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[0:00] Robert Bannon: His voice is gorgeous. We love his wife. We love him. We love that his new show is coming out with Michael Jackson wrote there's gonna be bananas and fun. He's literally joining us from rehearsal. His album is so gorgeous, everyone. Why you need to listen? John Pizzarelli is a genius. And Steven Pasquale is a genius. Welcome.

[0:23] Steven Pasquale: Thank you. Thanks for having me. I know you. I've seen you. I've seen you on stage. I've seen you on TV. I am a fan, so it's really a pleasure.

[0:32] Robert Bannon: I'm glad. Thank you. It takes a lot of guts to do an album that is just a guitar and a voice. So tell us how did this come about?

[0:41] Steven Pasquale: You know what? I was at home listening to I like to listen to really old-fashioned jazz. And I was listening to this Ella Fitzgerald Joe Pass record. I think it's 1967, and it's just her singing and him playing the guitar. And it was so simple and beautiful. And I thought, well, I just like the idea of no frills. If you had a good enough guitar player that you could really like fill all the non-singing with like incredible amounts of beautiful playing. And then of course, my brain went right to the idea of John Pizzarelli. So I just asked him, I said, Is this a crazy idea? You want to make like a kind of Joe Pass Ella Fitzgerald our attempt at that? And he loved the idea. And so he was in for at that point, and then we just had a couple of brainstorm sessions, and you know the brilliant thing about John is he's so fast. We made the whole album in like eight hours.

[1:31] Robert Bannon: Oh my god.

[1:32] Steven Pasquale: Yeah, it's insane. If you've never seen him in concert, you have to see him. He does he's an amazing and now him and his wife, who is no Broadway slouch, you know, she's a pretty much a legend herself.

[1:42] Robert Bannon: Totally.

[1:43] Steven Pasquale: Jessica Molaskey, she's amazing. She was in the studio with us, being so helpful, like every after every take. Really good ideas, really good thoughts. The two of them are really savvy in the recording studio.

[1:53] Robert Bannon: Well, it's streaming right now, wherever you can listen to your music, you can get a hang of it, and you could listen to the album. The album we are you can get it right where we are right now. You picked these songs. I know you're on dinner, so I appreciate you. You picked these songs, they're all classics. I mean, when I fall in love, young at heart, Stardust, you know, The Impossible Dream, Nature Boy. How did you whittle it down to being these particular songs?

[2:16] Steven Pasquale: Well, they're definitely favored songs that I've always loved, but the one factor was how would it sound just just a voice and a guitar? Was really the thing that I was thinking in my head. And then I thought, well, what will Pizzarelli really do from an arrangement perspective? Because I don't give him literally any feedback. I just say, let's do Stardust. And he goes, How about like this? And I go, Well, that's genius, great. And then we do it. I mean, that's how good he is. So his ability to arrange on the fly is like outrageous.

[2:44] Robert Bannon: And you are literally one of the first albums to come out of Center Stage Records. I mean, they're brand new, they've come out the gate with a bang. Like they're cast albums, they are putting out albums like this, and just how has it been in terms of music has changed so much through the years? I mean, we don't, but you're gonna have vinyl coming soon. There's a way to get it digitally right now. How is it to create music? The turnaround has to be super fast.

[3:10] Steven Pasquale: Yeah, it's so different now. We don't really bother making CDs anymore, right? Nobody really buys CDs. So, but there is this enormous like nostalgia for vinyl, and so we're gonna make a whole bunch of them because everyone that says I'm excited about your record seems to say I want a vinyl. So we're gonna do that. And then, of course, you can get it on Spotify, Apple Music, you know, all the places where you stream your music. We're gonna get your you know, vinyl copy, and we'll meet you at the stage door because we're gonna want we're gonna want to sign copy.

[3:39] Robert Bannon: You got it. That's the deal. So, you know, as we go through your list, you know, if this is your life, Steven, for a moment, you know, it goes back to Broadway debut in something called Reasons to Be Pretty, which you know, and then we've seen you on like seasons on Rescue Me and All the Gear and All of the Fun and shows like Man of No Importance and Junk and Bridges of Madison County and American Son, and recently and Here We Go, here we are. I'm sorry, I'm like literally ready to go, and here we are, which was so an honor. I'm sure an honor. It was an honor as an audience to sit and see Sondheim's last work.

[4:16] Steven Pasquale: Oh man, I'm glad that you say that. And literally, you're about to open this baby, which is Teeth. Isn't that tagline the best tagline you've ever seen? A kind of rage musical comedy.

[4:27] Robert Bannon: The tagline is great. The artwork, if you know anything about the movie, and if you know anything about what the show's about, is brilliant. What has it been like? This is a musical about a girl who's got teeth in her vagina. So we just gotta say it. We just gotta say it out loud. It's a show about a girl who's got teeth in her vagina, and it is as insane as you could possibly imagine. It's based on a very cult film from maybe like 10 or 15 years ago. But Michael and Anna have outdone themselves with upgrading the source material. It's really special. So hopefully people will freak out for it like we're freaking out for it in the rehearsal name.

[5:04] Steven Pasquale: I have to be there. I gotta see it. You have Raja Feather Kelly doing choreography. You have Michael, who is brilliant, Strange Loop literally tore up Broadway and tore up. This is gonna be a special, special show for sure.

[5:17] Robert Bannon: Yeah, I'm really excited about it. And I'm playing five characters, so that's pretty fun too.

[5:21] Steven Pasquale: How do you fit it all in? Like you're like you're literally a crazy person eating dinner on break from a show, releasing an album, doing television projects, doing next projects lined up. How do you organize your lives? How do you do it?

[5:33] Steven Pasquale: I mean, I'm a to a follower workaholic, so I like to be busy, but this was an intense little stretch here. I was doing double duty for a while of the Sondheim show and Teeth while the album was coming out. That was a little bit much. But now things are have settled, the album is out. I'm focused on Teeth. We closed Here We Are. It was beautiful and amazing. And now, you know, just looking forward to a nice little run at Playwrights and for people to discover the record.

[6:00] Robert Bannon: Yeah, well, there's the record. There it is, Some Other Time. If you're a jazz aficionado, if you know anything about music, then you know about John Pizzarelli. Him in a guitar, he's like the eighth wonder of the world. You add Steven's voice to that, and then you have a knockout of the park. If it's Valentine's Day, if it's a romantic fry, if you want to clean your car, if you're going to take a long drive, you put this on, you're gonna sing all of these songs from top to bottom.

[6:25] Steven Pasquale: It's a real duet record. I mean, that's the thing I gotta give Johnny the more credit. I wanted I didn't want it to feel like just a singer, um, with some beautiful accompaniment. I wanted the guitar playing to be as featured, and it really is. And we had two goals. One was that it would be a red wine, a glass of red wine kind of record, which we feel like it is, and a record that you never had to yell, hey Siri, turn it down. That's what I like. So hopefully, hopefully we get achieved both of those goals.

[6:50] Robert Bannon: Well, Steven, I want you to I want to say thank you. I hope that if you weren't so booked, we would be able to, you know, maybe see you do it on stage, but you don't have time to do this album live.

[6:59] Steven Pasquale: No, I would but it would be fun to do with just John and I somewhere special, maybe in the late spring or early summer. We're trying to find a spot to do that. But yeah, that's a that would be a fun idea.

[7:06] Robert Bannon: Well, I have to say that on the red carpets and working in this business a little bit and getting to go to award shows, your wife is one of the classiest, sweetest people that you could ever meet.

[7:19] Steven Pasquale: She is the greatest human I've ever known. That's without question.

[7:24] Robert Bannon: And I want to be in your house when you guys are vacuuming your floor, or when it's a car ride, because your two voices singing along to the radio is gotta be a good old time.

[7:34] Steven Pasquale: We do a lot of harmonizing, but it's always too stupid things like I'm gonna take a poop right now. I'm gonna take a poop right now.

[7:41] Robert Bannon: That's when we harmonize. You know how much people you know what how much you can charge a ticket to see you two do that?

[7:48] Steven Pasquale: Well, good, good. I want everyone that's watching, make sure that you check out Some Other Time. It's out right now. You can stream it wherever music is heard, and then get your tickets, go see Teeth, a coming of rage musical comedy when it's about to open and get up on its feet. Enjoy dinner, Steven. Thank you for spending some time with us.

[8:06] Steven Pasquale: Thank you so much. I'm sorry that I don't have more time today, but this was great.

[8:10] Robert Bannon: Great chatting. We're so grateful. We appreciate you so much. Break all the legs and congrats.

[8:14] Steven Pasquale: Thanks, brother.

[8:16] Robert Bannon: How sweet and cute is he? How much fun did we have? Can you imagine Philip Assou and him talking or singing and harmonizing about the bathroom and their apartment?

[8:25] Steven Pasquale: I didn't expect that.

[8:29] Robert Bannon: That was not what I expected him to say. And somehow I'm floored and fascinated. Do you hear the noise in the background? That's my dog. Welcome to living with a dog while you're trying to film a podcast. This is my professional messy little show.

[8:44] Steven Pasquale: Oh my lord.

[8:45] Robert Bannon: If you like mess, then you're in the right place. Go to RobertBannon.com, follow me at Robert M. Bannon, and make sure you listen to all my friends here on the podcast network, the Broadway Podcast Network. We have so many great interviews this week and month. If it's Melba Moore who's won a Tony, if it's Ooh, who else is here? Jimbo, who won All Stars Drag Race, and so many more great guests right here on the Roundtable. So stay by and stick by and check by every single day. And I thank you for being here. Thank you for watching. The best is yet to come. Until next time, I'll see you again real soon. Bye, everybody.