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November 23, 2010:

A BROADWAY LOVE STORY

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, I get asked occasionally what is my favorite amongst the albums I’ve produced, and I never quite know how to answer that, because, you know, they’re all my children and I find it unseemly to single out one specific album. But when I’m asked what was the most creatively satisfying album to produce then it’s a little easier, although there are many I could say that about. But the one that’s easiest to talk about and the one that came out exactly the way I wanted it to and exactly the way I originally envisioned it and hoped it would is the Christiane Noll album, A Broadway Love Story. I get asked about the album a lot – people really respond to it just the way we hoped they would. And yet, from the time I first had the idea to the time we stepped into the recording studio, that album was the longest in gestation and the hardest to get right. The idea was simple: Tell a love story – from the end of one relationship to the beginning of another, follow that one through its ups and downs and ending, and somehow end on a note of hope – using existing songs from Broadway or off-Broadway shows. I first offered the concept to Liz Callaway, who didn’t respond to it at all. Then, over the next few years, I offered it to others – same thing. Then one day, I met Christiane (probably at Joe Allen). She was on Broadway with Jekyll and Hyde at the time, and I booked her to sing on one of the multi-singer albums. She told me she really wanted to do a solo album. I said what kind? She had no answer. I said why? She said she just wanted to do one – which is the same thing as no answer. She kept after me over the next few months and finally, over dinner, I said I had this great concept that no singer seemed to understand or see the beauty of – she asked what it was and I told her and she practically leapt across the table saying she loved the idea and wanted to do it. And that’s how it began.

I laid out the basic and simple rules – we had to tell a real story – it had to make sense from start to finish and be linear every step of the way. We could not cheat and rewrite lyrics (we bent that rule only once because I needed a line in Tonight At Eight to propel us into Look At That Face, and it was a simple adjustment to do), and that became a real stumbling block so many times – we’d find a great song, perfect for the moment, and then the last verse would go somewhere we didn’t want to go and that would be that. In certain cases, like the two Gershwin songs, I was able to take one song as far as it could go in our story, and then meld it to another song that said the right thing. I knew I wanted a mini-overture that would end in a door slamming – that was in my head from the beginning. We made lists of songs – lots and lots of songs. Some were easy – I thought Wherever He Ain’t would be a great way into our story and I came up with an arrangement that made it work as a sort of prelude to the anthem No More from The Goodbye Girl. I knew instantly that Times Like This was the second song – I’d recorded Flaherty and Ahrens’ Lucky Stiff, from whence the song came, and at the time of our album it was not the overdone cabaret staple it is now. Tonight At Eight and Look At That Face came together easily, and that arrangement was one of my favorites to do. Todd Ellison, the musical director, and I worked very closely on the arrangements – I’d come up with the structure and feel and vamps and he’d make that a reality. Doing You’re Just In Love as a duet with the left brain/right brain of Christiane is just the kind of conceit I love, and doing the musical jokes in the beginning is what I thrive on – quoting The Twilight Zone and I Remember in those first few lines. Another thing I insisted on was thematically tying early songs to later songs, either by quoting an earlier song in the intro to a later song, or sneaking the melody line of an earlier song into the accompaniment of a later song. That gave the album a real cohesiveness that would have been lacking otherwise. It took about six months, I think, to finalize the song choices, figure out how they worked, do the arrangements and all that stuff. As we played through them all I knew we were still missing one song and we could not find it. It had to serve a very specific purpose, which is the first part of the breakup and realization that it’s over, but not encroaching into the territory of the actual breakup song, which was Now When The Rain Falls. We agonized over it for weeks. I booked the band session in LA in hopes that would force us into finding it.

Then I flew to New York for our final work session, so we could get the stuff to our orchestrator, David Siegel. We sang through everything, and you could just tell how well it was going to work. Except for that one damned song that we could not find. We were in a rehearsal studio on Eighth Ave. called Shetler Studios. Christiane had brought a humungous pile of sheet music and as I looked at it I thought my head was going to explode. I kind of just dove into it, scattering music all over the floor. Then my eye caught a song we’d gone through and discarded because it just didn’t feel good to either one of us. But as I looked at it I got an idea about the feel – it’s always the feel. The song was Good Thing Going, and lyrically it did exactly what was necessary. But the show arrangement of the song just felt so wrong – it was too facile and didn’t have the emotional thing we needed. The idea that came into my head as I picked up the music was a heartbeat. Anyone who’s ever been on the verge of breaking up knows that the heartbeat gets louder as you get nervous about what’s happening – I could just feel that pulse – I told Toddy what I was hearing, and he began to just play a single octave note as a heartbeat, and I told Christiane to sing it like she’d just been hit in the stomach. It became ragged and erratic and the minute we heard the first two lines we knew we’d found it – then Todd started sneaking in dissonant chords and then the song became the song. But it was that opening feel that made it work. Sondheim once said to me that he didn’t understand why we gave arranger credits because the song was the song – well, no, arrangers have a very specific thing they do and they deserve all the credit they get.

We went into the studio here in LA. I don’t think Christiane was quite prepared for how hands on I was going to be about every vocal, but we worked together amazingly well – she responded to every little nuance or color and made everything her own. Sometimes I’m very specific about something, but mostly I deal in imagery and non-specific colors and let the singer let that take them where it may. The conversations we had as we did Twenty-Four Hours of Lovin’ could not be printed here, but if you listen to that vocal, you can probably imagine what I was saying to get that performance. Christiane’s initial instinct was to ATTACK the lyric from start to finish – I had something else in mind – doing it one way from start to finish is never that interesting to me, so we found a way to make every line have its own meaning and to give the song a real build.

As we recorded the final song, The Next Time It Happens and the orchestra began playing the melody of No More under it, we knew we were making magic – and Christiane was giving one of the best debut album performances ever. She was frighteningly great. The album was a collaboration of the best kind between me, Christiane, Todd, and David Siegel. The mix was not difficult and the result was an album that did what we’d set out to do – tell a story. The reaction was great – sales were great – and Christiane actually performed it live, which was also great. Coming up with the title was easy, too, and it’s the only album I’ve done outside of cast albums that was sequenced in advance.

I have an idea that one of our upcoming Gardenia shows will be this album – and a one-performer thing. I’d love Christiane to come and do it, but if not, I’ve got several people in mind who would just kill with it.

Wait a minute – don’t I have some notes to write? Well, yesterday wasn’t much of a day so I can get through it quickly. Basically, I got up, took my car in to see if they could figure out why it went completely dead for two brief moments in the last week, and then I hung around the Dale of Glen for three hours while they checked it out. The only thing that was even slightly wrong, they said, was that the battery needed a little charge. It’s still in excellent shape, though, according to their diagnostics. The shift lever was taken apart and they found nothing wrong there – so hopefully it was just the little battery charge and I won’t have any further problems. If it happens again, then I’ll get a loaner and they can keep it until they find the problem – I’m hoping that won’t be necessary. Then I went to the mail place and got three nice envelopes but no nice packages. Then I did a couple of errands and whatnot and then I came home, printed out orders, and made some luncheon. Then I finally sat on my couch like so much fish.

Last night, I watched two count them two motion pictures on Blu and Ray. The first motion picture on Blu and Ray was entitled Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. I’d missed it in the theaters but knew it had made a lot of money (although not really, considering its budget was an astounding $200 million dollars). I also knew that on the imdb it has a lot of terrible “reviews,” which, given its box-office takings, is surprising. It’s a strange movie – it plays somewhat like Tim Burton’s Greatest Hits. It’s visually, well, Tim Burton-esque and it looks great and the CGI is very well done. The screenplay by Linda Woolverton hits all the right Disney-necessary notes, especially the female empowerment notes. The film is sort of a sequel with a late-teen Alice. Some of the film has little to do with Lewis Carroll, but it’s all kind of entertaining and it moves right along, with Danny Elfman’s typical Tim Burton-esque score that he’s written a million times to keep you awake should you doze off. The Alice is fetching, and the supporting cast, including Johnny Depp (curiouser and curiouser), Helena Bonham Carter, and a lot of celebrity voices, are all excellent. In the end, it’s not brilliant and you don’t really go away with much, and the whole Jabberwock dragon thing drags on, but it was a pleasant way to pass 100 minutes. The transfer is reference quality. I then watched the second motion picture on Blu and Ray entitled Modern Times, a film by Charles Chaplin, starring Charles Chaplin, with music by Charles Chaplin. I know it’s a classic and beloved by all, but it’s never been my favorite Chaplin film or even near my favorite (City Lights is THE favorite, followed by The Circus, Limelight, The Kid, and The Gold Rush). There are certainly great things in it, and Paulette Goddard is very pretty, but one can tell the Tramp has come to his end. And when Chaplin opens his mouth and does the musical number at the end and finally gives voice to the Tramp, you KNOW it’s the end. Had the Tramp been a sound creation Chaplin would never have had the career he had – his actual voice was the aural antithesis of the Tramp. The film does have its lovely final shot where, instead of the Tramp going down the road alone, he finally goes into the sunset with a girl on his arm. The transfer is excellent (I haven’t compared it to its UK counterpart, but will).

Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because I feel like I’ve written a novel.

Today, I shall be up early, I shall do a few little tweaks to the Carrie mix with my engineer, and then that will go to the mastering guy, who will hopefully be able to assemble it very quickly (since he’s already done the assembly from the other tapes, he knows exactly how it all goes together). Then I’ll probably pay my cousins a visit to pay my respects for my Aunt Lillie. I made the decision not to go to the funeral and informed my cousin Lori, who totally understood (and I’m wasn’t the only one who couldn’t move stuff around or for whom the distance was a little too much), and said just to drop by the house if possible. After that, I have a work session with The Singer, and then I’ll grab a bite to eat.

Tomorrow I have few plans – maybe a little shipping to do but not much else, and that’s a good thing. I do have to figure out the running order for the Gardenia show. Thursday is, of course, Thanksgiving, and I shall be at the home of Barry Pearl and his ever-lovin’ Cindy. Friday is our first Gardenia rehearsal, and I have no idea what’s going on on the weekend.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do tweaks to Carrie, get Carrie to the mastering guy, pay my respects, have a work session, hopefully pick up a package or three, and then have something light but amusing to eat. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your all-time favorite Randy Newman songs. Harps and Angels, a revue of his songs is about to open here in Los Angeles. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland.

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