When the Music Transcends

 As I've mentioned, and will likely mention many times, Forrest, Kenny, and Darrelle have been making music together for over 30 years. That means they have over 30 years worth of chords, beats, and entire songs hiding in files for the right time to pull them out. Right before Covid hit, they decided to pull some of those songs out of the crates for use in a musical theater project called Storyville: A Bluebook Chronicle. There will be many more posts related to how we collaborated on the development of Storyville from a collection of songs, to a script, to a connected piece of theater, but for now, I'm just excited about having gotten to spend a few hours with Forrest and Darrelle while they made magic aligning the script to the tempo and cadence of the original lyrics. 

When Forrest sent me his lyric sheets to accompany the plot outline Darrelle and he had developed, he didn’t expect those words to become a large part of the dialogue. Neither foresaw the story being woven in, out, and around the songs like a tapestry. The weaving, though, required lyrical changes to maintain the context of the narrative. Thus, my words melded to the original, and needed to be infused into the music. As a writer, there is something truly special about seeing your words come off the page and become something more than just words. Likewise, there was something magical about watching the process of making this collection of wonderful yet disconnected songs coalesce into a thematic journey that tells a cohesive story.  Here’s a small glimpse into that process.