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[0:00] Robert Bannon: Talk Music. Are you ready? It's The Roundtable with me, Robert Bannon.

[0:10] Robert Bannon: Welcome to The Roundtable, everybody. My name is Robert Bannon. You're listening to us. Look, see how excited people are to be here.

[0:19] Stephen Michael Spencer: He has a very good haircut. You have a very good haircut.

[0:24] Robert Bannon: Thank you. I just got it done, literally 45 minutes ago.

[0:30] Robert Bannon: For this. I know it's a fresh fade for this very, this is the pivotal moment of both of your artistic careers.

[0:37] Stephen Michael Spencer: This is it. We made it. We found it. With you, Robert.

[0:41] Robert Bannon: It's The Roundtable with me, Robert Bannon. And you're listening to us on Broadway World over here on the Broadway Podcast Network, iHeart, Spotify, wherever artists talk about art. There's a new show. It's called Music City that you need to get a ticket to and go see. What's it about? Who's in it? Why? Why is it? Why do we need to go see it? Well, I found two people that look fresh-faced, haircut done, ready to go to tell us all about it.

[1:02] Lauren “LOLO” Pritchard: To inform you.

[1:03] Robert Bannon: Would you introduce yourselves properly and what you have to do with this incredible show?

[1:08] Stephen Michael Spencer: Yes, I'm Stephen Michael Spencer, and I play TJ in this production of Music City.

[1:16] Lauren “LOLO” Pritchard: And he's been here much longer than me. He's been with the project for a few years. My name is Lauren Lolo Pritchard, and I play 23 in Music City. And I just got here basically a month ago. It's been crazy.

[1:33] Robert Bannon: A month ago?

[1:34] Lauren “LOLO” Pritchard: Yes.

[1:35] Robert Bannon: So what, so being here for years and a part of Music City versus being here a month, how did the show come to you years ago? And why have you rode the wave of this show for all of these years? What about it has been special and enchanting that you stuck around?

[1:52] Stephen Michael Spencer: Yeah, I will say that I have from jump when this project was introduced to me by Bedlam Theatre Company back in the summer of 2023, I had never seen material or been just the vision of something described to me that felt so close to what I do as Stephen Michael Spencer. It is a musical, but I like to consider it a play with a shit ton of music in it. But it's all music that is actor musician driven. It is country music. It is music that I grew up on. It is stuff that I write or wish I did write. It is the stuff that I play in my living room for my cats. It is the actor, musician slash songwriter that I am all piled into a story about people that I know about or have watched go through something very similar, which is sort of reaching toward a dream that can feel out of reach, whether it be music or theater, whatever it is.

But this project landed in my lap and I was like, Oh my God, this is like, this is so close to who I am. And I feel so attached to it having just sort of read it and listened to the music and realized that I had a lot to offer to it. And that is why I've stuck with this project, all that, and they keep paying me and giving me the opportunity. That's a big part of it.

[3:26] Lauren “LOLO” Pritchard: He's very good at it. He's very, very good.

[3:28] Stephen Michael Spencer: But it's a musical about music making, about the people that write the songs. And so there's this, you know, this is what we're going to keep doing on diegetic music. This is something I've learned here in this process, but a musical that is about the making of the music. So for me, it feels so much rooted in reality and in the sort of nuances of what it is to create and do it inside of a bubble that can feel really provincial and hard to break into. And here we are right off of 8th Avenue, you know, surrounded by, you know, superstar, I mean, you're a superstar, but surrounded by these, you know, celebrities making Broadway plays. And like, we're doing this little musical with a massive heart underneath the church of St. Luke's theater.

And it feels very much so like I'm right where I'm supposed to be doing it. So that was my way in and why I stick around. And then also probably just because I think the material for players and songwriters like us, it feels like such a blessing to be able to do stuff like this in this city.

[4:39] Lauren “LOLO” Pritchard: I think there are lots of ways where people have wanted to create something similar to what we do here in Music City. But I think there's something unique that does set us apart, which is that, which is like the way that the precedent is set within the environment, which is like, not just that we as the actors and performers trying to make the show happen every night are all working towards the same goal. But I think within the storytelling aspect, which completely emulates real life, is that like, everybody has a dream of some kind. And there is no singular way of getting there. Every story, I mean, you think of like, every great biography you've read or watched or any, you know, think of your top five favorite stars or whatever.

Nobody has the same path of how like they can and they can very literally tell you point A to point B, you know, they tell you very literally how they got there. But it's very hard to explain the pixie dust that happens in between. And I think that there are shows like this that have happened in the past that, you know, I've seen that I think maybe had magic moments in their own way. But I think that this show does a really special job of capturing specifically the singer songwriter arc of not only like the struggle, but like what the pixie dust feels like in real time. Because it's very, that's very, that's like a very hard thing to translate into like an understood thing. And I think so I did Broadway shows when I was younger, and then I have spent the better part of my career touring, writing, making records for myself, making records for others, writing.

And the music industry is like, confounding to people who do not do it. And quite frankly, it's confounding to us who do it because it's like, complicated. There's a million ways in, there's a million ways out. And it's impossible to like, again, explain one path. And there's, it's not that we sort of like, we don't dumb it down in this show at all. We still keep all the complexities of what can go into being a part of the music industry and how things can go from zero to 100 overnight for you, or whatever, you know, all the different levels. But beyond that, I think it tells like a relatable story where people can come in and be like, they can sort of live in the version of life where they're just a consumer.

And they really don't know how the inner workings work. And they feel like they're being told a true story about how it actually works. And I think a lot of that started probably at like the beginning of the creation of the show because of the person who wrote all the music in the show who he himself is a very successful songwriter. And a lot of these songs were big country music hits. So there's just so much truth surrounding the story that we're telling. And I think that that's why it has so much heart and truth around it. And I think that's why it's a unique experience doing it every single time, because we are not talking about things we don't know. Yeah. And we're not talking about things that people haven't felt or don't currently live in and through.

And that feels really, really nice. Because, you know, it's fun to tell stories and play pretend anyways. And you know, whether you're playing a fairy princess or a real person. You know, it's like, it's fun to play pretend, but it's really fun to start to tell stories that feel authentic and real all at the same time. And that's unusual. There's we do that.

[9:00] Stephen Michael Spencer: Yeah, there's this sort of saying in country music that it's just four chords in the truth. Sometimes it's just two, it's just two chords in the truth. And, and this, there's something, there's something absolutely. Like, what's the word a breath, a breath of fresh, not a breath of being like, just like relaxing to me as a theatre maker to be a part of something that just deals with in the like, as we just try to be as in the truthful moments as we possibly can. It's been built that way. Eric Tucker, our director, who runs this theatre company Bedlam in town, which is one of the great reinventors of classical theatre, has allowed has built us a structure in which we are with the people around the people.

I ran into a lady the other night. Did you hear me say, Oh, my God, I'm so sorry. But like, we're quite literally in the room. Because they're the other the audiences are other cast members. Yeah. And this far away from somebody as we're sort of navigating these characters' lives. And so it heightens, I think the experience as an actor and an audience member simply because you are complicit. We're not going to make you get up and dance if you don't want to, we're not going to touch you. But we are going to ask you to invest in the story with us, because it's going to be happening in the room with you. And for me, like the experience of that, when I go to the theatre, I'm looking for that experiential depart, you know, departing, I leave, I want to leave 46th Street and walk into St. Luke's and be somewhere else.

And like this playground, our sanctuary has given a space for I think, actor, crew, and audience member to sort of like leave the day behind them and come in and go on the journey. And in like any good country song, there's going to be clichés, there's going to be things that you know, you see coming, but when they come, it does not ruin the catharsis of it, because you've said yes. And like, it may just be two to three chords, but it is also the truth. And like that, like that is why I think what we have is so special and why it works so well in an environment that we built in St. Luke's and why it doesn't need to play in a big room. It doesn't want that it wants the smell of the beer, it wants the sweat of the actor.

[11:29] Lauren “LOLO” Pritchard: I think the intimacy of this space, and the fact that, you know, the audience really is sort of our extra cast member in everything that we're doing. That brings this extra sense of authenticity and realness, because we are, we I mean, obviously, we're all living and breathing together at the same time when we're all in the space. But there's something about as the story is unfolding. And even if people can see it coming, like you're saying there are moments where people are like, I already knew that was happening. And then they hear some of the con like, you hear them reacting to things. And they're like, she just said what, you know, kind of thing. And I think that there's, there's a level of intimacy there, but obviously would be very different if we were in a much larger space, you know.

[12:22] Robert Bannon: I want people to know that they can go to musiccitythemusical.com and you can get your tickets right now if you're looking for something unique, something different. It's date night, it's friends night out, you can't get to Nashville, but you want to, you listen to country, you want to sangria moment yourself, like it's the songs in the show, then this is the show that you need to see. It's intimate, it's unique, it's almost immersive in the sense that they're going to be he's going to walk right on your foot and bump into you and not drink over it's very exciting.

[12:49] Lauren “LOLO” Pritchard: And we also we also we start our entire night with a pre-show open mic in which audience members very legitimately get up and sing songs.

[12:57] Stephen Michael Spencer: Like if you buy your tickets online, it'll give you an option after you purchase your tickets to say do you want to sign up for the open mic for the night that you're coming and you can accompany yourself because obviously we have musical instruments in the room or you can sort of get in touch beforehand and have somebody accompanying you if you so choose.

[13:13] Lauren “LOLO” Pritchard: But yeah, you can literally come and be involved and be a part of the music making actual music making on the stage.

[13:19] Stephen Michael Spencer: It's super, super cool.

[13:21] Lauren “LOLO” Pritchard: Yeah, it's very unique.

[13:23] Stephen Michael Spencer: What?

[13:25] Lauren “LOLO” Pritchard: Julian Merrill, my Julian Merrill is my Jersey friend.

[13:29] Stephen Michael Spencer: Just get her to play your little she will I mean, she's amazing.

[13:34] Lauren “LOLO” Pritchard: And we've had is amazing.

[13:35] Stephen Michael Spencer: And we've had, you know, I think on our last run, it was the night after the Country Music Awards, the band that won Country Album of the Year was on our stage playing an open mic the next night.

[13:47] Lauren “LOLO” Pritchard: And so you never I mean, we we've had that we've had people walking off the street and sing, you know, karaoke songs. And like, there's a there's a there's a we have somebody come and sing an original song two weeks ago about a person who died in their apartment building and then it went on to stink for days and days because there wasn't a welfare check done.

[14:07] Stephen Michael Spencer: You never know you never know what you're gonna get.

[14:10] Lauren “LOLO” Pritchard: And it was like, it was like a rip roaring tune that he played on the piano. It was you know, you just don't know.

[14:17] Stephen Michael Spencer: You just don't know.

[14:18] Lauren “LOLO” Pritchard: But you can come and experience it all with us. It's great.

[14:21] Robert Bannon: I love I love that you're both Broadway stars who have done Broadway, who have done theater, who have done a lot of work and have the singer songwriter sensibility. Lauren, I want to I wanted to call you Lolo. Do people call you Lolo?

[14:34] Lauren “LOLO” Pritchard: Yeah, people call me Lauren and Lolo. They have my whole life.

[14:37] Robert Bannon: Because I don't know because Lauren Lolo, is it Lolo as the nickname? Or is it your middle name? Do you want to be I don't know you well enough to call you Lolo. But I was going for it.

[14:45] Lauren “LOLO” Pritchard: You can call me Lolo if you want.

[14:47] Robert Bannon: You can do it every day.

[14:49] Robert Bannon: My old friend Lolo, you have your career, your discography, your Grammy nominations and what you have done and in your career. What drives you back to theater? What makes you say yes to spending a chunk of time?

[15:01] Lauren “LOLO” Pritchard: It's so funny. I've been thinking so much about it because I haven't done a show like I've done. I've done workshops and things, which is essentially how I wound up here. I did a workshop of this production a decade ago. I went and made a record and I went this way and went on tour and whatever. The show was sort of doing its own thing, went that way. Literally a month ago, I got a phone call late on a Saturday night that was like, would you consider dropping everything and coming to New York and working on this show?

[15:41] Lauren “LOLO” Pritchard: The book writer and the songwriter obviously were still involved and then a couple of the cast members were still a part of it from when I did it 10 years ago. One in particular who I've stayed in contact with and close with over the last 10 years. I had peripheral knowledge of what was going on and I'm crazy and I said yes and I packed everything in a day. Me and my son got on a fucking plane. I learned everything in 48 hours and then started doing the show on Juneteenth and I

[16:15] Robert Bannon: What she did was a Herculean effort and it will go down as one of the most insane weeks in the history of the American theater. She quite literally learned the show in less than two days and I met her on a Wednesday afternoon at about 11am and on Friday at 6.30pm she was going on stage to do this entire massive lift.

[16:41] Lauren “LOLO” Pritchard: Wow.

[16:42] Robert Bannon: Okay.

[16:44] Lauren “LOLO” Pritchard: It was pretty wild. But to answer the question of like why did I say yes and why and also sort of what am I doing here. You know when I got cast in Spring Awakening I auditioned for Spring Awakening in LA. I wanted to be a songwriter and I sort of accidentally wound up in this massive Broadway musical that changed my life.

[17:09] Stephen Michael Spencer: A small bit.

[17:10] Lauren “LOLO” Pritchard: Just a small bit. I mean obviously it continues to change my life all the time. It's like it's been the most tremendous thing to be a part of 20 years now. But it was such an all-consuming experience and I was literally a child. And I felt that like I wanted to go do the things that I thought I needed to do. The things I thought that I wanted to do and I definitely wanted to do them then it wasn't that. I think that I needed a departure from the world of theater at the time. And then it was like the more that time went on and the more that stuff just kept building in my music life the biggest challenge was like when you do eight shows a week you can't really fucking do much else.

[18:02] Lauren “LOLO” Pritchard: In life. It's sort of it's sort of a lot and it's just sort of a lot you know it's sort of a lot. And I remember I remember you know when I was sort of in in the limbo of sort of like making my first record for Universal and I had left Spring Awakening and I was still auditioning for things and I was getting cast in things I wouldn't take the job because it was like I don't want to put I don't want to put if I if I agree to six more months of this is six more months I can't tour it's six more months I can't travel it's four months I can't you know so it was like through all of those years I just sort of like kept putting it off. But as I've said to all of them like it's been it's been a very emotional experience to come back to this because I cannot believe how much I've missed it.

[18:50] Lauren “LOLO” Pritchard: And at the end of the day at the end of the day I'm still me in here my my little eight year old self looked at my mother dead ass serious when I was truly eight years old and I said I I'm gonna grow up and I'm gonna move to New York and I'm gonna start on Broadway show. So my mom looked at me like I had five heads like I don't know how we're gonna do that but okay you seem like you were pretty determined. So and deep down inside you know that little eight year old Lauren is still in there who wants to do that and I don't think she ever really went away I think that there was just a lot of other things that I was really interested in doing. I've had the craziest life and career and all of the things that I used to dream about as a little girl have come true.

So now I've had to get other dreams and new things I wanted to do and of which there are so many but I think more than anything I feel a level of joy and gratitude to be able to still do it at all. It feels like a tremendous gift to be able to walk into such a gracious and like insanely talented company of people who had the audacity to believe I could learn the show in 48 hours and be part of this company and tell this story with all of them. It has I think it will probably take me a long time to really be able to understand the many levels of gratitude and true sincere love and joy that I feel for all of these people and for this experience because it has shown me a lot about what I have been missing I that I sort of wasn't even aware of until I walked in the room and I started doing it again and I was like oh this is it right okay this is it great okay good good to know it's good to be in the know now.

[20:54] Robert Bannon: I love welcome back welcome back and see of course you could do it in 48 hours and Steven you like you have your own music and it's also you're very like you're a very classically trained Shakespearean actor like when you look at the work you've done you've done all the scary parts like the parts that people who say they're an actor don't want to do because they're not really an actor. So what does it mean for you to return to a musical to let and you're not a Shakespearean character you get to play expand your wings and play something else.

[21:29] Stephen Michael Spencer: I miss Shakespeare. I miss the meter so much. You know, I think it goes back to the thing I said earlier about just meeting a project that felt, you know, I think playmaking in general is my calling in life. Storytelling is the thing I love the most, and part of that is is bridging a gap between myself and the character on the page, and often in Shakespeare or classical work in general there's a lot more work to do to build that bridge and figure out how to bring myself to a Hamlet or bring myself to any number of characters that feel other worldly to me, and that's one of the things I love about storytelling. And in this one it feels so close to Steven that like that work of the bridge building didn't necessarily take up a lot of my creative space, and so I could sort of trust that all of that stuff I do in classical text analysis and exploration of a play as a whole, it all is the same, it's all the same stuff, and it's really just trying to understand how you, the human, can like make that human feel alive and truthful.

And I think under the right direction, and because again, you know, Eric Tucker, our director, he's one of my favorite classic actors and directors on the planet, and he is amazing, and so I think, you know, there's not really a difference other than there's more, you know, ellipses and ums and ands written into contemporary text, but I think the work is the same. And for me to be able to play a play, a character like TJ that feels that I am on such a similar journey as is is, it's enough to keep me coming back and seeking that truth and like finding the different ways to play it every night because we're all humans and we're all dealing with an immense amount of life outside of here, and that's the joy of playing a play every day and and I'll always go back to Shakespeare.

I will it'll it'll be, you know, there. He's not going, he ain't going nowhere, he's been dead a long time. But you know, I think it as a creative, I am able to be here and funnel almost all of my energy, all of the things that I feel like I've been gifted with, that I have trained and focused on and spent many years trying to cultivate. I'm able to, I'm able to play with them all here and like, ah, you know, often the Shakespeare plays I do, I am, I am often the musical one, and Shakespeare plays I have a guitar, I play a clown, I sing the songs, you know. But here I don't have to pretend, it's not like a, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, I think what's interesting about specifically TJ's character is that I think that, you know, I mean, obviously he's meant to be, he's, he's, he's really honestly all of these characters is that I think nobody is one-dimensional, right, and I mean we as people are not one-dimensional, right, obviously our one, none of our lives are one-dimensional, but I think that, you know, sometimes there can be stories that you're telling that that don't, that can feel more more one-dimensional than others.

I think with these characters, and especially with TJ's character, I think that his, his, I think there's like a level of soul-searching and finding that, like, he's he's constantly looking for the answer somewhere, not even because he doesn't have it within himself. I think, like, he knows that he has lots, a lot of the answers to sort of how to transform his life, but I think he as a character doesn't want to do it alone, he doesn't want to be alone, and that comes from, you know, things that you discover about his character from his childhood. And I think that, you know, when you're, when you're playing a character like that, that sort of has to, that you're, you're having to, as you're building these characters and you're turning them into real people, and you're having to sort of do the study and do the work and figure out what that what that storyline can look like in your own brain so that you can let that story unfold in front of an audience each night.

I mean, I think just because we're, you know, I don't, I think I think that it takes the same amount of focus and study that you would have to have in in if you were doing very serious, you know, Shakespeare. So I think I still have the joy of, like, as a character of TJ, observing most of the play, like I am either observing it happen, and so there's a joy of he's always in the room where it happens, true always.

[27:11] Robert Bannon: Hey, but being able to sort of take the temperature every day and and like observe and listen, how's the way, so sweaty. Yes, I'm very sweaty. Well, if you want to see him with his good haircut and his sweat, and you want to see Lolo with that voice and what the characters, all the voices, all the music, all this incredible story, if you are a fan of music, period, you don't have to love country, you don't have to know Nashville, you don't have to understand any of this world, just fall in love with the characters, the storyline, and the music. Go to musiccitythemusical.com and get your tickets. It's at the legend right down, it's a legendary—there, it's legendary space that is a part of New York, it's a New York landmark, is a landmark.

Go see, and you will not recognize it if you've been at St. Luke's Theatre for any place prior to Tony and Tina's wedding, whatever it is, you're not going to recognize our I mean especially if the last time you were here was Tony and Tina's Wedding, you're in for a surprise. There's no spaghetti and meatballs, you're not getting garlic bread and a salad at this show, but you're gonna get that. Although I do think that we have a few patrons who would like some garlic bread, pretzels and beer, and a salad. Pretzels and beer for sure. Yeah, thank you so much for taking time on a show day to make this happen and chat with me, and we are excited for this, and the journey of this show continues, and thank you for this incredible career and all the art and music and and so the best is yet to come. We look forward to having you come back anytime. Thank you for having you a lot.