Nine years ago, Jamestown Revival co-founders Zachary Chance and Jonathan Clay were enlisted to write the music and lyrics for The Outsiders, a musical adaptation inspired by the classic 1967 novel by S.E. Hinton. The story takes place that same year in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and focuses on class friction and teen gang warfare after an accidental death during a bullying assault.
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Justin Levine—who previously did music production, arrangements, and/or orchestrations on Here Lies Love, Moulin Rouge! The Musical, and Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson—was originally brought in as musical supervisor for the show. But he and the Jamestown Revival duo quickly clicked and decided to fully collaborate on the score that spans everything from country to choral work to ‘50s-style rock. It’s not your standard Broadway musical score.
Fast-forward to 2024: After opening in August 2023 to big box office and great acclaim, the show wins four Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Sound Design of a Musical. Chance, Clay, and Levine are nominated for Best Original Score Written for the Theatre. For all three men, this was their first time writing a Broadway show.
American Songwriter asked them what they learned during this creative process.
Learn to Serve the Song
“I think the hardest part was learning how a song serves a musical, versus how a song serves an album, and moving the story forward,” Chance explains. “The challenge was you don’t just write verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus out—we have to finish in a different spot than where we started. That took some time. Thankfully, we got to work with Justin who really helped. We were studying musicals and then working with Justin, who just comes from that world—he’s a dramaturg, he’s a songwriter, he’s a director. He’s probably going to write his own show one day.”
The Opening Number Is Often Written Last
Levine highlights this fact by noting that “Tradition,” the classic opening number for Fiddler on the Roof, was written last. “A lot of times that’s because you need to really create the piece first in order to then understand how you want to position the audience to experience it,” Levine explains.
The second act opener for The Outsiders, “Justice for Tulsa,” also “had its own challenges,” Levine continues, “because we really wanted to find a way to hook people back in after the end of Act One, knowing that they just had a 20-minute intermission, and also cover a lot of ground storytelling-wise, without feeling like we’re under serving any of it.”
Don’t Be Precious About Your Songs
When Jamestown Revival write songs, they rarely go back and edit them, although they might adjust or change some lyrics in the studio. But working over a nine-year span on The Outsiders, they scrapped some songs and reworked others.
“We wrote songs that had to be reworked because the scene changed and what we were saying,” Chance notes. “Each time you do that, you find something new because you’re cracking it back open. The opening number ‘Tulsa ‘67’ was very much that way. We realized we needed to set up the world differently. So we had the format in place, but going back and really fine-tuning it and adding these new parts. They all had their own set of challenges.”
He adds that at one point, Clay returned to Texas for family obligations, when a new melodic idea for “Far Away from Tulsa” popped into his head. Recalls Chance, “He started singing these lyrics to us over the phone. So we’re on a conference call, writing this new section of music. It’s really fun to be able to just keep building these songs out.”
Write to Each Character’s Voice
“Each character has a unique voice, and they have a unique perspective,” Clay says. “They’re singing for a different reason. Ponyboy’s songs were very idealistic and he was a dreamer. They’re very lofty. They feel big and bold in their risk-taking. Whereas [with his older brother] Darrel, his shoulders are very heavy, and he’s got a lot on his plate. So he sings with a lot more angst, and his songs are written with a lot more angst. It’s not only how do you make each song specific to that character, but how do you make a character’s track consistent? Every time they sing, how do you make it sound like them? How do you develop that track for them?”
Let the Performers Sing the Songs in Their Own Way
Although the show takes place in the late ‘60s and also features ‘50s-style rock, a performer like Emma Pittman (who plays Cherry) has a modern pop style to her singing.
“In terms of her voice and her vocal quality, it was really important to us that the actors singing those songs—our original cast and future casts—feel they inhabit the songs and that the songs are in them,” Clay says. “I would rather the actor take that song, and even if they change it just a little bit, make it sincere to them, whatever their voice is. If Emma Pittman would have happened to have a very ‘60s-sounding voice, then the song would have sounded more ‘60s. But she doesn’t. And we told her, ‘Don’t try to sing it in any certain way. Try to sing it how you would sing it if you wrote it.’ I think allowing the actors that liberty ultimately makes for a more compelling performance because they’re comfortable singing them.”
“A key ingredient is the authenticity of that performance,” Levine concurs. “For different folks, there’s going to be a different style that maybe sits more in their wheelhouse. I think it’s a combo of the two. I believe that when someone is singing with authenticity to themselves and to their instrument, you believe them. I tend to prioritize in the approach really working to the strengths of the performers themselves, in addition to giving them guidance on the style itself.”
Great Sound Design Can Flesh Things Out More
Levine notes that while Cody Spencer’s immersive sound design utilizing an L-Acoustics L-ISA surround system did not affect the songwriting, it helped with orchestrations.
“Our show has many peaks and valleys in terms of the dynamics,” Levine says. “Americana is often about its minimalism as much as it is about anything else. While for theatricality there are moments of maximalism, certainly in the sound design, we also needed to be able to hear everything. There’s actually something about Cody’s approach that makes you feel the music without necessarily turning it up, as far as the placement of the subwoofers and the way the band is EQ-ed in various moments. I think what was really important to us was that you could tell that this was a band playing live. Part of that is also about giving the band the opportunity to play with each other and feel each other.”
The Power of Collaboration is Key
“It really does take a village, and refinement,” Clay remarks. “I realized how effective being willing to really genuinely crack a song back open can be, and to do it sincerely.”
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