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[0:00] Joe Iconis: Started writing this song when I was six or seven years old. I finished it when I was 30 years old. I think you will hear both Joe Iconis' in this song. Let her rip.

[0:14] ♪ Musical number: "Muthers R Speshel (Wen Yer Sad)" — performed by Lin-Manuel Miranda ♪

[0:22] Hi, I'm Jennifer Ashley Tepper.

[0:24] And I'm Joe Iconis.

[0:25] And you're listening to ALBUM PODCAST on the Broadway Podcast Network. On this episode, we're going to be talking about Mothers R Special, When You're Sad, which is famously a collaboration between Joe Iconis and his much younger self.

[0:34] Joe Iconis: Yeah, it's one of the few collaborations, writing-wise, on the record. Actually, the only one on the record. And it's, yeah, it's the first song I ever wrote in my whole damn life. In this episode, you will hear about recording in the studio with the great Lin-Manuel Miranda, including a very special behind-the-scenes moment we had with him involving the Tick-Tick-Boom movie, and about how the song was created in this special version with our special guest. Yeah, we can't wait for you to hear it.

[1:05] When it's time to go to prom, they'll give you a condom and a shot of binoculars and say you're the bomb, you are the bomb. It's the only collaboration on the album. And the collaboration is between me at age, I think, 30 when I wrote the song. And me at age six or maybe seven, I can't really remember. And that is because Mothers Are Special, When You're Sad is the first song that I ever wrote.

[1:41] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: And what inspired you to pick it back up? Do you remember when you were 30? Did you go, oh, I want to do this on a Mother's Day concert? Or does your family joke about the song and that's why it was still in your brain?

[1:54] Joe Iconis: No, you know, so I had seen a video many years ago of myself performing the song. It was a song that I actually didn't remember. And then my oldest best friends, Kevin Manganero and Mike Getzanani and I were hanging out in Kevin's basement. And this was probably like around college years, right? And so like in my 20s. And we were hanging out and Kevin had a videotape of like old movies. And on this videotape was this recital or not recital, like this culminating show from a summer theater camp that Kevin and I did when we were like six years old. And so it was just like a two-week camp. But then we did this little show at the end. And then part of the show was, you know, people sort of doing individual talents.

And I sang the song that I said that I wrote. And I was too scared to sing the song myself. And so I had like a sock puppet who sang it. And I like hid underneath the desk and had the puppet above the desk. And so that was like that was my introduction to Mothers Are Special when you're sad. And I and you know, the song itself is is just like the first that first little chorus. The mothers are special. Mothers are special. When you're sad, it's that repeated four times. And so I remember watching that for the first time and just being like, oh, my God, this is literally the first song I ever wrote here. And I don't I think Kevin still has the tape, but I haven't seen it since. But I always remember the song.

And then I wrote it when I was 34. There used to be this thing called Six Word Memoir, which I feel like was like an NPR show or something. And so they did a live six-word memoir show. And basically, it was like, you know, it was writers, performers, whoever's you would like read your six-word memoir and then do a, you know, a bit about it or something. And so my six-word memoir was Mothers Are Special when you're sad. And I, you know, did an expanded version of the song as my like presentation for six-word memoir. And that's how the song was born.

[4:11] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: What was your own mother's reaction when you revived the song?

[4:15] Joe Iconis: My mom, you know, she liked it a lot. I feel like it wasn't the reaction wasn't like, oh, my God, my son is the best. It wasn't it wasn't an immediate, you know, like crying and falling all over me. But she liked it. She thought it was good. There's definitely things in the song that are not specific to my mother. Like, you know, I was really I was really excited once I got into the song about this idea of of taking, you know, like the knowledge and experiences of a 30-year-old man and and sort of treating them like a children's song. It's like, you know, if you were able to to talk about like, you know, STDs on Sesame Street, what would that kind of song sound like? You know, that's like the idea.

[5:03] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: But I kind of does Avenue Q is that?

[5:09] Joe Iconis: Yeah, yeah, I guess it's I guess it's that. Yeah, I guess I just had the idea for Avenue Q 15 years after Avenue Q came out. But I think that, you know, the idea of my mother ever handling a condom, let alone handing me a condom is so removed from my mom that, you know, that's an example of something that just literally never would happen. So I think she loves the song, but she doesn't necessarily think it's, you know, fully about fully about her.

[5:36] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: And when did you decide that this was going to be on the album? And did it immediately pop out to you as like a good special guest spot for Lin-Manuel Miranda?

[5:47] Joe Iconis: Yeah, you know, it's a song that that I do in concert from time to time and I sing it or the great Lance Rubin sings it sometimes. But for the album, I you know, I I'd like the idea of having Lin guest on the album because, you know, Lin is someone who I've known since the beginning of my career when I was writing my show The Black Suits, which was about a Long Island garage band and had a lot of sort of like, you know, things about it that were pulled from my own life. That's when Lin was writing in the Heights and, you know, and and in the Heights was, you know, sort of pulling things from his own life. And and so in the early days, we tended to be like connected a lot. Like people would sort of speak of us in the same breath.

And then we, you know, sort of went down different paths or whatever. But he's just been such a fixture in my life. And I thought it would be so cool to have him on the album. And I wasn't quite sure what I wanted him to do. But then as soon as I kind of stumbled on the mother's or special idea, I was like, oh, yeah, it has to be this just because, you know, he's such an immense, an immense talent. And like, he's so famous. You know, he's just like he's the most famous person currently traipsing through the theater world. He's so huge. The idea of having this person who has that level of like worldwide notoriety and fame sing this like really, you know, simple like silly song about mothers felt really felt really appropriate to me.

And, you know, and he has just like such a sweetness about him. And it just felt like a good match. And luckily, he was totally game. And he was amazing. I love his performance so much. He, you know, he took it so seriously. And yeah, I really I really love it. I think he has he has like a sweet innocence to him that is really I think really it's it lends itself well to the song. I really I really dig it.

[7:58] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: And what was it like recording?

[8:00] Joe Iconis: I remember, you know, obviously, all the album was recorded during deep COVID. But it was just so I don't know, startling to be in a studio with Lin-Manuel Miranda when like we hadn't seen anyone outside of our bubbles in so long. And I know that he did some improv on the song. And it was early in the process, I think, of recording.

[8:20] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: It was.

[8:20] Joe Iconis: Yeah. I remember the Lin session being so surreal because like I, you know, I know him, but we're not, you know, we're not like best buds, you know, we're not like hanging out all the time. And so there is like, you know, there's like a bit of like a starriness kind of always around him. And then he so he like, you know, got to the session. And we talked about the song and he, you know, he was like, is it OK if I, if I, you know, mess around with it a little bit? And I was like, yeah, yeah, of course. And so he, you know, he did like the the sort of like interjection things in the song. I'm of course, like blanking on every single one of them now, but he those are all him and he just kind of like went for it.

And, you know, we talked about it, but he was completely in his element. And the, you know, the intro at the top of the song was was something that he thought would be a good idea to include the, you know, the sort of like explanation of what the song is, which was something that I was always so like, I don't know if this is like cringey to have, you know, like this one song be introduced, which is because it's like, you know, the song also it's like it is obviously it's me, but I do feel like it's like the person whose mother is special in the song is a writer. You know, it is it does feel like a song that a writer wrote. And so it just felt kind of appropriate that it's, you know, a song that I wrote as, you know, originally just to straight up honor my mother.

And then, you know, years later, when I collaborated with my younger self to make it a little bit about honoring, you know, all mothers and the messiness of that, then to have, you know, yet another writer kind of take it on and embody it. It just all felt felt appropriate. But in the studio that day, the the other thing that I remember the most of all was that Lin was like in the middle of making tick tick boom. And he showed myself and you, Jennifer Ashley Tepper, an early cut of the Sunday sequence. Yeah, from tick tick boom, like in the studio, which is just so it's so insane to think about the timelines of all that, you know, and to be like, we were in COVID. And we were like in a studio with Lin Manuel, him in the middle of making tick tick boom, showing us like footage.

Yeah, I think for like COVID reasons, and privacy reasons, and all that, I think it was just like you, me and Ian Keggy, who's obviously producing and recording and Lin. And so he felt like open to showing us that and you know, like for me, like having been in the studio for the album, and then like working on tick tick boom, those were the only two things in the world. So it was very, like cool during that COVID time period to get to see Sunday, which like, you know, in the world of security never could have been sent to us on the internet. It was just because we were in person in the studio recording Mothers Are Special. It was really cool.

[11:07] Joe Iconis: I feel like his recording of the song has made me feel more than ever that another really good person to sing this song would be Kermit the Frog. Like I just feel like if it's ever like the Muppets sing Joe Iconis, this is a very clear Kermit selection.

[11:22] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yeah, not just because of the sock puppet, although maybe the original inspiration is.

[11:28] Joe Iconis: Yeah, no, I think that it's, um, yeah, it's like the, the, the innocence, but the knowingness of the song feels very, very Kermit.

[11:37] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: And very Lin Manuel.

[11:39] Joe Iconis: Yeah.

[11:40] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Anything else about Mothers Are Special when you're sad, you have to include that.

[11:46] Joe Iconis: I do. I do. Yeah, it's like I like that my first song that I ever wrote has a has a has a title with the parenthetical.

[11:55] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yeah, I also correct. The first time you ever wrote so I can't believe I haven't done this myself yet. Maybe I did years ago, sort of, but I would love if a fan who's listening to this podcast right now could go through all of the songs on album and number them based on when you wrote them so that we have a chronological timeline that starts with Mothers Are Special. And it shows the entire trajectory chronologically. I think that'd be really cool. So hit us up on Instagram. If you're that person who's going to dive into all the podcasts and interviews and figure out exactly when each song was written.

[12:27] Joe Iconis: Oh, yeah, I love that. Well, you know, I mean, what is funny about that is that if we did that, I know the first two, it would be Mothers Are Special, when you're sad, and then the next one would be starting to forget. I wrote in undergrad. And it is funny that it's like those songs that I'm starting to forget is a song that's about my grandfather dying. And it's like this, you know, the songs are about my family. And it's the ultimate, like, you know, sort of writing what you know, that it's it's like my first, you know, however many years of being a writer, it was all just kind of about my immediate family. And then it got a little bigger, where I'm sort of writing about, you know, my friends and this desire to make art.

And then I'm kind of writing about like, what happens when you, you know, you have a family of artists? How do you take it to the next level? And yeah, I do feel like I can kind of chart my life in the in the subject matters of the songs that I that I wrote.

[13:13] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yeah, I totally think that'll be true. But the chronological would be interesting to see if there's some outline or the first couple songs that are on the album that you wrote that are like about something outside your experience more so than in.

[13:26] Joe Iconis: Yeah, hit us up. Mothers are special. And so our fans hit us up with your chronological timeline.

[13:34] Joe Iconis: Hey, thanks so much for listening or watching to my podcast. Do me a favor and go to wherever you just listen to or watch this thing and subscribe. Or like or give us a great rating or review and then head to bpn.fm slash album to find out even more information about this podcast. More ways to watch more ways to listen and check out my album album. Thanks so much for hanging out. Album podcast is executive produced by Liz Armstrong, produced by Dori Berenstein, Alan Seales, Kim Garris and the rest of the team at the Broadway Podcast Network. Be sure to visit bpn.fm slash album for both audio and video versions of this podcast and to listen to album.

[14:20] Thank you, Joe.