HELP FUND "FOLK CITY: THE MUSICAL" SOUNDTRACK

Hello all,

 

Folk City: The Musical brings its audience into the fascinating world of Beatniks, bohemians and hippies, folkies and blues players, poets and rockers who were drawn to Greenwich Village in the ‘60s to realize their creative dreams. The play follows six young creative hopefuls through the turbulent three decades of the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, through dynamic musical, cultural, political, social and personal changes.

 

After a sold-out New York run, the production had just completed its critically acclaimed run in Portland, Oregon (and celebrating its 10-BroadwayWorld Award-win, including “Best Musical”), we focused our attention to returning to the New York stage, when we were hit by the coronavirus pandemic. Quarantine. The world stopped. Theater stopped. Even the music sector stopped. Business stopped.

 

This time in quarantine and the still-shaky return to normal life, however, gave my co-creator Bernadette Contreras and my Folk City partner (and wife!) Marilyn Lash, time to pause, regroup, rethink and re-create. We knew it would take theater a while to get back on its feet, and even today as we approach 2022, live events and theatrical productions are closing due to new waves of variants. We knew that we had to rethink this play. Think outside of the box. And we recalled an interesting trend prior to the pandemic—hit productions were launching through recorded cast albums. That’s what was driving some of the biggest Broadway shows like Hamilton, Be More Chill and Hadestown, which all started off because of the popularity of their “soundtracks.” So, we took a longstanding simmering idea, of creating a second version of our show—eschewing the jukebox musical playlist of established hits for having all new and original songs. Why? Well, to start off with, the performing rights costs for the well-known songs were ridiculously prohibitive and could take years to secure them all. We had/have 30 songs in the play (Moulin Rouge has 70!!!) and it would make it impossible to enter festivals and launch the play with those costs and timeline. But the biggest driving factor was that we remembered the core purpose of the show—to give a glimpse of the life of a group of young singer-songwriters who came to Greenwich Village to find camaraderie and hopefully, artistic success. We needed a new organic original playlist.

 

As some of you know, I originally started off as a lyricist. When I first bought Folk City, I put my songwriting career on hold, so I could concentrate on promoting the careers of others. I took it up again in recent years. So, I became the librettist for the new version of the Folk City musical.

 

I’ve been fortunate enough to have had some great collaborators along the way. Nick Lohri has been my steady musical companion for decades, and I used some of our existing songs as a foundation to start this new soundtrack. Same with Gary English, former keyboardist with Captain & Tennille, one of my original collaborators from the ‘70s. For new music written expressly for the play, Nick recommended a mutual friend of ours, Ronnie D’Addario, a multi-talented singer-songwriter on his own, as well as a first-class musician. Ronnie and I spent this past year writing new songs for the play—spanning genres from doo-wop and blues, to folk, ‘60s pop, folk-rock and rock, representing the three decades from the ‘60s through the ‘80s, the timespan of the play’s storyline. One of those songs, “Rising Fahrenheit,” was covered and released as a single by the outstanding band Sunshyne + The Foxx, as a killer pop-dance recording. (You can find it on iTunes and other streaming services.) Pat DiNizio of The Smithereens co-wrote a song, “It’s A Shot,” that we brought along from the original production. George Papas, who starred as Ernie the emcee in our New York production, contributed the music for three fabulous new songs. One of the highlights of the original play was the character Karen’s blistering rendition of the amazing recording artist Tracy Nelson’s classic “Down So Low,” which also happens to be one of my personal all-time favorite songs. Of course, we had to ask Tracy to co-write a song for the new play; the result—the show-stopping “I Belong Here.” Another favorite musician of mine is jazz artist Lili Añel. I had a lyric that was perfect for her, and I was fortunate that she connected with it, and in a rare collaboration for her, she co-wrote “Lovers Leap,” a song we will also be releasing as a single. And our most recent and final contributor is singer Paula Fields’ with her co-write of “Never Been Taken This High,” a rousing gospel roof-raiser. I am honored to have written these remarkable songs with these incredibly talented musicians.

 

Our next step was to find a new cast for the recording. And, boy, did we luck out. Besides George Papas returning, the insanely talented Raph O. Shapiro, who was in our New York production came on board, as did Morgan Mallory, who won the BroadwayWorld “Best Actor” Award for his performance in our Portland production. One of our favorite actors from our initial investors’ performance, Judah Frank, a spectacular vocalist, was also brought back. After a months-long virtual audition process we found the outstanding theatrical actress Abby Slocum, and I was fortunate enough to learn that a former student, Emily Blount, was the perfect singer and personality for the character Jazz, our resident jaded Beat poet. With the aid of singer Paula Fields, who mentors many young R&B and gospel artists, an extensive search was on for the perfect powerhouse-voiced character Karen. We soon realized that it was Paula who was perfect to sing this role for the soundtrack. So, there’s the “cast” for the album. Ronnie, Morgan and Justin Henry have produced and arranged. Finally, we were lucky to bring the extraordinary musician, arranger and producer Filippo De Laura on board to wrangle the whole project.

 

I want to also share my gratitude to our original cast: Kim Vogels, Famecia Fairbanks, Joanne Coleman, Ryan RIckenbach, Cass Dillon and, especially Hallie Griffin, who could not have been more talented and supportive. And always, to Marilyn and our dear friend and partner at Folk City, Joe Hillesum.

 

The plan: Get this album finished. Of course, it’s beyond budget. That’s why we’re setting up the GoFundMe page. We’re almost there, with the tracks all recorded, now waiting to be mastered.

But there’s more. We need to create a few promotional videos and we also have a great award-winning podcast director, Manny Faces, waiting in the wings ready to turn Folk City: The Musical into a weekly episodic podcast, featuring weekly portions of the play, songs from the soundtrack and live performances from guest artists. It’s an exciting direction, but that also costs money that was not in our original budget.

And still more...it is critical for us to hire a publicist and promotion director.

And while there’s the stage production itself, we have recently received interest in a film adaptation. But right now we are concentrating on this soundtrack.

 

We need your help to finish the “soundtrack” and fund the rest of this project. Our initial goal was very modest. Any donation you can make will help and be most appreciated: $10. $50. $100. $250. A million dollars.

 

I don’t have to tell you how government and corporate funding for the arts has diminished. The way creative projects are surviving is through the public’s desire to keep the arts vital and ongoing, and more and more creative projects are being funded through GoFundMe.

 

As rave reviews of our show have pointed out, there’s a lot to relate to in Folk City: The Musical: reliving one’s youth, the importance of historical perspective, and most importantly, the joy of music.

A perfect example is how enduring music is. One song, "Stand Tall," which represents the topical folk music era in the play, was adapted as a video to help raise funds for a Ukrainian charity. The song resonated and reached 10,000 views in a month.

 

 We appreciate your potential support and would greatly appreciate it if you could share this GoFundMe link with as many people and groups as you can through emails and social media. That would be an immense and much-appreciated help.

Thank you,

Robbie Woliver, Bernadette Contreras, Marilyn Lash

 

The music video below features scenes from the play's NY and Portland performances. The track is the demo to the song, "Rush of Rhyme," co-written and arranged by Ronnie D'Addario, who is also on vocals and all instruments.