Once again, Bren and Val have 1 1/2 songs in this film, just like in last year’s TINKER BELL & THE LOST TREASURE: for this year’s film (the third in the Tink series), we wrote the opening/closing song, which is called “Summer’s Just Begun,” and co-wrote a lovely lullaby with composer Joel McNeely called “Come Flying With Me.”

We think the movie is quite good, and look forward to seeing it at the wrap party in a few days. The official release date is September 21, but if you’re interested in this weekend’s sneak preview screenings, go here. It looks like they overbook the events deliberately so the houses will be full – so early arrival appears to be key…

Recently, I found myself mysteriously without either a car or a bike. Millie Van Lily, our aging yet functional monstrous van, was on its way to take Mose and Val to Mose’s gym class. And by mistake, Val had left her bicycle in the back of the van, leaving me stranded without a way to get to Bikram Yoga that afternoon.

So I walked. It wasn’t too far, and it didn’t take too long–I kinda hustled, but there were a lot of lights. But mostly what I did was walk, drink water, and sing and ramble into my dictaphone. And by the end of the walk, 35 minutes later, I had a complete form of a song we’d been assigned to write for the Tinker Bell t.v. special, and some choice lyrics to go with it.

In addition, my walk took me on a slower, more luxurious route through parts of Glendale that I rarely pay any attention to, and I liked it. I liked looking at the natural flora and fauna that creep into the cracks in the concrete jungle. I liked walking under the train track bridge as a commuter train thundered by overhead. I liked the whole thing.

So here’s what I’m doing for my birthday next Friday, August 6th: I’m walking from my house all the way to the Santa Monica Pier. Then, if I still have any energy left, I’m going to walk down to the Venice Pier, and meet friends for dinner, and then go soak my tired dogs. Here’s my planned route:

Where I'm walking on August 6. Click for a close-up view.

Along the way, I’ll be tacking a few other writing chores, and taking pictures and videos of interesting stuff in all the neighborhoods I leisurely pass through. If you’re interested in seeing what I come up with, follow me on twitter at @brendanmilburn where I’ll be linking to all the photos and videos I upload as I walk.

Mostly I just like the anachronistic-ness of walking in LA. Really, nobody does it, and I’d love to have a singular experience for the celebration of thirty-nine years on this planet. Wish me luck.

Angels 4 Ana Benefit Concert
Monday, June 7, 2010
8:00 PM
Boston Court Performing Arts Center
70 N Mentor Ave
Pasadena, CA 91106

Use the promo code “GROOVELILY” to get $30 tickets, here.

Leap. Creative Commons attribution license, Sabrina's Stash on flickr.

Forgive me for being inconsistent with these “weekly” demos. It’s been kinda tough lately–and I’ll get into that shortly. But for now, here’s this week’s song, way more “adult contemporary” than we usually roll, but it still feels appropriate to the subject matter. Here’s “Leap.”

http://groovelily.bandcamp.com/track/leap-rough-demo

If you like it, download a copy and throw us some $, which goes directly to buy groceries and pay bills. Thanks!

Here’s why it’s appropriate this week:

Val and I moved out here to LA, among other reasons, to try to further take advantage of our growing relationship with Disney. They were flying us out once or twice a month, and it just seemed like the right idea. And as far as writing songs for the Tinker Bell movies, it has been, and continues to be, great.

Two weeks ago, though, a bunch of things happened in quick succession that really threw us.

First: we’d been invited to write two songs for a potential stage musical version of Disney’s “Freaky Friday” last fall. We thought this was a terrific idea. We knew we’d be competing against some of the best theater songwriters in the country, and we held out hope, and kept holding out hope, and kept holding…for about six months. And finally, we found out through the grapevine, that somebody else got the gig. (We wish him the very best.) But we were sad.

Second: We’d been invited to write spec songs (i.e.: spend a lot of time writing and producing demos, and don’t get any money at all, in the hopes that one or more of your songs gets chosen) for a spinoff of High School Musical. Once again, we knew we’d be competing against many other talented writers, and our chances were slim–but we poured everything we had into three songs, and found out that none were chosen. We were very sad.

Third: Toy Story The Musical, long in redevelopment for a huge, amazing, revised and revitalized production at the big, grand, awesome Hyperion Theater at California Adventure Park, was cancelled. The reasons for its cancellation are numerous, and I don’t understand all of them, but we didn’t realize how much we’d been counting on this one terribly cool thing until it was taken away from us. We were very, very sad.

Finally: Guy Adkins died. See this blog entry. I kinda lost it.

So it’s been a little tough here in the Milburn/Vigoda side of things for a couple of weeks. As in the song, we leapt, and fell. And leapt, and fell. And leapt, and fell again.

But there’s nothing like failure and being reminded of your own mortality to jump-start the creative process. Which is why it feels SO GOOD to have Gene out at our house for five days to finish writing the songs for Wheelhouse. Nobody is paying us any money to do this. No theaters are lined up to book it. Right now, we’re only doing this for ourselves. And it’s incredibly satisfying. It’s taking another big leap, and the three of us are doing it together.

The structure of Wheelhouse as of Saturday morning.

Mose and Gene perform a saxoflute duet during a rare break in our Wheelhouse toil.

Which leads me to the context for this week’s demo: Leap. It was never intended for Wheelhouse–but now that we’re building Wheelhouse into something bigger, stronger, and better than we originally envisioned, we’re finding ways to include things we hadn’t dreamed of when we started.

I don’t want to overshare here, but let’s say that the band dynamic in GrooveLily is a little bit like this:

Brendan: Oh, look, a cliff! Let’s jump off it.
Val: Okay! Me first!
Gene: Uh, guys? Hello?

This risk-inclined Val & Brendan/risk-averse Gene dynamic is what drives the story of Wheelhouse, and risk-averseness is what kept Gene in safe, static situations in work and love for a long time, until somehow a dam broke inside him. In a matter of weeks he found Suzanne, fell in love, and started a life with her.

Leap was written as a wedding present for Suzanne and Gene. Our intention was to write a song to play at Gene’s wedding that would make him cry.

It worked.

And then we recorded it as a VERY adult-contemporary styled demo for Warner/Chappell.

And now it looks like it’s gonna be Gene’s 11 o’clock number in Wheelhouse, in a far more direct, far less smooth-jazz version sung by Gene.

As I type these words, we are done with five solid days of writing and discussing and hashing it out, and the score of Wheelhouse is 99% written. We are no longer very sad. We are happy and hopeful and excited about the future again.

Sir Ernest Shackleton

Mfitzgerald@ljp.org

The location is Theodore and Adele Shank Theatre – at La Jolla Playhouse at 8 PM on Wednesday, June 16th.

Guy in rehearsal for Midsummer, with Val in the background

One of the sublime parts was getting to meet and work with Guy Adkins, a gifted and wildly versatile actor. He’s done such a wide variety of work on stage, and playing Robin Goodfellow in Midsummer was just one new facet of his skill set coming to light.

He was so witty and kind and smart, and so full of joy. We were so glad to get to know him and to become friends with him during the three months we were on this project together. At the end of Act 1, Guy sang our song “All Shall Be Well,” and moved me to tears at many of the performances. I’m still kicking myself that I didn’t get a recording of him singing it.

Guy died last week, on Wednesday, May 12. I knew it was coming–we all knew it was coming. He found out he had stage four colon cancer about 15 months ago. But he’s been so good, and so open, and so giving since he found out; he has been posting about his experiences on facebook and in a blog called “Notes from a Candyman.” His willingness to share his innermost thoughts, fears, worries, and joys these past 15 months have changed me for the better.

I know that Guy’s work in Midsummer isn’t necessarily representative of his career as a whole–but it’s the only thing we’ve ever done with him, and when we heard that he had died, we immediately put “All Shall Be Well” in the set list for our concert in Philadelphia this past week. It felt very good to sing the song again, and dedicate it to him.

Here’s that song, with a montage of T. Charles Erickson’s photos from McCarter and Paper Mill. We miss you, Guy. Thank you for everything.

Standing in the shadow of the man who is first in line.

This week’s song is about a guy who discovers too late that he’s lost his chance with a girl he used to date. It’s my hope that this song will become part of our live set with Gene singing lead…but in the meantime, this demo has me singing lead and Val playing the role of the hot backup vocal chicks. If you like the song, buy a download and send us your $ without diverting vast percentages to Steve Jobs, eh? Thanks.

This one’s also about envy, and in much the same way that “Happy, Happy, Happy” was born from an incredible, uncomfortable bout of pure unadulterated envy when we were trying our hardest to get signed by a major label and I walked past a larger-than-life-size-poster of Vanessa Carlton back in 2002…this song was born from the same emotion, but in a slightly different set of circumstances.

Here’s a little backstory, if you’ve got a moment.

Herman, set the wayback machine to 1995. The internet is a wee thing. People make telephone calls on telephones that are plugged into the wall. GrooveLily is still The Valerie Vigoda Band. I have returned from 13 weeks in Amsterdam with Val and Max to resume living in New York City, and I have to find a job. I get word that there’s this guy who writes music that sounds kinda like mine, and he needs a piano player for this show he’s doing.

I call him and arrange for an audition. I arrive at his little upper west side apartment which has an imposingly large (at least by NYC apartment proportions) 7′ grand piano. We chat about his experience and mine, and while I have chosen to go to college and grad school, he has eschewed the academy and pursued writing musicals with a fervor and a directness that I have not. And it’s paying off–he’s got one show opening off-Broadway soon that he needs a musical director for–that’s why I’m auditioning today–and he’s got another big Broadway-bound show coming up with bookwriter Alfred Uhry and director Harold Prince.

My jaw drops. But I pick it back up.

He asks me to play something that I’ve written–he seems genuinely interested. I’m more than a little intimidated now, but I gamely stumble through “Take Away My Dreams,” the final song from my thesis musical with Jason Cochran at NYU, which had been fresh in my mind and my fingers in May at the staged reading downtown, but now in September tumbles across the keys and scrapes out of my throat like a distant memory of a brick falling into a vat of cow pies. Apparently it sounds good enough to him to continue the audition, though, so maybe it wasn’t SO bad.

Then, to gauge my abilities at the keyboard a bit more precisely, he plays the complex opening riff from a song from his show, called “She Cries.” Go listen to it, and then come back. It’s great, isn’t it? Wow, what a terrific song, I’m thinking. What a cool riff.

And I try, and I can’t play it right. And from that moment, I can tell the audition’s over. I didn’t get the gig. I leave his place, feeling pretty dumb and lame–I’ve spent the whole summer playing introspective songs from Inhabit My Heart every day, and not getting my chops into shape for cool-ass samba rhythms like this.

And I go home, dejected.

Jason.

Over the next few years, I watch from afar as this guy (whose name is Jason Robert Brown, by the way) goes on to success with that first show, Songs For a New World, then gets a tony award for his next show, Parade, and then writes the complex, sad, but deep and inspiring show The Last Five Years, which is STILL kicking my ass from across the room, despite being stuck inside its CD case.

In the meantime, I finally did learn to play that riff and stole appropriated it for a Milburn/Vigoda song called Sitting on the Fence, and opened up a whole world of syncopation and fun in my playing which is still expanding.

So for a long time there I turned my back on the world of Musical Theater and enjoyed Jason’s work from afar, as Val and (first Max, then) Gene and I pursued immense rock stardom in college cafeterias, coffeehouses and Unitarian Church Basements across the United States and Canada. And when our ticket to immense rock stardom actually turned out to be in the world of Musical Theater, my path and Jason’s path converged again.

In January 2005, Val and Gene and I were at the Theatreworks Writers’ Retreat in Palo Alto, working on our first batch of songs for Wheelhouse, our follow-up to Striking 12. Georgia Stitt was also there, working on a song cycle, and we reconnected. It turned out that she was now MARRIED to Jason Robert Brown. Unbeknownst to us at the time, Val was already pregnant with Mose, and Georgia was already pregnant with Molly, who was born a week after Mose in September of 2005.

Fast-forward to 2009. Val and I move out to Southern California, and among the first people we get in touch with are Georgia and Jason. We hang out a few times: their place, our place. Mose and Molly become fast friends–Molly actually performed a marriage ceremony for herself and Mose in a tent in her backyard, and now whenever we mention her, Mose says in all seriousness, “I’m her HUSBAND.”

The kids get along. The four adults find that they have a lot in common. I’m actually getting to know this guy after all these years, and I genuinely like him. Heck, I genuinely like them both. I think they like us too.

They both have a career writing musicals.

Val and I have a career writing musicals. Basically. Sort of. Well, there’s a rock band and some songs for movies. But it’s basically the same thing.

What could be bad? Nothing to be ashamed of.

So why is it, when I read a facebook post from Georgia about her and Jason being mentioned in a gossipy theater article about how they attended the opening of A Little Night Music on Broadway–why is it that I am suddenly filled with ENVY?

I thought I was OVER this kind of petty poop.

I thought I was a mature person. Am I not capable of being happy for and proud of my friends?

Yes, I am capable. I am happy, happy, happy for them. But I am also going green with envy. STILL.

AAAAGH.

I have to get my kid to school this morning. I have to make a lunch for him. I have to get my s**t together. Val gets breakfast for him while I take a shower, and lo and behold I find I am singing what seems like an entire song to myself. I have a verse, I have a chorus. The chorus goes like this:

I am standing in the shadow of Jason Robert Brown.
I am standing in the shadow of Jason Robert Brown.

It’s a song about what if, about if only, about if I had just tried harder younger and not gotten diverted, if I’d been as ballsy as he was, and as skilled as he was when he was so frickin’ young, if only, if only, then I might have the level of success and fame that he has. It’s a very, very, very small-minded petty little song. I am genuinely embarrassed by it.

Clearly, this will not be a song that will be of any use whatsoever to Warner-Chappell. What can I do to repurpose all of this unbridled, unexpected envy?

What if the fame and fortune is neither fame nor fortune? What if it’s a girl? What if the protagonist is not me, but instead a guy who used to have the girl, but has lost her because he “got off track,” and she went with somebody else in the meantime?

After some back and forth with Val, we arrive at a cross between a country song and an R&B song, in the neighborhood of John Mellencamp, with the following hook: “Standing in the shadow of the man who is first in line.”

So Jason, if you’re reading these words, please take this in the spirit it’s offered: I think you’re awesome. I hope you don’t mind that you inspired a fit of envy, and I hope you take some pleasure in the song that came out of it. I’m glad to be friends with you after all this time.

Brendan and Val (and Gene, via video!) will be at this weekend’s gala 40th anniversary concert for TheatreWorks at the Mountain View Performing Arts Center, along with David Henry Hwang, Jeanine Tesori, Paul Gordon, Vienna Teng and others. We had thought it was a donors-only affair – but the theater has just released some last-minute promo ticket offers:

From TheatreWorks:
A special offer…
Buy one ticket, get one FREE!
Call 650.463.1960 now, and mention code “Brendan & Valerie.”

Offer expires May 7 at 5 PM.
Phone orders only. Not valid on prior purchases.
Subject to availability.

GALA 40
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Cocktail Reception – 7:30 PM
Concert – 8:30 PM
Post-Show Dessert
Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts
500 Castro Street
Mountain View, CA 94041

Click here for more details.

You brought your nintendo, I brought my guitar

courtesy of wikipedia

When I was in high school, it became clear to me that I needed to get my hands on a Nintendo Entertainment System. It had the best games available, games that played pretty much exactly the same as they did in the arcades. I finally saved up and bought one, and many hours were wasted thereby.

When I went off to grad school, I put it into a box and didn’t think about it again until twenty years later, when I read about people using Nintendo Gameboys, Commodore 64’s and NES’s as musical instruments, making a new genre of music called “chiptunes.” A bit more digging in my (cough) copious spare time led me to a band from Chicago called “I Fight Dragons” and their terrific cover version of Jonathan Coulton’s “The Future Soon.” I Fight Dragons’ choice to place the Nintendo front and center in their mix seems wildly appropriate to the content of Coulton’s song–cyborgs, unrequited love, and nerds with crazy power fantasies.

Well, all of this was percolating around my head when it became time to start writing pop songs for Warner/Chappell, in the Katy Perry/Kelly Clarkson vein. I started hearing a song in my head about a teenage boy and a girl playing video games together…and lo and behold, a wonderful free instrument rained down from the internet upon my head: the “magical 8-bit plug” which sounds startlingly like a Nintendo Entertainment System.

I hatched this idea, but once again Val brought it to the finish line with lyrics, vocal, and editing out my not-so-great ideas. [Note from Val: As a person who is truly, spectacularly awful at playing video games, I had a wonderful time inventing a female character who beats the pants off the boys in this traditionally male arena.] Tune in next week for another one, and please let us know what you think in the comments below!