My time in Providence only lasted two calendar years. It felt like a lifetime.
Sidebar # 1: Rent. I shared a huge three bedroom apartment with two guys and we paid $450 a month. NOT EACH. $150 a month. It is the last time in my life that I wasn’t worried about where next month’s rent was coming from. I made my rent in a week at the children’s theater. This is how life should be for everybody.
The children’s theater was an incredible experience. Most days we did two shows, either morning and afternoon at the same school, or morning and afternoon at different schools. That’s approximately 720 shows in two years. A crucible of growth for an actor…those kids will let you know if they aren’t entertained.
In and around this, I was rehearsing with The Mahoneys, doing staged readings at Brown, RIC, URI and Alias Stage, auditioning for anything and everything, and writing songs at a furious rate.
Then in the winter of ‘93, I was asked to be in “True West”. The director had heard my songs and wanted to use them in the pre-show to set the mood. She wanted to feature “Lean Hard Ghost”, “Passed Lamenting’s Past”, and “Dilemma”.
But rough live band recordings wouldn’t really fit the atmosphere so I reached out to an old college friend. Her husband was a guitar virtuoso and had a home studio. I went over there one free Saturday and we laid these three songs down.
He used a drum machine, played bass and lead guitar, and I played rhythm and sang. My old friend did backing vocals on “Passed Lamenting’s Passed”.
Sidebar # 2: The Mahoneys refused to say the title “Passed Lamenting’s Past” when deciding what song to play next. They referred to it as “P.L.P.”, which is why it is labeled as such on “The Mahoneys: Live From The 20th Century”. That always made me laugh, them denouncing my pretention. God, we had a lot of fun in that basement.
A week passed. “True West” was about to open. We loaded the three finished tracks (the ones you will hopefully click on and listen to later) into the sound deck, teched the show, and that’s how my three songs played before an American theater classic.
It was odd to be backstage preparing to be someone else and hear my own voice floating out over the theater. I had to shape my pre-show prep to include that odd intrusion. Again I fantasized about an actual release of music, pressing vinyl in a rush to coincide with the opening of the play.
In an imaginary world where I had representation and management, this would have been a publicist’s dream! Actor writes songs inspired by Sam Shepard’s masterwork! Buy your copy in the lobby!
But alas, this aspect of my career was to remain secret, even with the songs blaring out over an unsuspecting crowd.
The security and ease of my monthly bottom line had started to feel like a trap. A life almost entirely made up of rehearsal, performance and songwriting, but my ambition was curdling all of that sweet cream.
Like Lee in “True West”, I longed for something bigger. Longed for achievement and recognition. Longed to jump into the slipstream of money that trailed behind mainstream American success.
I wanted to hit the big time.
Here are “Lean Hard Ghost”, “Passed Lamenting’s Past”, and “Dilemma”. Imagine you are in a darkened theater in the winter of ‘93/‘94 waiting to see “True West”!
Sidebar # 3: Whenever I do a play, I invariably wind up writing a song or two inspired by the experience. In this case, it immediately turned into The Mahoneys one epic song, “Angst, Or The Ballad Of Cricket Hicks”. It tells the tale of a drifter who comes back from the desert an avenging angel, looking for all those who done him wrong.
Within a couple months of “True West” closing, I had moved out of my Providence apartment, given my notice at Looking Glass, done my final children’s show of the school year, and moved back in with my parents for the summer.
I needed that $150 a month to get ready to move to New York City. The Big Apple might have been due but I was headed true west.
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