elongate this analogy, but, but no. Otherwise, the production received a lot of praise. Steve's family, the original writer. He they were incredibly grateful, and it was very meaningful to be a part of that project, because, again, he was a friend when I was in high school. And, yeah, yeah. So on a personal level, there too, it was really nice.

Zoe 8:14
That's awesome. All right, let me ask you about you've mentioned this you, you've touched on this, you music, directed the show, and you've been music directing and directing musical for a really long time, because you're a music teacher at this point in your life. And so I wanted to ask you about the shows that you've directed and music directed before, and sort of how the experience you had on these shows helped you with the writing of a Holiday Homecoming and the staging of it as well.

Brian 8:45
Yeah, so at this point now, with the recording of this, I've directed three fully staged musicals at my job, actually gearing up for the fourth, but I'm not gonna announce it here, because my students don't know what it is yet, but I've directed a production of Little Shop of Horrors, Catch Me If You Can. And last year we did High School Musical, which was a lot of fun. Yeah, as far as music directing, Holiday Homecoming was actually my first musical that I music directed and conducted. The Pit this past year for high school musical was the first time I taught the score at school. So I kind of CO music, directed it. I did not direct the pit for that show, because I also staged the show with my assistant director. So that's where my focus is, and not on the band, but I taught the music to the kids, so kind of blending both skills, because during the day, I also teach choir at the school that I'm at, as well as concert band, so I'm constantly teaching music, directing, all of that. So I was able to just kind of transfer those skills to Holiday Homecoming, build upon them, and then transfer back to school, because I have what I found interesting for Holiday Homecoming was it was different than school, because I'm constantly working with the kids and building their. Musical knowledge, and it's in the culture that we built in our programs and all of that Holiday Homecoming, we're dealing with community people who are getting involved, some of them for the first time since high school, which I love, is fantastic. Theater is for everybody, and everybody should be there, yeah, but at the breakneck pace that we were doing with the original songs, it took a whole other level of consideration and rehearsal, and if I had to go back now, there's certain things I would do differently because I went through this

Zoe 10:27
process. Yeah, would you? Would you, or did you write any of the songs for Holiday Homecoming, knowing that you would have an amateur performer have to perform them? Like, did you make some choices that you were like, yeah, maybe we don't go that high. Maybe we just keep it easy for them.

Brian 10:46
I did not, and there were a few times that regretted that, oh, not in a bad way. But it was just like, why the time some of these issues popped up? It was more so, not necessarily range, but actually counting and where certain things fell that made sense, at least to me, in my ear and other people, but for like, a community member, and it was an original song. And again, if anybody's listeners, you did fantastic. Like, I'm not there's no shade, there's nothing but appreciation and love for you. But we were at a point in the process, at that point where there was no changing the score, like the score had to be locked at that point because it was orchestrated, and there just wasn't time. So that's something I'd like to eventually go back and look at again and figure out and learn from

Zoe 11:33
I wanted to talk to you about sort of what you're working on next. I know you're working on other shows. You've you've mentioned the show with Jess. I know you have other projects. So can you tell us about what's next for you and what you've been doing this summer?

Brian 11:46
Yeah, so as far as musical theater stuff, I have, the show I'm working on with Jess, and I'm in the early stages of working on some children musicals with actually a former teacher of mine, which I'm very excited about. I've been a bit busy with some other projects and commissioned work, so I haven't been able to put as much time into them this summer as I was hoping to. But as an educator, and I'm really excited about that, to provide students with the opportunity to perform these shows. And these, these are shows for like the second or third grade through like sixth grade. So they're, they're they're easy, they're fun, they're playful.

Zoe 12:22
So, so these shows, they're for kids and performed by kids or performed by adults, uh, performed by kids. That's really cool, though, that's very

Brian 12:31
nice. So it'd be like, you know, like Jimmy Smith's elementary school play would be, insert our show,

Zoe 12:37
A Brian Strohmetz's original.

Brian 12:39
Yeah, fingers crossed. You know, it'd be pretty cool, yeah, wouldn't it? Yeah? And then, outside of musical theater stuff, I do a lot of orchestrating and arranging and writing. So I've actually had quite a few commissions. This summer, I just released a marching band arrangement of freaks, which is the when mom is in home. I don't know if you've ever seen that meme with the kid with the oven door slamming it. So I had fun doing that one. I just had a big Christmas in July. Drop of a bunch of brass quintets and band pieces for Christmas. You can find it on my website, also on any of your streamers. I released them as a little short Christmas EP because I can't escape Christmas music ever, never.

Zoe 13:22
It's Christmas all day, every day at Brian's

Brian 13:24
Believe me, I like Christmas music. I like Christmas music, but it's been a lot the last couple years. The piece I'm most excited actually, from that release is a piece called from the realms. It's one of my first original wind band pieces based on angels from the realms of glory and Angels we have heard on high, is what I based it on. Oh, yeah. And that was commissioned by a local community band, and I'm very excited to say, because I played with the band, they've also asked me to conduct the premiere in December. So I'm very much looking forward.

Zoe 13:58
Wow, look at that. Yeah. Oh, that's really cool. Yeah, I'm happy for you. That's going to be exciting. Okay, we're gonna move on to the next topic, and that's a topic I don't really like, because now we're gonna have to talk about me.

Brian 14:12
Oh, welcome to the hot seat. Zo, it's my turn to ask the questions. Yeah, so you asked me about my show that I did last year. Why don't you tell us about your show that you did last year.

Zoe 14:23
I can Okay, so last year we wrote a show called Knocked I'm saying we, because it was actually five writers who got together and did this. This was a, you know, you said you we wrote the show in six months. We pretty much did the same thing, but there were five of us. So I say it was, it was maybe a little easier, maybe not. We also used tapes. We didn't, we didn't have a band on those, on the performances. Within last year, I got together with, like a group of people in Brussels. I live in Belgium, Brussels, and I don't have a lot of Musical Theater People around here, but there is a musical theater scene. So somehow I got put in touch with Eliza Popper, who's a musical theater performer in Brussels and she wanted to start writing musicals, and so she put a group together, and together with Claire Rumery, Finola Southgate and Gabriel Pinto, we got together and wrote a show about a front door in Brussels. So the idea we had was, we'll, we'll do a song cycle. We just want to do a song cycle. It's not just anything crazy. And we attributed, first of all, decided what the show was going to be about, and we we voted on on theme. It was a whole thing that we had post its on a wall, and we're putting stars down on post its.

Brian 15:46
Yeah, no, I love it. I love hearing everybody's process, yeah. And again, I've said this before, but I want to say this now publicly, like, I love this concept for a show.

Zoe 15:54
Yeah, it's a cool concept. I can't take all of the credit for it, so I'm happy to say it's a cool concept. Yeah. So, so we basically the three, three themes that got the most stars, most boats, were life of a front door last night on Earth and Brussels. And so we it's the story of a front door, 100 years of a front door in Brussels from start to finish. And then, you know, by the end of the show, we want the audience to feel like the door is a character because something happens to the door, and we want them to understand how important that thing is. I'm not spoiling I might be. I didn't know something happened at the door. Something happens to the door at the end of the show. And what we wanted is that every member of the audience have their own opinion about it, because they've come to get some sort of emotional attachment to the door. Every scene of them of the show is happening in front of a door that that very same door. And it basically goes through a number of people who either buy the house or rent a flat in the house. And so it goes through 100 years of like historical events in Brussels, historical events throughout the world. Because, you know, between 1924 and 2024 guess what happened? There was a war. So, you know, we have that in there, one or two things. We have covid in there. We have what else is there. We have the World Expo that was in Brussels, we have Brussels life, Belgium, life through the through the door. That's our scene setter. The way we got to the show was scratchy as hell. So we basically decided which song we wanted to take in which scene. And so we each went away, wrote a song, wrote the scene to go with the song, and then we we got together again, and through the writing process, we noticed that it was pretty easy to like thread a story throughout each of the scene, where you could keep characters going from one scene to the next, and we're like, maybe this is more than a song cycle. Maybe this is more like a musical. No one would want to say the term musical, because as soon as we did that, we knew we had to basically strap down and rewrite a whole lot of the script and make sure that it would work as a as a one a 90 minute show, one act, play. And I think somewhere in we started writing this in May or June, and somewhere in August, we're like, yeah, guys, this is a musical. This isn't this isn't a song cycle anymore. We need to make it work as a show. So we had to rewrite everything. And this is the worst way you can go about writing a show, is you, you write the songs before you write the story, like that. Don't do that. Write the story first, and do your song spotting, and then write your songs. Because if you do, if you write the songs first, you're always trying to make the song work.

Brian 18:49
You just described the problem with every jukebox. Yeah.

Zoe 18:53
Well, yes. So we had to kill some babies. We had to make some hard choices, cut some part of the song, kill entire story lines and characters, but it was, it was really interesting. I think we all learned a lot, and we staged it in November, I think, like, a few weeks before you guys went up, we were up,

Brian 19:11
So you mentioned something about the show, and I'm just curious, because we haven't talked about this, but I'm very curious. Go for it. What was it like writing about covid? Oh, my God. Because, I mean, it really hasn't been that long, and I don't know how, like, Belgium reacted to covid, but I'm sure everybody in the world knows about America. So yeah, I'm just gonna leave it at that. But I'm very curious about, like, how, I mean, even just personally, not even like outside world, just personally, how did it feel revisiting that time

Zoe 19:41
well, so I'm glad you asking about that, because that's the song I actually wrote. So, you know, good on

Brian 19:46
you cool. I don't even think I realized that.

Zoe 19:50
Yes, how was it? You know what it was to me? It was the covid thing. Was so clear. It was so clear that. The whole world stopped. Like, you know, Brussels went into lockdown, maybe a week behind Italy,

Music 20:07
everything stopped. And the world got so small.

Zoe 20:15
We stopped everything. And it was so sort of the hook for that song was when everything stopped, and it was crystal clear. I sat down to write that song, and I was like, I know what it is. I think my problem with writing that song was, when is the song going to happen? Is it happening on the day we're closing and so what? What story am I telling at that point, because the world is stopping. But do you know how the first week just felt like it was a holiday rather than in vs you were just trying to figure out what was going on and and then I realized that for everything to stop, everything had to be moving beforehand. So what, what I ended up writing was, was this, like this song that starts like a week before covid, say, at a house party, and then, and then you get the news. And so I, I had a fairly No, I'm not gonna say Happy covid, like covid wasn't happy, but my day job was easy, to just transfer everything online and do everything online. I missed, I missed going to the office, I missed seeing people, and I missed the social interactions. I missed all of that. Yeah, I kind of wrote a song about that emotional moment of like, No, this is, this is my life now. This is how I'm supposed to live. It's, you know, I was this person who was going to parties and having fun and having a drinks with my friend, and now I'm walking in the streets and there's no one around, and I could, you know, I could fall in, no one would know, you know, that sort of solitude that was very present in the song, I think. And then, yeah, we, we also used it as a kind of an emotional moment for for one of our characters as well. And so it was really fun to have to work in something so heart wrenching that you need to make sort of very tangible for for people. I I'll tell you, though, that like that song when it came on, because it starts before covid. It actually starts in 2019, and we had dates up, it was like people weren't expecting it. It was so so we started the song, it was like this sort of Ed me kind of beat and and then we kill it, and the people on stage all put their masks up, and they exit the stage and leave just the one singer. And that moment, I could hear the gasp in the audience. I was up in the tech booth, and I could hear the audience react to that. And that is it's in my memory bank now, and it's never leaving it, because that moment was so amazing, just to just see the impact this thing had. I was like, Okay, maybe I've done my job, right? You know?

Brian 22:52
I love theater like, that's, that is the best theater moment. I love when that happens as an audience member, yeah. So when writing that song, because you said it came easily. Did you? Did you kind of, like, let it all just pour out and write the main chunk and then circle back and make it fit in and add to it? Yeah? Rewrite or, okay, yeah, I was because, like, that satisfaction of something just coming out also just feels great.

Zoe 23:18
Yeah, exactly it was. I very quickly said, this is going to be an AABA, you know, Somewhere Over the Rainbow type thing, so that I can, sort of, I have, then I have my three chunks of stories. I know what I'm telling, I'm telling the audience, and I know how I'm bringing it all back. So, so, yes, I needed, I needed to write one chunk of it and then replicate it three times and then find something to go somewhere. And actually, I actually wrote, I should, I brought half the song in one go. Like it was this crystal clear moment where I was like, yes, when everything stopped, you know, I'm walking in the in the in the streets alone. I'm just carrying, like I had this very strong image of someone carrying shopping bags and going back home, like walking home and the streets being empty. And one of the big things that we have in Brussels is we had like, foxes coming up and running around the streets, which they do in general, but like they were doing it in the daytime, whereas you usually see them at dusk or dawn or in the night, but they were doing it in the daytime. And there's nothing as sad or magical, depending on who you are, as a as a sort of a emaciated fox trying to run through the bins that everybody's leaving on the sidewalk,

Music 24:30
and everything stopped. Everything

Zoe 24:37
so, yeah, so all of these images were in my mind. I wrote something about being alone. And basically the B section was saying, You know what? They said it would last a month, and it's been going on for six I'm, I'm, I've, I'm done with this. Yeah, so that was, that was the how the song, song came about. And then I had to, like. The first the intro to the song was the hardest thing to work on for me, because I wrote everything on the guitar, which is my instrument of predilection. It was very clear what the sort of the shape of the song was. I know I was going to start on an acoustic with just like a little bit of finger picking, and then go into a strumming section, and then go back to something a little more, a little quieter for the end, which actually ended up not being that quiet, because we need a big finish. But that's the magic of collaboration. For the first bit, I knew I needed a big idiom moment. I knew I needed something be like, this is a party. This is when you need and that's not what I write. So I had to listen to a lot of EDM music and try to imagine something, and I think I had to rework a lot of, like, the melodic material and the harmonic material to fit into that genre, because what I had with my little like, tingly guitar wasn't what would work as an EDM piece of music. So yeah, and luckily, my one of the show's co writer, Finola Southgate, who's written an amazing show came out, and she helped me orchestrate the EDM bit me.

Brian 26:20
I so I'm gonna guess the answer is, well, but you know, at the end of all this, how was the show received?

Zoe 26:31
Well, no, we had, we had three, three performances. All of them were sold out, which we never imagined. Okay, it was 100 seats theater, but we sold out. Every performances.

Brian 26:44
Selling out is selling out.

Zoe 26:45
Yeah and yeah, we it was. It was really well received. I think we all learned a lot from it. We whole we all had a blast doing it. We were exhausted after it. We slept for six months. But it was, it was a great it was a great show. It was really well received. And, yeah, that's all you can hope for when you start start out.

Brian 27:07
That's awesome. I'm so excited for you. So I guess is, I don't know much about this because, you know, like, again, I'm in Jersey, I'm in the New York Philly Zo, you know, is what? What's the musical theater scene like in Belgium? I'm gonna guess, somewhat thriving. If you're selling out, well,

Zoe 27:23
somewhat it's, it's, it's a lot of amateur companies, which, which our show was, it was fully amateur. We casted everything ourselves, and we and we directed everything was done by one of us. There is a musical theater scene there. There are, like, a few companies active in Brussels, which is super which is super fun, but there's, I think, non bar one, who does, who does original shows. And so that was kind of our big selling point. It was like, it's, it's the first original show about Brussels.

Brian 27:57
So what's next for you, now that you've done docked, now that I've done that, what's on, what's on the docket, what's what's Well, knocking down your docket. I guess

Zoe 28:04
the first thing I was working on this summer was we rewrote the whole show. We, like we knew, we knew there was some things that we wanted to rewrite, so we rewrote it. I rewrote this, the second verse of a song, yeah, gab and Finn both rewrote the script to make it more of a unit, and like some of the characters, needed more of a back backstory. So we, so we, we kind of crow bother. And it doesn't feel that way, I swear. So we'll have, we'll have a second run of knocks with mostly the same cast. We have one cast member who decided not to up again, but we'll have the same cast doing the show from the 23rd of October to the 25th in the same place in Brussels. So we'll make sure to have that in the link somewhere. We'll have links somewhere, Brian, won't we?

Brian 28:55
Well, we'll link it up and get your tickets now, because it's gonna sell out again.

Zoe 28:58
Okay, now for the fun bit, Brian, we've got this little game called lyric or lie that we'll play every episode. So I'll let you explain what it is, since you came up with it.

Brian 29:09
Yeah, so it's pretty much all a name. We're gonna each take turns reading a lyric from a show, and you're gonna have to guess if the Lyric is correct or not. If it is a lyric or a lie. It could be a totally made up lyric. It could be a lyric that exists as is as it was written and intended by the authors. It could be a lyric that's mostly like how the authors wrote it. And we're gonna have to figure it out. And Zoe doesn't know this part, but I'm gonna say bonus points if you can name the show, because I won't even sell tell you the show.

Zoe 29:41
No, obviously, obviously, bonus points, if you can name the show. All right, let's go. I'm not sure I can do this, but you'll Yeah, okay, you go first.

Brian 29:49
You gotta have faith. Zoe, you gotta have faith. All right. So are you ready for your Lyric? First? Was that the lyric? No, no, that was not the lyric. I'm just making sure you're ready. I'm ready. I'm ready. Okay, here. Your Lyric, go, think of me. Think of me fondly when we've said goodbye. Remember me once in a while, please, because you are my guy. Here it is again. Think of me. Think of me fondly when we've said goodbye. Remember me once in a while, please, because you are my guy,

Zoe 30:25
I'm gonna say it's a it's a true lyric, but I have no idea this is terrible.

Brian 30:32
It is mostly a true lyric, but it is incorrect. Oh, no, what? There's, there you go. It is incorrect. Okay, what was so the song is, think of me from Phantom of the Opera.

Brian 30:45
So the actual lyric goes, think of me, think

Music 30:52
of me, think of me. Think

Brian 30:54
of me fondly when we've said goodbye. Remember me once in a while. Please promise me you'll try not because you are my guy.

Zoe 31:04
Okay, you know what? That's funny, because that last line really threw me, until then, it could be, it could be pretty much something, but I was, I thought it was too many words for you to have written the whole thing, and I should have known that you were going to trick me.

Brian 31:19
I'm I'm tricky that way.

Zoe 31:21
Also, you tricked me on on, Andrew Lloyd Webber, with owning it up to it. I'm not a fan.

Brian 31:25
I mean, I'm not a big Andrew Lloyd Webber either. But I figured you know the longest running show in Broadway history, with 13,900 performances, that is still running in the West End. Oh, man. And after 35 years, one of the big songs you might know a little bit Well,

Zoe 31:43
it turns out I didn't All right, okay, okay, you know what? Let me go. Okay, I thrill when I drill a bicuspid. It's swell, though they tell me I'm maladjusted, and though it may cause my patient distress somewhere, somewhere in heaven above me, I know, I know that my mama's proud of me.

Brian 32:03
Oh, I know this one. This is dentist from Little Shop of Horrors. And that lyric is correct.

Zoe 32:09
That is a correct lyric. Yeah. One of my favorite thing is seeing Alan Menken in London last March and him telling the story. I know. I'm sorry. I'm not. I'm not him telling the story that he's, you know, the whole thing about laughing gas and the dentist being the villain in the show was, wasn't his idea, but he had to live it down, because his whole family are dentists,

Brian 32:36
and his his dad was like the leader in

Zoe 32:40
in in the in the last fingers, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Brian 32:43
So he's wild, yeah. I want to shout out a little known Alan Menken song, at least in the States, especially. That is one of my favorites. It's called compass of your heart. It's a Glenn Slater lyric, and it was written for the redo of a ride at Tokyo Disney Sea. It's Sinbad voyage. It's a fantastic song. It's like a small world type ride, but you're following sinbad's adventures. So compass of your heart is the name of the song. You know what? I am so glad that my next lyric gets to follow up your that lyric that you just told me in a great way, and you're gonna figure out why shortly enough, you go, here's the lyric. I'm especially good at expectorating patois.

Zoe 33:28
Oh, gosh, give me a sec. Oh, that's, that's Gaston in Beauty and the Beast.

Brian 33:34
That is correct. Yes, yes. You know Ashman making lyric is good to follow up that with.

Zoe 33:41
So, I mean, yeah, that was the only thing you could do. Well done.

Brian 33:44
Yeah. I mean, how many people get to use the word expectorating, which is just a fancy way of spitting, yes? So yes, oh yeah, and patois patooie, spelled with three O's.

Zoe 33:57
All right, I'll give you one more. One week later, I'm writing you a letter with every word, my life gets better, but the ink ran out as I was about to say, Good night. Could I hear it one more time? Yeah, sure. One week later, I'm writing you a letter with every word. My life gets better, but the ink ran out as I was about to say, Good night.

Brian 34:22
I don't know the show, but that's really nice. I would hope that that's a real lyric. It's not, yeah, it's not okay. Well, then you better use that in something,

Zoe 34:31
because no, I'll own, own up to it. I looked at the lyrics for helpless, and I just, I just rewrote. I mean, this is last verse, or something like that. Is she says, You know, I one week later, I'm writing your letter

Brian 34:45
nightly, and now my life gets

Zoe 34:49
better. Yeah, that's

Brian 34:51
why it feels okay. Okay. So I'm not totally crazy.

Zoe 34:54
No, you're not. You're totally on it. I went, but I like I went into her. Hamilton and got you this. This was, this was my little

Brian 35:03
No, that's good. I I love it. Are you

Zoe 35:05
ready for your final one? I don't know, but yes,

Brian 35:08
here we go. Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes, silver white winters that turn into springs. These are a few of my favorite things.

Zoe 35:19
That's Olaf, isn't it? Nope, no. Oh, what is it? I don't know. Do you want to hear it again?

Brian 35:25
Yes, okay, snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes, silver, white winters that turn into springs. These are a few of my favorite things.

Zoe 35:38
I know it's a show, but I don't I can't think of the show.

Brian 35:41
That's okay. Is the lyric Correct? Yes, correct, yes,

Zoe 35:44
it's correct. No, it's correct. Yes, it's correct. I'm I'm doubling down.

Brian 35:48
It is I was, I was a mean person on Oh no, it is incorrect. What is this? Where is it? What did you do? So it's the sound of music my favorite. Course, yes. So my lyric, that I said was snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes, silver white winters that turn into springs. These are a few of my favorite things. Yeah, the actual lyric, snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes, silver white winters that melt into springs. These are a few of my favorite things.

Zoe 36:18
I was that's really tough, Brian!

Brian 36:22
I feel like I got progressively harder. Yes, you know, that was too hard, so I got one next time.

Zoe 36:29
Yes, well, see, I got one. I'm happy I got one, okay, but I was too young and too short, and there were no female captains. And my dad said, Be patient. He said, just see what happens.

Brian 36:43
No female captains. That definitely feels like a story beat. I'm trying to think of any shows that might have female captains in them. And I know you're gonna say it, but I'm gonna kick myself, unless it's the pirate queen, which I know is a thing, but I don't know that show. No, that's pirate queen. No, it's not okay. Can you read it one more time for me? Yeah, of

Zoe 37:03
course. But I was too young and too short, and there were no female captains. And my dad said, Be patient. He said, just see what happens.

Brian 37:13
I'm gonna say it's real, but I don't know what from okay, it is real.

Zoe 37:17
It's Come From Away.

Brian 37:19
Oh, okay. It's

Music 37:20
too young and too short, and there were no female captains.

Zoe 37:23
I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure how well you knew the show.

Brian 37:26
I I have to say, I don't know it well enough. I need to watch the pro shot. I know the opening number. That's about it, yeah. But I do know a guy who actually just played guitar on the national tour. You do? I do. And he's actually he played in the premiere of Holiday Homecoming. He's played for a lot of my school shows, and he's going to be playing my wedding ceremony next year. So shout out to Matty Cotton,

Zoe 37:49
Yeah. I think we need Matty on the on the on the part at some point. Definitely it's Yeah. Comfort boy is a show, book, music and lyrics by Irene sank off and David Hey, I hope I'm pronouncing that right. We'll just assume it is. And it's a show about what happens in a little town of Gander in Newfoundland as the 911 attacks happened and all planes were grounded because the US airspace was closed. And it's an amazing show, and I think everybody should see it. It's my top three show.

Brian 38:23
Yeah, it's definitely a blank space in my a gaping spot in my musical theater. Knowledge, we'll get you there. Don't worry. I know I've been welcomed to the rock. I still just got to go to the rock. Yes, you did. You need to go to the rock. And with that, I think that closes out our first round ever of lyric or lies.

Zoe 38:39
So Well, there you go, Brian, that was our first ever episode of making a musical. How about Was it

Brian 38:45
not bad at all? I'm excited. I had a lot of fun. I hope you had a lot of fun. I hope our listeners had a lot of fun. Yeah, there's a lot more to come.

Zoe 38:52
There is thank you all for tuning into this. You can subscribe to our podcast in the feed. At some point, we'll have that in all of the good podcasts and even the bad ones. The next episode, um will be coming out sometime in September, um, before Brian gets swooped in by the school madness. Hopefully, until then, you can find us on Instagram.

Brian 39:15
We're at at making a musical pod on

Zoe 39:18
Instagram. Thank you, Brian and Brian is at

Brian 39:21
Brian stromets music.

Zoe 39:26
This episode was produced by miso de York and co hosted with the amazing, awesome dad Joker that is Brian Strohmetz. And the music for our show was written by Brian Strohmetz and I did all of the editing with the guidance of Desiree McFarland, thank you for getting to the end of the episode and see you in the next one.

Brian 39:46
Have a good one.