That last song proved to be almost a meditation on our lives during the first year of the COVID crisis. Sondheim’s words perfectly summed up the uncertainty of the time. It was during the pandemic that Errico had the inspiration to do a different album of Sondheim’s songs. One that celebrated the city that she and the composer both lived in: New York City. That album, Sondheim in the City, gets released on Friday and starting today Errico begins a a five-night stand at Birdland Jazz Club in New York in a show entitled A Manhattan Valentine.

Last week I spoke with Errico about her passion for Sondheim’s work, her various collaborations with him over the years and what she learned most from her time with him. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview (which is chockfull of wonderful stories and observations about Sondheim and herself), please go here.

When did the desire to do a second collection of his material start bubbling up within you? 

I think I always knew that I was going to spend much of my life turning to him. I don’t know that I was wanting to record [another album] until the pandemic happened and I turned to him yet again in another crisis. Sondheim Sublime is a very inward record. It’s a lyrical record. I was going through a hard time in my own life. I just keep turning to Sondheim. I think that he is probably the greatest source for me of wisdom and courage. Sondheim worked with me on the creation of that. He had ideas for it. He knew what I was working through. He knew what I was feeling about his work. He was a little embarrassed by the word sublime, because I think he felt it was so spiritual and maybe corny. I think he said it was camp. 

Now the pandemic happened. We lived through that. Maybe we’re coming out of this terrifying time. I was thinking about New York City. I was thinking about how everybody was leaving New York during the pandemic. I was thinking I want to recommit to New York City; it gave me everything. When Sondheim died, the ideas of New York were so rich in my head. When he passed I worried for New York. I thought about his New York. He made New York for me. And for so many of us, he defines it. And he’s a great poet himself of New York. I felt like everything is there again in Sondheim for another chapter of my life. 

There are going to be people who are going to be surprised by some of the material on this album, because I don’t think many people have heard Dawn or Nice Town, But. For those who don’t know, Nice Town, But came from one of his earliest works in the 1950s called Climb High that never got finished. Oddly, he didn’t write about that song in his Collected Lyrics books. What was your process of discovering other songs that maybe the world doesn’t know that would fit the story and the narrative you have in this album? 

Nice Town, But, you’re going to have to wait for the vinyl. That’s not going to come out on the 16th. We’re going to have 14 songs. That is a coda of juvenilia of his youth. That is not going to come out just yet, but I’m thrilled that I’m going to be singing it live at Birdland. It’s a brilliant piece of his youth and it is meant to just be a humorous and energetic finale to all the thoughts that I put into the more classic songs.

But I open with an unusual song which is on the first release, Dawn, which was [for] an unproduced film [Singing Out Loud]. It’s a wonderful song that nobody knows and I’m super excited for people to hear it. I hope that it acts [on the album] as a new beginning of a New York waking up. What is New York at dawn? It’s quiet, but it still hums with life and promise. 

I hope that that means there’s a whole lot of material that we still haven’t heard that we will get to hear, either from you or from other people throughout the years ahead.

There’s more things. I put some cut music on here as well. Music cut from musicals. Jazz fans always love the alternate take. Like Chet Baker did this or Charlie Parker did this one that they didn’t put on the record. I have the same obsession with cut songs and there’s some beautiful cut music from Follies that I included here: Can That Boy Foxtrot? We’ve heard it, but it’s not the most common song. And It Wasn’t Meant to Happen, which I think is a masterpiece.

I think in his Collected Lyrics Sondheim said that was his attempt to do a Cole Porter true pathos song.

I believe he rewrote it in his head when he wrote Send in the Clowns. I believe that it has the same meter, a meditative regret. And it’s about denial. Send in the clowns. I’ll be fine. It wasn’t meant to happen. I’m good. But she’s there. And in the song, just as with Send in the Clowns, don’t bother. They’re here. You can really hear the other person is in the room.

What was the process for you in approaching songs that the world has heard multiple times?

Songs like Being Alive, that’s a young person’s song. I have spent my whole life as an ingenue, singing from a young person’s perspective. And in a way I’ve been gradually beating the ingenue out of myself. So I guess I was thinking about what that song is saying. Maybe when I was younger I was thinking, somebody hold me, I want happiness. I would probably have thought, I want that connection. But I think now I realize she’s not asking for happiness. She’s asking for a kind of pain. Someone to force her to feel alive through the kind of armor of sophistication and familiarity that we put on.

There are a lot of people who have a stereotype of New Yorkers being neurotic. Sondheim himself is quoted as saying, “I prefer neurotic people. I like to hear the rumblings beneath the surface.” You’ve created a New York centric album. Do you think there’s a part of Sondheim in the City that celebrates these neurotic people that Sondheim was talking about?

Oh, yes. I think there’s a kind of jaunty, upbeat quality to my record, because I don’t think it’s a sour and cynical world. Actually, I think if you look closely at Sondheim, there’s a kind of ecstatic pleasure in New York; the rhythm of things. I think Another Hundred People is an ecstatic song. Even Everybody Says Don’t. Sure, all these people are blocking you, but step over them. He’s more than satiric and malicious. I say, ecstatic. I think he was excited by the possibilities.

Once you stop trying to make life makes sense in the literal or linear simple way. Because once you’re allowed to be nuts a lot of problems vanish, a lot of humor and love and complication and emotion and style and laughing and nightlife, so much becomes possible. I guess that’s a middle-aged person speaking justifying ourselves.

Do you think there are reasons, other than the fact that Stephen Sondheim has passed, that his work is being embraced so vociferously and voraciously as it is now?

Because it never gets boring. It’s relentlessly interesting. There’s no bottom. It’s so smart and there’s so much love in it as well. And it’s never dated. There’s so many layers. Maybe we need him more now than we used to. Maybe we understand that his talents and his gifts had some difficulties. At a time that wanted something more cheery or simple or commercial – the British wave and everything that annoyed him – he was looking in the mind. Not everybody wants to do that. And I think now we’re really not afraid.

In the liner notes you talk about going to Sondheim’s house when it was on the market after his death. Was that the first time you’d been there?

Yes. Actually, I feel like I’ve been there because I saw that wonderful interview with [composer] Adam Guettel. When I walked in the room, I was so overwhelmed. Oh, my God, there’s the chair. I was so nervous. I didn’t take pictures. I just stood there like, wow.

What has your process of performing Sondheim taught you about who you are as a person and who you are as an artist?

I felt encouraged by him to be a female kind of intellectual person. He encouraged me over a long period of time. I can’t pretend we were intimately close friends. More like a very dedicated, almost a daughter figure. I’ve honored him. My thinking about him so much and applying his stuff for my own personal survival. I find him funny and sexy. And I love going to the shows, even if I’m not in them.

The emails between us were empowering, funny, educational, challenging. He says he hates self-deprecation. That was my most unpleasant quality, he said. So I don’t do it anymore. I don’t think I’ve been self-deprecating today. I try not to. I used to be throwing myself under the bus here and there and he didn’t like that. He said it’s the least attractive quality in all people. He liked to lift you up. He said, Melissa, you’re a lot of things. You’re an actress and a big band singer or a girl singer, like in that old tradition. Keep exploring that. 

We’re trying to learn about ourselves through a master’s music and be respectful and explore it and honor him at the same time as learn. This is me finding myself mid-life. Just don’t press too much. Just be. 

To watch the full interview with Melissa Errico, please go here.

The post Melissa Errico Has a Valentine For New York City appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

There are multiple musicals that inspired such deep passion within audiences that you would have expected them to be smash successes. Side Show, about conjoined sisters Daisy and Violet Hilton, is one of those shows. The original 1997 production, which earned great reviews and received 4 Tony nominations including Best Musical, closed after 91 performances. The 2014 revival, directed by Bill Condon (the film Dreamgirls), earned 5 Tony nominations including Best Musical and closed after 56 performances. For book writer and lyricist Bill Russell those results didn’t match the passion of the audiences who saw each production.

On Monday, September 25th, Russell will present My Side of the Show at Birdland Jazz Club in New York. He’ll be joined by cast members from the show for an evening of stories and songs.

I got my own stories earlier this week when I spoke with Russell about this musical he wrote with Henry Krieger (Dreamgirls) that still holds a very important place in his heart. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To get even more stories about Side Show, please watch the full interview on our YouTube channel.

Q: How has your relationship to Side Show evolved since you first started working on it to where we are today? How will that influence how you present your memories from this chapter of your career?

It’s certainly been an education in a lot of ways – especially in how musicals get to Broadway. It has been on Broadway twice and it’s been a flop both times now. That’s a very loaded term, but I’m using the definition by Variety, which was considered the showbiz bible for a long time – I’m not sure if it still is. But they define a flop as any production which does not recoup its initial investment. And there are a lot of long-running shows that classify that way.

Jekyll and Hyde ran for four years on Broadway. Never recouped. Thoroughly Modern Millie won the Tony Award for Best Musical and it never recouped. I don’t think Sunset Boulevard did either. But, we live in a capitalist culture and it’s easier to measure success in terms of dollars and cents. But I don’t feel Side Show is a flop because it’s meant so much to so many people.

I looked at Vincent Canby‘s New York Times review of Side Show when it first opened on Broadway and he compared your work as a lyricist to the work of Betty Comden and Adolph Green who had had a production of On the Town going on in Central Park the summer prior to your opening. Since Side show was your first Broadway musical, not your first musical, but your first Broadway musical, what did that comparison mean to you?

Oh, God, it meant the world to me. To be mentioned in their company? I mean, they are just legendary and I loved their work. I met Betty Comden once and I mentioned that I can’t believe somebody would compare me with you. So that was a wonderful, wonderful moment for me. 

Vincent Canby’s review of the show was very, very positive, but most of it was a discourse about conjoined twins and it didn’t really help sell tickets. At that point I was wholly obsessed with that because we weren’t selling as well as the audience reaction seemed to have warranted. Every performance was getting instant standing ovations and people just were loving it. So I had very mixed emotions.

The musical opens with Come Look at the Freaks. It seems like as a society we have evolved into a people where that’s all we do. We just look at the freaks on Instagram, we look at them on Tik-tok, we look at them in every possible aspect of social media. When you wrote the lyrics for that song did you ever think that we, as a society, would embrace being and looking at the freaks as much as we have today?

No, not really. When I was first interviewed about the show in the mid-nineties they would ask, “What attracted you to this subject matter? Because sideshows don’t even exist anymore.” And I said, Are you kidding? They’ve moved to afternoon television because Jerry Springer was featuring conjoined twins regularly and much shorter people than them. I do think there’s just this fascination that is innate. It’s both fascination and repulsion about people who are radically different. But I do believe that we’ve become much more accepting. And now, as you say, we see freaks everywhere. I’m proud to own that world, by the way, because I definitely consider myself one. Certainly I did growing up. It’s a good point that they’re everywhere now.

There was a much more successful show that had the song Let Your Freak Flag Fly – Shrek the Musical. How has being a freak become more accepted if it’s going to be part of a popular musical like Shrek? 

In a way it has, but it still creates a barrier in terms of selling tickets. When the revival came about we thought that change you’re talking about and now is really the time for this. But women buy the most Broadway tickets. Though Side Show is very female-focused, I think when women hear it’s about conjoined twins they think it’s going to be sad and make them uncomfortable and they do not buy tickets. Once they see the show they love it. But getting them in just is a problem. It’s a continual marketing challenge.

You had to have known that when you started it.

When I was first pitched this idea I just was immediately interested. I thought the theatrical possibilities of two actors singing and moving together were great and the metaphorical ramifications were huge. Once I started diving into their story, I was just so fascinated. There was a point when [producer] Manny [Emmanuel] Azenberg, when we were doing readings of the show, came to me and said, “You realize, Bill, that this subject matter has a real ick factor connected with it.” And I was like, Really? I knew this wasn’t exactly standard Broadway fare, but I thought it was just intriguing and it never occurred to me it would be such a hard sell.

You have worked with composers Ronald Melrose, Janet Hood, Albert Evans, Peter Melnick. What sets your collaborations with Henry Krieger apart from all those other collaborators with whom you’ve worked? 

Henry, you know, he’s such a mensch. He’s just a great guy. He, like Irving Berlin and many other well-known composers, does not read music. So that was different. Our first meeting he asked me, “How do you prefer to write – music or lyrics first?” I was like, I go both ways as a lyricist, but oddly enough most of the composers I’ve worked with prefer the lyrics first. That’s far from typical with Henry.

In the morning I’ll work on a lyric, sometimes the whole lyric, but more likely an intro in a verse or a verse and a chorus. I take it down to him. He lives downtown, I live uptown. We will have discussed where it comes in the show, maybe a musical feel, but not always. He doesn’t read it first. He puts it on the piano, sits down, puts his hands on the keyboard, grabs it and looks up, and after a brief pause, starts singing and playing at the same time. I would say that 50% of the time what comes out of his fingers that moment defines what that song will ultimately be. 

As with any musical there are a lot of songs that never see the light of day or maybe are in early versions of the musical and then get taken out. Some of those from this musical were Why Haven’t You Learned Yet?, Side Show, The Choice I Made and more. How painful is it for you as a creator to have to say goodbye to something you put your heart and soul into?

When I started writing songs for musicals and we had to cut something, it was like, Oh, I can’t do that. But anymore it’s nothing to write another song. We frequently would write maybe five songs for the same moment in the show, just always refining it. Then we would cut stuff because the plot changed. It hasn’t been that hard. I will say when it came to the revival and working with Bill Condon, there were a couple songs that were really hard for me to lose, but I totally understood why.

Is there a whole alternate world of Side Show that exists in songs we’ve never heard? 

My husband Bruce put together a CD of songs we wrote and it’s 90 minutes long, and that by no means includes everything. When we first met with Bill Condon he asked for everything we’d written for the original production and he was mentioning songs we didn’t even remember writing. Honestly we’ve written so much stuff. It’s quite a bit of music and some really good stuff. 

You said writing songs is easy. You know how many people wish they could say that and mean it.

It’s easy for Henry and me, I have to say. Honestly, I could write lyrics every day. I have a much harder problem with books. I think they’re much harder, at least for me. But I love writing lyrics and you can finish them in a finite bit of time; unlike books, which never are finished. 

I saw an interview that you did with Henry, I think it was from Broadway.com. You mentioned that only one song remain untouched for the 2014 revival. What was that song and why? 

It was the the twins’ first song called Like Everyone Else and it wasn’t intentional that we didn’t didn’t touch it. Some of the changes in the other songs were just minor lyric tweaks or whatever. But it just so happened that song, nothing changed.

There’s one song, as you know, that has turned into an anthem for freaks, for performers, singers, and it’s Who Will Love Me As I Am. It’s a song that that has outlived the show on a certain level. Why do you think that song resonates so much with people and did you have any sense in writing it that this would be become the anthem it has?

That lyric came from a really personal place for me. I grew up in the Black Hills of South Dakota. My grandparents were cattle ranchers over the border in Wyoming. Everybody called my father cowboy because he was one. He broke calves in rodeos. In that hyper-macho environment of cattle and cowboys, hunting and sports and cars, I felt like the biggest freak in the world. So when I started working on this show, I just felt right at home. I understood it.

Some people regard the show as a gay metaphor and I’m fine with that because that was really my entry into the world. But I do feel that limits a bigger metaphor than that. If I’ve learned anything doing this, it’s that I think everyone feels like a freak on some level or at some time in their life; certainly adolescence. So that lyric came from such a personal place, and it was one of the first five songs we wrote for the show. Whenever we would play it, people were so moved by it and so I wasn’t surprised.

Did your father live long enough to hear that song and to see the show?

Unfortunately, no. He died just when we started writing it. 

Do you think there’s going to come a time where Side Show will be loved as it is? 

Oh, I think it is that time. They arrived back with the original. It’s just the people’s perception of what it might be like if they haven’t seen it. That’s the issue. Not from people who see it. At least once or twice a month somebody comes up to me, finally having found out that I wrote the book and lyrics and they just go off about how much the show means to them. How much hearing the album when they were in college; how they just couldn’t stop playing it. I can’t think of anything more gratifying for a writer. It’s more gratifying to me than making millions of dollars from a huge commercial hit.

To see the full interview with Bill Russell about Side Show, please go here.

Main Photo: Bill Russell and Henry Krieger at the opening night of the revival of Side Show (Photo courtesy Birdland Jazz Club)

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Perhaps you didn’t know Julie Benko’s name before this year started. You certainly do now. She was Beanie Feldstein’s understudy in the Broadway revival of Funny Girl who took over the role when Feldstein left the show early. She also did numerous performances as her understudy. Benko will continue as Lea Michele’s understudy once she assumes the role and will also play the part at Thursday night performances.

This is a big week for Benko and Yeager as their album, Hand in Hand, gets released by Club 44 Records on Friday. The album was born out of online Quarantunes the couple did during the pandemic.

Then on Monday they will perform at Birdland Jazz Club in New York. That concert will be live-streamed at 7:00 PM ET/4:00 PM PT so you’ll be able to see the show without having to be in New York.

Having heard an advance copy of the absolutely delightful Hand in Hand, I spoke to the couple about how they merged their musical styles for the album, how their relationship has deepened by being collaborators and about the whirlwind that is Funny Girl. The musical’s signature song, People, is on the album, but it’s a much more personal version of the song than Benko performs at the August Wilson Theatre.

What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. If you’d like to see the complete interview, please go to our YouTube channel.

Q: Jason, in the press release you’re quoted as saying, “Every song that we chose has a special meaning to us and has grown with us in our relationship.” What does Hand in Hand tell us about your relationship and how you not only weathered the pandemic, but also creatively flourished during it? 

Jason: If you play every week with the same person, you develop a certain close musical rapport. Which we already had, but it only deepened through that period because we weren’t collaborating with anyone else. We weren’t able to. So we learned new repertoire and explored new repertoire, we also got suggestions from listeners, family and friends and fans who would tune in online. Many of the songs bring to mind certain memories from that period, as well as memories from New Orleans. Songs that are included on the record bring to mind the several trips that Julie and I have taken there.

Q: Did you find that your relationships with the songs changed from when you first started performing them to when you finally had to cement them in a formal recorded version? 

Julie: Some of the songs we recorded so many takes of and they were all so different and we had to choose. Each take was very different: some out of time, some more New Orleans, some more playful and more theatrical, some less so. I think the good news is that we actually have all those other recordings and we could always put them out as an alternate take if anybody wants to hear some of the other fun stuff we had.

Q: The entertainment industry has been filled with married couples who have achieved incredible highs and some who have achieved incredible lows by working so closely with their spouses. What is the best thing about working with your spouse and what is the most challenging? 

Jason: I feel we’ve become closer as a couple as a result of our music making. And our musical partnership has become solidified and stronger because we are a couple. I’d say the most challenging aspect is when I mess up I disappoint, not only the vocalist who is the star, but I also disappoint my spouse.

Julie: This is sort of a special thing that we do as opposed to the primary thing that we do. So it really does feel like an escape from all of the really stressful stuff that both of our careers bring us. Making music together actually feels like a vacation because it’s just fun.

He really means it when he says he doesn’t want to disappoint. You have to to find a way to support each other as an artist and as a person and be a cheerleader for both and and be able to make space to hold that.

Q: Is there something from merging musical lives that can serve as a role model for anybody who’s trying to bring to two different voices to shared lives, to different points of views together?

Julie: We have to be so just tuned into the other one so that we can have that call and response. It’s a give and take. It’s a dance. It’s a dialogue. What he plays affects what I sing and vice versa. So I think there’s certainly a lesson in the music for relationships in that way. We actually try to consciously say, I’m going to really listen to you and watch you and be with you, rather than focus on doing the song, quote unquote. The music is better because it’s really just about being present with one another. 

Jason: I would only add that also in selecting the the repertoire and creating the arrangements, it was very much a collaborative process that involved bringing songs from Julie’s world and songs from my world together. And then finding, compromise isn’t the right word, but sort of meeting each other at a place esthetically where we both feel at home and excited. That’s a tough combination to reach. We’re different artists and we have different projects and different esthetics that we enjoy. So finding the Venn diagram of where the circles overlap is also kind of a good metaphor for merging two lives together; remaining independent and distinct. 

Q: One of the songs that I love on the album is Sweet Pea, not just because it’s dedicated to Billy Strayhorn, but also because it sounds like a song that Strayhorn would have written, which I assume is intentional. What does Strayhorn mean to you?

Jason: I wrote Sweet Pea as a tribute to Strayhorn on his 100th birthday in 2015 and then later added lyrics and knew that I wanted to have Julie sing it. Strayhorn is one of my heroes as an artist. Somebody who, without much of an ego about it, was casually just brilliant beyond what most of us can even conceive. They say that he would write and read scores of music while other music was playing. In other words, he could read a score of music and hear it in his head, or even write one out as though he were writing a letter or reading an article. The man was brilliant beyond belief and he was a brave person as an out gay man in 1940s New York City. He he took part in various civil rights actions as well. 

Q: I can’t wait, Julie, for the time when you sing and record Lush Life, which Bettye LaVette told me she is going to spend her entire life trying to get right. 

Julie: I know it’s intimidating, honestly. We were actually in tech in Funny Girl. Michael Rafter, who is our music director, who also is a jazz jazz pianist and has been Sutton Foster’s music director for a long time, he just noodles around at the piano in rehearsals. I would just sit there and I was one of the only ones who would recognize what he was playing. I remember he played the four opening bars of Lush Life and I came over and just started singing. He was like, “You know, it?”

Q: Since you brought up this little show that you’re in, obviously there’s no way you could have predicted what this year was going to bring you.

Julie: No, I was not manifesting any of this. 

Q: So given the wild shifts and changes that this production has endured, what are the challenges in staying focused and more to the point, enjoying all of the opportunities that this maelstrom has given you?

Julie: Well, there are challenges in that. Obviously there’s the media swarm, which I have not generally enjoyed being a part of when it’s the tabloid kind of stuff. That’s just all speculation. It’s just very upsetting to read because it’s full of lies. You don’t want to even dignify stuff with responses. But I’ve learned how to tune it out and just turn it off. I try to just focus on doing the work.

One of the main challenges is the vocal, physical, emotional exhaustion. But once you are in there it’s put on the costume and see everybody around. You get on the train and you go and it’s a party. The audience is excited to be there and you can feel that. And it’s just such a dream come true and such a joy to get up on stage and do this huge, complex role that requires every bit of you. So you get on the train and try to enjoy the ride. 

Q: Are you able to enjoy it, Jason, given everything Julie just said about getting caught up in a lot of the gossip and all the other crap that goes along with this position?

Jason: I feel for Julie. That can be upsetting at times, but I think she’s done a great job of making sure her relationships with her colleagues at work are good and honest and free of that noise. My contribution to that is when none of us knew what was going to happen, I started a thread with the family that Julie is not on. So if there was an article of interest that, say, someone else in the family really needed to share, they could share it there so that everyone except Julie would see it.

Q: Which brings me to the version of People that you have on Hand in Hand. People is one of those songs like Being Alive in a Company where it seems like everybody needs to make it as big as possible at the end. What I love is that you’ve taken this less-is-more approach and made it much more intimate on the album. What did the song reveal to you that maybe you didn’t know before when you started looking at it from that perspective? 

Julie: We didn’t know People before I had to audition for Funny Girl.

Jason: And I only knew it from her audition she asked me to accompany her. 

Julie: The fact that we didn’t have that long-standing relationship, or feeling like there were expectations we had to fulfill, probably helped allow us to just explore in our own way. The sense we got from the scene was this is about people who are in a seduction, this love that’s beginning. And it’s also about loneliness and connecting. I think when you do it in a show on stage and you have a big theater to fill and have a big orchestra to sing with it, you get to belt things out. But to me, the lyric and the the emotion behind the song of wanting to connect in a very intimate way with someone really spoke to let’s find a way to express that intimacy and the intimacy we feel when we get to play together.

Jason: In the context of our album, which has that kind of intimacy, even on the tracks that are orchestrated with more instruments that we overdubbed, there’s still this little house concert or small salon feeling to the record that’s, we hope, inviting. So that’s the feeling we brought to it. And I was thinking of something like a tango or a bolero, because the song feels like a dance between these two characters. We just came up with a couple ideas the night before the session and then played around with it in the studio

Q: I want to conclude our conversation by asking you about something Fanny Brice said: “Let the world know you as you are, not as you think you should be. Because sooner or later, if you are posing, you will forget the past. And then where are you?”

Julie: I love this quote. 

Q: I do, too. So how does Hand in Hand let the world see who the two of you are and how do you think you’ll look back on this maybe ten years from now?

Julie: I think that the album is eclectic. We really bounce around between a lot of different genres and feelings. We try not to let ourselves be limited by genre. It’s not a jazz record. It’s not a theater record. It’s our record and it’s very emblematic of the music that we enjoy listening to and the music that we enjoy creating together.

Jason: I think also that there’s a lot of humor and playfulness on the record as well, which is a part of our relationship and who we are in our home lives. There’s also tenderness and love and respect, I think these are also all values that we try to live out in our home lives and in the world. I think it is a reflection of us individually and as a couple.

Julie: I think that it speaks to the fact that the album is unique and is something that really, truly, came from us and from loving each other. 

To see our full interview with Julie Benko and Jason Yeager, please go here.

Main photo: Jason Yeager and Julie Benko (Courtesy Club 44 Records)

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