Birthday Mess...

Big News:

My birthday is August 14th ...also known as... next Friday.

For those of you interested (...also known as... the three of you who read this (including me and my mom... well maybe not my mom) ...

I will be at Cait Doyle's Hot Mess in Manhattan - her award winning (yep seriously... a MAC award) cabaret that she does monthly (or something like it) at the Duplex.

Well the kicker to this is... Cait adds new songs to her set every mess, usually written by up and coming NYC composers... and the latest addition was written by yours truly. ;o) so reserve yo tickets and buy me a drank on mah birfdayee.

For those of you too cheap to make it... or separated by miles, be them mental or physical, I'm sure there will be youtube evidence which I will gladly post here.

Get tickets at:

http://theduplex.com/webcalendar/view_entry.php?id=4367&date=20090814

Wowie...

Wow... I haven't posted in a long while. Been a crazy summer. I am looking for an apartment like other people look for meaning in their lives... if anyone has a lead on a roomie or an amazing place in Manhattan... holler at me.

Stay tuned to the blog for the beginnings of a new project I'm working on (a redonkulously important project I like to call... my thesis for my MFA) which I am so incredibly lucky to be writing with Becca Anderson... I'll be documenting here. Well, at least I'll tell you things that wont require I keeeelll you.

At the lake...

Being a nice relaxed musical theatre writer proudly hailing from Tennessee... while actually relaxing on the lake in TN. Going back to civilization tomorrow where I have to start pretending to be a piano player again when I go pick up my score for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum... which I'm music directing.

Drinking Gentleman Jack on the rocks... not a usual staple of my drinking habits, but in celebrating my return to the state in which it is made... why not. I think there needs to be a southern fried play in my future. Not a comedy... aren't we all tired of southern fried comedy?

The Happy Prince reading went swimmingly! Well... it was read and sung with statuesque beauty (bad joke.... for the Wilde snobs out there). Big shout out to the actors: Doug Shapiro, Clay Elder, and Dru Aber. Our music director John Di Pinto, our director Jonathan Warman, and our amazing advisor Randall Eng. What a great time we had with those guys... and of course to my better half when it comes to lyrics and vegitarian dishes: Dan Marshall
I'm back in Nashville... wow. It's exactly the same and completely different. The flight sucked... I'm kinda over air travel. Tried to sleep but the bitches next to me had to go to the bathroom every five seconds.
Glad to get some work in on the new version of Fathers (new title forthcoming...are you excited... I know I am) And I'm brainstorming ideas for the thesis musical... which will get its reading next May... I will be writing with the oh-so-talented-incredibly-funny-hottie-with-a-past (drumroll.... which cascades into a terrible downturn resulting in a cacauphony of unimaginable sound before resolving to the most beautiful silence ever heard by the ears of man)...Becca Anderson. Check her out at www.whynotbecca.com.

It's done! The first draft is done and goes into rehearsal on Tuesday! Excited? I know I am!

The Happy Prince

Words by Dan Marshall

Music by Brandon James Gwinn

based on the story "The Happy Prince" and the letter "De Profundis"

by Oscar Wilde

Reading's Thursday at NYU! Then back to Nashvegas!

Keep a postin'...

So. I'm busy. As usual... I was an actor today... for the first time in a while. I spent a few hours with some of my favorite peeps shooting for an indie short. It was all comedy improv (and beer) and we had a blast. I'll be postin' when it gets out of post.... production that is.

Spent the weekend celebrating birthdays and drinking too much... some with one of my new favorites, Anne Frazier Thomas... who is an AH-mazing singer-actor... we are both working on Children of Salt (a new latin musical) at NYU. I'm stage managing... ew... it's required. I admire people who are actually good at it... I don't think I'm one of them. geez.

Found a great bar location where you can have private parties basically for free... Hurleys in midtown....my roomie Sarah's mom came to visit (the famous Shirley... wow. she's like my other momma....we had a blast)

I leave to go to Mexico (swine flu or no swine flu I haven't been on a real vacation since 2004 and I deserve it dammit) on May 15th (the day after my reading at school) and then I'll be gone until July music directing Forum... so I have to play MORE Sondheim this year... dammit. I feel like I have something to do or somewhere to be every day until I get on that plane. Help.

Rewriting Fathers into a better play with a different title (a better one hopefully). I'd love to come out of the summer with a few things to show for it. That'd be nice... but so would just sitting on my ass. We'll see which idea wins. As I type this I wonder if anyone reads it.

So. I have a blog now It's cheaper than having a website. I've been really busy working on my new one act with words by the oh-so-talented Dan Marshall. It's based on the Oscar Wilde Short story The Happy Prince, and is coming along quite nicely! We have our reading on May 14th. Might release some tracks sooner than later. Get excited.