photo by Rayelle Dooley
[Editor's note: This column previews two more weekends of the musical Grass So Tall, Sky So Black. On Fridays and Saturdays through Dec. 15 at 11 p.m., Blue Barn's Witching Hour — at 614 S. 11th St. in Omaha — hosts performances of the musical. Admission is $10.]
In the past few days, Brad Hoshaw has bookmarked four stories with a common thread running through them. That thread is murder.
For the Omahan whose talking voice is always loaded with lilting melodies, for the geniune laugh and smile that represents his Nebraskan home well, Hoshaw is an unlikely suspect at first glance as someone who delves into the macabre. Yet, as the olde time ghost story musical he's helped work on attested in its opening pair of shows last weekend, death (or the refusal thereof) is a subject his incisive songwriting is adept at covering.
In Grass So Tall, Sky So Black, Hoshaw sings of William the artist, a poor soul in the throes of the evil void of a prairie. William seeks to commit suicide when all hope is lost, but William, just one of the many characters in a musical of connected short stories, is not allowed to die. In his work with Midwest Dilemma's Liz Webb, Hoshaw approaches his first musical with an adaptive excitement expressed in the Q&A below.
Grass So Tall, Sky So Black stages two more weekends of performances through Dec. 15 on Fridays and Saturdays at 11 p.m. Blue Barn's Witching Hour hosts the shows at 614 S. 11th St. in Omaha. As he drank whiskey on Sunday afternoon at Jake's in Benson, Hoshaw talked of William the artist, how the character evolved through various drafts, how writing for a musical has differed from his previous work and how talking about murder with strangers isn't always the best idea.
Hear Nebraska: I want to start by talking about how you wrote songs for this musical versus your previous work. Specifically, in the song you played on Worlds of Wayne, you end on a chord that doesn’t resolve. Was that decision one you would have made only for a musical?
Brad Hoshaw: Yeah, and I don’t know that it necessarily had a purpose in the scheme of the musical. It’s not a chord that naturally transitions to the next scene. It just felt like it was more appropriate to create a sense of unease for the audience, to kind of hang and wait for the next thing, which is a completely different scene.
But I didn’t want it to tie up in a neat, little bow at the end of the song, and then would people feel the definition of, “OK, that was one thing, and this is a different thing.” I did it on purpose, but it wasn’t an extremely logic purpose, I guess (laughs).
HN: As far as the theme for Grass So Tall, Sky So Black goes, have you done that before with your music, included a melody through more than one song?
BH: I have not done that previously in other songs, but I’ve always been a fan of that. I remember when Adam Hawkins released his home recordings, he had a melody, “It’s coming down, dah dah dah dah,” that melody that ran through four or five different songs. He would bring it in as an instrumental part, play that melody back. I thought that was cool how it ties everything together. So I’ve always been a fan of people that do that because it almost makes a concept album out of something that isn’t necessarily a concept album.
Of course, musicals that I’ve listened to in the past usually bring back melodies throughout different parts of the musical. Even in epic movies, there’s usually an overture, like in Ben Hur, Gone With the Wind and things. They’ll do an overture at the beginning as people are filing in and then that comes back in different scenes when they want to punctuate that this is really important, a main plot line. Then they bring it back, and subconsciously it makes people realize that, “OK, this is the main theme. This is really important.”
But the “Grass” theme that we perform was written by Liz, so she had already written that before she brought me on. So that had already been established before I was involved withe the project. Then I just added my guitar and vocal to it.
HN: Would it give too much of the story away to continue examining the song you played on the podcast?
BH: No, it shouldn’t. You mean “William the Artist”?
HN: Yeah, or I believe you called it “The Eternal Life of William.” Do you have a few titles for it?
BH: There’s a lot actually. I originally wrote it as “The Eternal Life of William” and then I wanted it to be “The Eternal Life of William the Artist” and then in rehearsals they just call it “Suicide Song” because that’s how they wrote it out in the script, “Here we’re going to have a scene about suicide, about a guy who wants to kill himself and can’t die.”
So that’s how they conceived the whole section. So yeah, it could end up being anything if I actually put it on an album and define a title for it. It could even be none of those (laughs).
HN: Tell me about the writing process. You said they blocked out a part for a suicide song. Were your lyrics part of the story drive, or did you write lyrics toward their story?
BH: It was interesting with that song because they had had meetings for several weeks. They wanted to do a ghost story musical. And so, I wasn’t in this process, but what I heard they did was they had people write on sticky notes their ideas of what scares them. Then they went through and picked their favorites of what they thought would be the scariest scenes and put them in order.
So they had mapped out which scenes would happen, but they didn’t have a concept of how they would present those scenes yet, whether it would be music or spoken acting parts or dance. Then it was over a period of collaborative writing sessions where everybody got together then went home and tried to write something and came back the next day to show what they had done.
I went to a couple of those where they finally picked out, “OK, we want this to be a song, and this one.” Then I was sent off to write those songs. They told me to write a “hide and seek” scene about two sisters who are playing hide and seek in the house. One of them is taken away by the big evil thing. So that was one of my assignments, which it wasn’t hard to make a hide and seek song creepy because the terminology can be creepy.
Then they also wanted a suicide song. The interesting thing about that was I had already written a song before I had any guidance or direction from them about a guy who was buried alive. It didn’t have a suicide element in it. So he’s buried alive, and I call that song the bell song, which isn’t part of the musical, but we play it as a six-minute interlude as people are coming in and getting situated. It’s still snuck in there, but it’s kind of an outtake.
That’s about a guy who’s buried alive and attached to one of those bells they used to put on graves to avoid being buried alive. And he just rings the bell and nobody comes to get him. He can’t die, though, because something’s keeping him alive.
And so, I had written that song and sent it to them. They liked it, but they wanted me to add a suicide element to it. For some reason, it just didn’t work with that progression and that melody. So after working with that for a day or two, I ended up writing a completely new song, which was “The Eternal Life of William,” about a man who tries to commit suicide and can’t and gets buried alive. But in that, the bell is completely out of the story. There’s no bell in that story. So it kind of evolved from a previous song. I kept some of the concepts and dumped some of the concepts.
HN: Did the others have any input on how or why William would commit suicide?
BH: No, that was pretty wide open. That just came out unexpectedly, the whole plot of why, the fact that he was hung up on this fictional girl in his head then runs into her in real life, but it doesn’t play out the way he wished. He misses his opportunity with her. So that’s the catalyst for him to want to end his life.
HN: What is William’s part in the larger musical?
BH: The way the musical is laid out, it’s more separate scenes, though some of the scenes play off of each other. It’s almost like a lot of short stories that are all talking about the same location and the same big, bad, evil thing. So the actual character of William is exclusive to that scene, but the story of the evil that comes in his experience is throughout the whole musical.
HN: This is fictional and I assume it’s set in a different time period, but have you felt any sort of fear of open spaces or frightened by the prairie?
BH: Definitely cornfields have freaked me out before. More than an actual fear or terror, though, I’ve felt an extreme loneliness and seclusion in the prairie and large, wide-open spaces. Sometimes it can be a stark reminder of how small you are.
It can be haunting, it can creep you out, but not necessarily in the sense of I think someone’s going to jump out and kill me (laughs).
HN: Did you actively think about going to minor chords or major chords at certain times to evoke those emotions, or did you play around with those?
BH: Yeah, I think right from the start I thought, “OK, it’s supposed to be creepy or scary, so minor chords make sense.” But I was playing to see if I could buck that idea, not use minor chords. So I started messing with more single-note lines, and in this situation, I tended to write the melodies before the chord progressions, which normally, it’s the opposite way where I write the chords first or almost simultaneously.
Here, I would pick out melody lines I thought would be haunting or creepy and then try to figure out what chords fit underneath those.
HN: And in your own songs, you normally write the music before lyrics?
BH: Yeah, they’re usually the last part for me. Lyrics are in constant revision, too. Even in the two opening weekend shows, from the first night to the second night, I changed some of the lyrics in the William song, just because I found a word I thought was more specific to the feeling I was trying to convey. Or maybe it was that I was in front of an audience and I felt like I needed to say a word that would wake up the ear a little bit more.
That’s the really fun part about doing multiple shows in a row in front of a live audience. There’s a little more of an impromptu feel to it where you really can say and do anything on the fly. Then if it doesn’t work, you can try it again tomorrow. In a rock show, you usually work out a set list and that set list, for the most part, you don’t ever want to do again because you don’t want to bore people with the same show twice.
In this case, you can get used to the rhythm and you have more freedom to play with words and phrasing and delivery.
HN: Could you talk about the one word, and why you chose to change it?
BH: Yeah, there’s a few. There was one word where he “cried ‘out’ to the heavens,” but it made more sense for me to say he “cried ‘up’ to the heavens,” and actually look up when I say it. It created more of a visual direction for people. So that’s one change I made on the second show. Then I think one of the lines is talking about him driving on a gravel road and the “gray dust and the gravel clouded up his mind.” I think “dust” was what I chose on the second night whereas originally it was “gray ‘dirt’ and the gravel,” which was just a mixup on my part. It never should have been dirt, but I realized, “Oh, am I saying dirt? That doesn’t make any sense.” (laughs)
So it’s just an evolving song, I guess. As I notice things need to be tightened up and fixed just for the betterment of the song, I can do it because it’s fresh in my mind and each night I can make little changes.
HN: As compared to playing on stage with your band, how do you perceive people looking at you? How important is it that you act out your songs to a degree?
BH: Luckily, I think in this situation with the musical, I’m allowed to be a little more natural to how I would normally be onstage. I don’t have any speaking lines, so I don’t have a strict character role I’m playing. And I’m playing a musician and a singer.
The only direction I was given as far as acting or interacting with an audience was I’ve heard from many people that when I’m performing with a band or even solo in a venue, I have this blanket stare over an audience. I can be looking at no one at the same time I’m looking at everyone. People notice that and they sometimes liken it to one of those paintings where it seems like the eyes follow them wherever they go.
In this, they want me to look people directly in the face. They want me to make connections with individuals. And so, that was scary to me at first, but I think it’s just going to help me with feeling more comfortable onstage during my own shows.
HN: Is there anything I’ve missed so far that you want to talk about?
BH: We could talk about whether I want to keep doing it or not. I think there is another project that’s been mentioned to me that I might work on. I would be interested in trying something more ambitious, something that’s a full-on musical. This is more segmented where there’s sections of music that come back around. But I’d be interested in testing myself to see if I could do a full-on musical where most of the dialogue is sung. A couple people I’ve worked with have given me the impression that there’s a project they’d like to bring me on for. So I’m excited to see where this might lead.
HN: Have you thought seriously about using songs from this musical for your own music?
BH: There is a discussion. Liz and I have talked about doing an album of murder ballads. And so, we’re focusing on the musical now — we don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves — but there is a possibility we’ll record these and put them out. There are songs that aren’t in the musical written by both of us, so there’s some stuff we could use to fill up a whole album.
The interesting thing about murder ballads is that it’s a traditional folk song form, but originally mostly all true stories, written in close proximity to the event, it was more with the purpose of giving a moral tale, don’t do this or this or you’ll end up at the gallows, or just passing on information, just folk tales telling people the news. It was easier to remember and pass over distances through song. I’ve been interested with the idea that it wasn’t just an art form. It was stories that involved real events. It was almost like reading a newspaper with forensic details of the murders. That’s why they’re so graphic. Songwriters wanted them to be as accurate as possible, and give as much information in the song.
So the whole idea of the murder ballad is fascinating to me. It’s a taboo genre to sing about murders and victims of murder. Oftentimes, you’re getting in the head of the murderer and giving some sort of a reason why they’re doing it, and that can come off as if you’re justifying it, which is shaky ground. You don’t want to be glorifying murder. The whole contrast of diving into some something taboo and something people won’t like: gruesome songs about horrible people, but also trying to making it have an artistic merit in a way.
I would love to continue to writing some of these songs, though I don’t want to do exclusively murder ballads. I like pretty melodies too much (laughs). But I like the idea of possibly doing an album, expanding the songs. I’ve also been toying with the idea of writing a song about a recent murder. I know that makes my girlfriend nervous (laughs).
HN: Do you think writing about a recent murder can be done, and if so, how would it be different from those songs from the past?
BH: I’m pretty sure that the murder ballads of Ireland and Scotland and the early murder ballads always had some sort of moral at the end. Either the person was executed or tormented by the ghosts of their victims for eternity. There was always some moral consequence at the end. Then a lot of American murder ballads have left that out, where maybe the guy got away and maybe he’s still around.
I could go either way. I think it’s safer to put a consequence at the end, so if someone raises a question of morality of writing about a murder, you can say your song is portraying murder as bad. But I don’t know how I will handle that. I’ll probably make that decision when I find out who the characters are and where the story is leading me.
HN: Do you keep your eye on the newspaper then?
BH: I have, and it’s been disturbing. It might talk me out of it. It is a different emotional process when you’re dealing with a true story as opposed to making up characters. Just in the last couple days, I’ve bookmarked four different murder stories that were major news on CNN or whatever.
photo by Rayelle Dooley
They’re all really bizarre, have strange motives, strange scenarios that would make for good songs, but I don’t know how I’m going to get myself to a place or if it’s possible to make it into a song that is worth writing or performing. I’m not going to be flippant about writing about current murders. It has to be as tasteful as possible, and I don’t want to offend anyone.
But yeah, I have been keeping an eye on the paper. It’s been on the front of my mind, and it’s really discouraging to see how much of that stuff happens every day.
HN: What’s your opinion on Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska?
BH: I really like that album. For a long time, it was the only album of his I’ve liked. But he’s grown on me, and I’ve opened up to more of his catalogue. There’s a lot of current bands doing murder ballads that aren’t necessarily traditional. The songs in this production are more a traditional form, which is what they call the A form: just verse, verse, verse. No chorus or bridge, just basically a repetitive melody that tells a story from one verse to the next. Maybe a musical interlude to break it up, but it’s stuffed with information and facts and words to a melody and to a chord progression to a tune.
Liz and I have gone the traditional route in this musical. I think on the Nebraska album, it sounded more modern, and it wasn’t a traditional murder ballad. Bands like Okkervil River and Felice Brothers, that have dabbled in the traditional and modern forms. Of course, Tom Waits does some, too, and everybody knows Johnny Cash’s (laughs).
I was taking in a cab from rehearsal one night, and I guess I was in a talkative mood because I was telling the driver about what I was there for, what I was writing. It’s amazing the reaction I get when I tell people that I write songs about murder. It really freaks people out. It makes them uncomfortable, and they don’t know how to react.
I don’t think they understand that it is a common niche genre, and it’s been done by multiple artists, and maybe they didn’t realize it (laughs). To single it out and say I’m writing songs about murder, people don’t know how to react. They give you a look like, “Is he crazy? Maybe he’s just an artist.”
HN: Specifically, how did the cab driver react?
BH: He was just a smile-and-nod kind of reaction. The reaction I got from him was just speechless and, “Oh, that’s nice.” Very hesitant to carry on a conversation anymore. It was territory he didn’t understand or didn’t know how to have a conversation about. It was a concept that was uncomfortable and unknown.
But I suppose if you’re a cab driver, you always have to be suspicious, especially of someone talking about murder (laughs). Oh well.
CHORDS
recorded on Worlds of Wayne's 181st episode
capo on first fret
Am – Em – Am – Em
Am Em
Now William was an artist
Am Em
He drew things from his mind
F C
And carried in his back pocket
E F
The wife he’d longed to find
Am Em
Then one day at the market
Am Em
He could not believe his eyes
F C
For the girl he’d always wanted
E F
Was standing right by his side
Am Em
He spoke out in a whisper
Am Em
A hollow, ghostly tone
F C
But the wind just barely kissed her
E F
She heard none of the words he spoke
Am Em
Then after he left the market
Am Em
He burned up deep inside
F C
For the girl he’d always wanted
E F
They would never again reunite
Am – Em – Am – Em
Am Em
So he drove out to the country
Am Em
The wind dried his eyes
F C
The gray dirt (dust) and the gravel
E F
Clouded up his mind
Am Em
Then far off in the distance
Am Em
An old house he saw
F C
It seemed the perfect witness
E F
To watch his plan unfold
Am Em
So there in the kitchen
Am Em
He swallowed down his fear
F C
To end the painful living
E
An easy way to disappear
Am – Em – Am – Em
Am Em
Then early in the morning
Am Em
He walked out toward the road
F C
Then suddenly without warning
E
The ground swallowed him whole
Am Em
His body began sinking
Am Em
In an earthen undertow
F C
His foolish wishful thinking
E
Thought this was his chance to go
Am – Em – Am – Em
Am Em
Now six feet under prairie
Am Em
Poor William’s still alive
F C
His one great desire
E Fm
Is to be allowed to die
Michael Todd is Hear Nebraska's managing editor. This is his attempt at a murder ballad. Reach Michael at michaeltodd@hearnebraska.org.