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[0:00] Richard C. Walter: So great. I'm very lucky to have the cast that's gonna be there too and the band. I uh earlier this year, um the musical Madame Clicquot that I co-wrote with Lisette Glodowski released the studio cast album, and it was so exciting to get that music out there. Um it was so much fun to pick those six songs and work with the arrangers and orchestrators and just kind of bring that to life. And um Lissette and I actually have been working on several other projects kind of all along the way. And it just felt like a really exciting time to play a few songs from that album, play some songs from that show that were not on the album, and to also give a taste of some of the other projects I've been working on with Lissette and other collaborators and also on my own.

I have uh a few uh projects where I'm writing music and lyrics uh by myself, and I'm really excited to share some of those songs too. Those are really personal and exciting songs. That amazing. So the show is called Pieces, New Musical Selections. And while we're talking about if you want to get your tickets, you can go to Chelsea Tableandstage.com. If you if you grab your tickets and go have an artisan pizza and have a martini and then go hang out at the bar on the roof afterwards and have make a fancy night of it, it's a great place to see a show in New York City.

[1:16] Robert Bannon: How do you get the performers in the lineup that you have to say yes to coming on down and singing? And how do you pick the performers? Are they suited for each song? Do you reach out to friends? How does it work?

[1:29] Richard C. Walter: Yeah, some of them are, well, all of them are great friends of mine. And so I've been lucky enough to work with them um through Madame Clicquot or through um other projects of mine. So they're all folks that I that I know and love very much. And so I'm so glad that they're uh coming. But a few of them um are singing songs that they are, you know, in my mind, very attached to uh that they've sort of always sung. Uh Kevin Massey comes to mind. He'll be singing Life on the Edge from Madame Clicquot, and he's been uh in the role of Francois for for a while. And so it just feels natural to hear him sing that song. And Victoria Frings will be there as well, um, who plays the title role in Madame Clicquot.

And so she'll uh be gracing us with her gorgeous voice and uh singing the love duet with Kevin as well. And so um, and then we have some folks because some of these songs have yet to be performed. Let me miss I'm so sorry. So I can get tickets. How unprofessional of me not to put it on you not disturb. Um, but so um so other uh the other performers are either folks that some of them a lot of them really are from Madame Clicquot, um, and some have been in the ensemble, but everybody in that ensemble is a star in their own right. And so, you know, I reach out and say, I have this song that hasn't really been performed yet. Would you sing it and you know put your own spin on it? And so just thinking of the incredible performers um that are friends of mine that I it's just so exciting to get to hear them sing.

[3:02] Robert Bannon: Yeah, and to hear your music uh sung in front of an audience with the reaction. What is it like when you do it on stage versus when you're doing it in a recording studio? You put the album out, you can people can listen to it and hear the six songs that are out and etc. But when you get the audience reaction or when people hear it and come up to you, what does that feel like as a songwriter to see people other people interpret your music and then hear the reaction from people who listen to it?

[3:27] Richard C. Walter: It's the best. I mean, to sit in the audience and hear people kind of get silent at really powerful moments, or to laugh when there's a joke, and just to feel that energy, it's really amazing. And in an album, you have so many different levers that you can pull to kind of add that layer there, but there's nothing that can quite replace that feeling of being with the people who are listening to it. And um, I love when people come up after and tell me what their favorite song was that they heard, or uh, you know, that some particular lyric or musical motif really meant something to them and stirred something. So that's very, very cool. And for the singers as well. I mean, especially a lot of these are songs that haven't really been heard yet.

And so having the performers say, Wow, I really like spent some time with this song and that it meant something to me, or this is my favorite song to sing, or something like that. You know, that's incredible. And I'm so excited.

[4:26] Robert Bannon: Yes, I love it. If you want, like we said, get your tickets, Chelsea Table and Stage coming up um this month. But also you can find more information about Richard at RichardCWalter.com. If you're listening to us, it's just as it is, Richard C, the letter C Walter.com. Um, as a songwriter, I wish I knew how to write a song. I have no idea. I barely know how to sing one, but I what I can say. But what I can say is that it feels like a very lonely um job and daunting. You know, it to me it reminds me of like I'm gonna sit in front of the computer and that cursor is blinking and it's a blank page and I gotta start this. Is it is it lonely? Do you prefer working alone? Do you love collaboration? How do you work as a songwriter?

[5:07] Richard C. Walter: Yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong, you definitely have those moments of the blinking cursor, and you're like, what's gonna happen? What's gonna what's gonna come onto this page? Um, and sometimes that can be difficult and frustrating, but I've never actually found it to be very lonely. I love collaborating, so a lot of my collaborators, um, Lissette and uh Richard Lindenfelser, Eric Sorrels, and Nick Laughlin, uh all of those uh collaborators I'll be bringing songs from those collaborations to this concert. But even the songs that I've written alone, um, sounds a little bit corny, but I get to spend time with these characters and I sort of close my eyes and imagine the world. And even if it's not this like wonderful fantasy land where the sky is purple and everything is, you know, very vivid and colorful, you're still sitting and imagining a person's expression and maybe who they're singing to and what they're sitting on and the texture of their clothes, and you get to really bring to life the scene that necessitates this music and this song, and that feels so um I don't know, so powerful to me. And I'm spending time with them with those people and getting to know them um as I write that song, and so that it never feels too lonely because you have your characters.

[6:22] Robert Bannon: Yes, I get that. I do I feel that way as an actor, like it's you you may do the interior work, the work of the character, but you're with that, you're discovering that character. So yeah. When you went you got your bachelor's, Tamai, you got your master's degree at Tish for in songwriting. Where were you from? And when did you decide I'm gonna be a songwriter?

[6:43] Richard C. Walter: I'm originally from uh I grew up in Connecticut, but my middle school, high school years were in North Carolina, and that's where I really um discovered songwriting. I had a uh I was always playing by ear. Um, and I always sort of think of songwriting as you're playing something by ear that you've only ever heard in your head. So you're you're playing it, but it's just not something from the radio. You're just playing something that kind of is in your mind, and so I think playing by ear has really helped me um develop that skill as a songwriter. But I had a really, really good uh arts program in my high school. Um, and I was very lucky in that sense that um we had a we had a teacher shout out to Laura Sam, uh, who was uh just a champion of the arts at that school and especially theater and helped introduce us to a lot of different kinds of musical theater um and and songs and what those can be.

And so that had a huge influence on me in those formative high school years, and I followed that in my uh bachelor's degree in music and uh concentrated in composition there. Um and then I actually after college um took a little bit of a left turn um sort of and went out to LA um to work in merchandise for uh Barry Manilow and his company and got to actually go out on the road and sell merchandise with them and every night get to listen to Barry Manilow concerts, probably I don't know how many hundreds of those concerts. Um and that was such he is one of my favorite songwriters, um one of my favorite people and artists and obviously a legend. And so getting to hear craft at that level, I think uh that was a very fortuitous turn for me because I think hearing that music really influenced me um as a writer and made me want to be a better writer because uh he's pretty incredible.

[8:40] Robert Bannon: And so that was uh, yeah. Why isn't that in your bio here?

[8:47] Richard C. Walter: All right. So, so Richard, now that you're my best friend, yes, I've only seen Barry 23 times. I've seen Have you seen Harmony yet?

[8:57] Richard C. Walter: Mm-hmm.

[8:57] Robert Bannon: Oh my gosh, I'm going in January when I'm up for the concert. I'm so excited. Um I love Bruce Sussman. Congrats to Bruce and Barry. We did the red carpet, we spoke to Barry, we spoke to Gary, we spoke to the whole entertainment team. We so song speaking of Barry Manilow, he gets this uh he's kind of gotten his flowers a little bit more as as of late, but growing up as a fan of at sixth grade, you know, singing I write the songs in the Ritual Park Middle School show. Um, not the coolest thing, but as I what I love about his music is the arrangement and the songwriting. There's an emotion, there's a musical theater quality to his music that is new musical theater. How do you study other people's music and their chord structure and the moods and the tempo and the orchestrations of it all and the ideas of instrumentation? What is your do you sit in daydream? Do you play with it? Do you listen to a lot of music to get inspired? Like, what how do you get?

[9:57] Richard C. Walter: I could sit and listen to this one's for you, or, you know, even now or something like that, and be inspired, or the songs that he didn't write, like weekend in New England is like a beautiful date song.

[10:09] Robert Bannon: But how do you, what do you do to get in your mood to sit down and figure out what you're trying to do?

[10:14] Richard C. Walter: Yeah, I when I'm trying to figure out a moment of a song, I do. I mean, I listen to songs that maybe about similar emotions. Um, if I'm getting into that uh particular spot that I'm like, I need a song here and I gotta write this, and um, where do I start?

[10:32] Richard C. Walter: And um, but I think anytime that you're listening to two artists and going to theater and absorbing it, that every moment of that helps you as a writer because there are so so many incredible writers out there that are creating work and putting it up in small venues and on Broadway stages and in arenas like Barry. I think you hear music from all different kinds of writers, and you just realize that every writer is right in a certain way of what they're doing, and no writer would approach the same song in the same moment exactly the same way. And so when you hear all of that, it kind of opens you up to say, I don't have to do this exactly the way it's been done before, but I can hear how someone's done it, and it opens up a new door, and that's where each songwriter has this individuality that comes through.

There's a door there that you open and say, okay, hearing all of that, this is what I think might happen, and maybe I'll take a flair of that or you know, something and bring it together, and it becomes this brand new thing. And then somebody else may listen to a song that I write and say, Wow, I really like what he did with that moment. And that makes me think of this for my thing, and it's gonna be a brand new thing. And so it's just never-ending kind of creativity, I think.

[11:56] Robert Bannon: I totally understand. And what I um think of the most not to keep talking about Barry, but what I love about seeing him, like seeing him at Radio City last year compared to all the other times, the work is never done, it's always being rearranged and reorchestrated and played and perfected and modernized and changed. How do you let it go? How do you let the song it's done? It's it's is it ever? Is it always is it always rejeuzed and thought about it's so hard.

[12:23] Richard C. Walter: I mean, I it's funny though, I do have some songs where I kind of feel like they're done, and I'm like, cool. I I said that what I wanted to say. And I feel like I mean, when you get into arranging and orchestrating, I think that can always um always change. And especially with Madame Clicquot, I've really gotten to see firsthand how you know, through the music direction, even Kenneth Gartman is our music director, and he's brilliant. And just seeing him on the spot be like, let's re-voice this in a in this group number and make you want this sound, not this sound. And um, and then the arrangers. We have Frank Galgano and Matt Castle um doing the orchestrations and and the arrangements. And it is just, I mean, I it's like architecture.

I mean, it's like we're sitting around with like a blueprint of a song, and they are just these master architects that are like, okay, we what here's what you want. Talk to us about, and they're so brilliant at being like, talk to us about the feeling, talk to us about the room that these characters are in, and we're gonna take that and the whole arc of this story, and we're gonna drop in this one, you know, clarinet lick that's gonna bring that to life for you. And it's like that's that's incredible, and and that's something that I I can't speak highly enough about the people that have that ability, because I I am not an orchestrator in that sense where I can just sit down and think of every instrument in the world and pull that together.

And I think that's an amazing thing, an amazing gift to a composer to hear someone that's so good at orchestration and finding those colors to play with, look at your music and do that to it because it it lets you kind of hear the the leveled up version of what you've written and and how cool that is.

[14:14] Robert Bannon: I I can't agree with you more. I've whenever I've worked on my own music and and worked with arrangers, which sometimes is a is an old school forgotten art form, especially, yeah. But to take a song and to be able to put it and make an arrangement and make the instrumentation and orchestrations of it is so gorgeous and it's so unique. It's like a thumbprint. It's it's so fascinating to me. Um I was with my friend, I was with I was with my friend Matt Gould yesterday. He's got Lampika coming to Broadway.

[14:42] Richard C. Walter: Oh yeah.

[14:43] Robert Bannon: I um and he was talking about orchestrations and final drafts of songs and the song, the show's coming opens in April, and we're they're still working on it. And I was talking to him about the inspiration for a musical about her. How did you come up with the inspiration for this musical?

[15:00] Richard C. Walter: For Madame Clicquot?

[15:02] Robert Bannon: Yes.

[15:02] Richard C. Walter: Oh man, well, of course, I was having a glass of Clicquot, and I thought, who made this? Um, but no, I I really did get curious because I this is, I mean, it's a champagne that's kind of ubiquitous, especially around holidays and celebrations, and you just see this really bright yellow label, and and uh we would always kind of splurge for a bottle if we were having something special. And and I just got really curious and and started researching the history of it, and I found out about Barb Nicole. Um, and I just her story blew me away. And the more that I looked into it, the more I was completely blown away by what she did and and how what she achieved, especially at that time. Um, and I I really kind of held on to that story for a long time.

Um, and then I met Lisette, uh actually at NYU, good doing our masters, and I I talked to her about it and I said, What do you think about this? Read some of these things um and some of these articles and and tell me if if this inspires you. And she just like her jaw hit the floor when she came back to me after reading those, and she was like, This is unreal. And we sat down and wrote the very first song for the show, um, which was about their wedding day when she married Francois, which was secret. It was hidden in in the underground uh wine cellars, actually, of the Clicquot family, um, because of the French Revolution and Catholicism being outlawed, they couldn't have it in a cathedral like they normally would.

So it was this very intimate uh underground, and and we didn't even know how auspicious a setting in the wine cellars at the time. But um, to us, that was just like, oh, that's amazing. That they're the foreshadowing of that setting and the kind of delicateness of this moment between them. And so we wrote the first song, and it's kind of the only song that hasn't really changed in the show. It's like everything else is sort of worked around it. But that that point of entry for us, it made us feel like that was really right because after everything um and six years of rewriting and and editing, it's it's that song has remained mostly intact.

[17:11] Robert Bannon: Um it's so fascinating. When I when I saw Red that you were coming on, I you know, I when you Google the album, whatever, you see the signature, you see, and you instantly know it from the bottle, right? Like you instantly know the signal, you instantly know the yellow label, you instantly know it. But there's a story behind each and every one of these things that is fascinating. And then for you to do the research and say, hey, this could be a musical, is what musicals and theater is really all about. And you're educating us and telling us things that we don't know in a fun and entertaining way. So I'm excited, Richard.

[17:47] Richard C. Walter: Thank you.

[17:47] Robert Bannon: Me too. Gosh, I'm excited. And if you want to get a heads up before it before it's up on its feet and in stages and everywhere and all around the world, and you know, you're you want to be up on the the next thing. You need to go on the 18th of January and see the some of the songs from that and some of the other songs that Richard has worked on at 9:30 at Chelsea Table and Stage. Yeah, you can get your tickets. You can get it, you can get a ticket for for less than you could get a martini in New York City.

[18:13] Richard C. Walter: Exactly.

[18:14] Robert Bannon: But you should still get a martini, and then get a martini. And then there you go. Then you have a glass of cacao, maybe if they have even better, you'll be inspired to walk to your local liquor store right after the show's over. That's it. Get a bottle. Uh go to Chelsea Tableandstage.com and go to RichardCWalter.com if you want more information about the shows and his music and his bio and all the fun things that are you, Richard. And yeah, including videos and all that fun stuff. I am so grateful to talk to you. I'm really excited to see this journey and this little rocket ship that you're on. And um, thank you for sharing some of your tricks in of the trade. And and now I'm gonna be thinking about Barry Manilow.

[18:55] Richard C. Walter: I know.

[18:56] Robert Bannon: Let's go listen to uh uh anything. Mandy, let's go listen to Mandy.

[19:00] Richard C. Walter: I was gonna say, do you have a favorite?

[19:02] Robert Bannon: Oh my gosh, it's so hard. Um gosh, I don't know. You know what? It was always the the most fun in the show at the end when Copa Cabana came on and the streamers went off, and it was just the biggest party. I love that.

[19:18] Richard C. Walter: You you can't replace it.

[19:21] Robert Bannon: I I love it too. I I love it too. For me, it's corny as it is. The opening, you wouldn't believe where I've been, that opening, that is my thing. Let's go.

[19:30] Richard C. Walter: All right.

[19:31] Robert Bannon: I'm gonna take you to a we're gonna have to go to a Manilow concert.

[19:35] Richard C. Walter: Yeah, we're going.

[19:37] Robert Bannon: Congratulations, all the best.

[19:38] Richard C. Walter: Thank you so much.

[19:40] Robert Bannon: It's been great being on here.

[19:41] Richard C. Walter: Thank you so much.

[19:42] Robert Bannon: How sweet is that? I love a new composer. I love new work. I love Barry Manilow. Anyone that comes on the show and loves Barry Manilow is a fan favorite forever. Listen, don't judge me. Manilow is an is a national treasure. Do you notice these? You can't see if you're listening to us. When age you start to get bags under your eyes, should I get cream? Should I take a what should I do? Can someone DM me? Will you DM me and tell me what you use? You know, my friends say avocado cream. Look, long story short, you're watching the round table. We're live every Thursday. You can see us on the Broadway Podcast. Well, you can hear us on the Broadway Podcast Network. You can see us on YouTube. We talk artists about art and we have fun and we're a mess.

And that's what this show is all about. If you want more information about me, go to RobertBannon.com, Robert B-A-N-N-O-N.com and listen to my music. It's out wherever music is heard as well. My albums and all my fun stuff. Lots of concerts, lots of events, lots of guests, lots of nonsense on the way. Stick around, stay with us, and remember the best is always yet to come. Till next time, everybody, have a good one.