Male Call!

Fans lucky enough to attend Hair star Gavin Creel‘s two sold-out shows at Joe’s Pub on July 27 will be getting a sneak peek of some of the songs he’s planning to put on his second CD, which will be entitled Quiet. “It’s just going to be me and my songwriting partner Robbie Roth and two guitars. Even the stuff from GOODTIMENATION, our first CD, and the covers we’re singing will be done acoustically,” he says. “I’ve always had a plan for my music career. GOODTIMENATION was like my mix tape of all the musical styles I wanted to explore, Quiet is going to be more intimate, like a coffeehouse record, and then I want to do like a concept musical and then maybe a Christmas album.”

The Joe’s Pub concerts are not the last time Creel will be performing this year; he and Roth have gigs set up for Ars Nova in October and Symphony Space in December. “I want to keep an equal presence in music and theater, and these concerts are really going to help us what songs to put on Quiet,” he notes. “I feel like we’re constantly getting better musically and more of what’s in my heart and head is coming through.”

Still, Creel says that his public admission of being gay earlier this year (in The Advocate) hasn’t changed his songwriting as much as one might imagine. “Maybe some of the pronouns have changed, but I’ve always been honest in my music. But it is nice not having to hide anything in any part of my life.”

Roth and Creel began working together in 2004, and Creel says they can now basically finish each other’s sentences “The other night, I had to take my dog out to the dog park later, after Hair, and he started working on a tune, and I wrote down some silly lyrics, and now it’s a great song. I think we could write a song in five minutes if we had to. We both believe simplicity is the key to our music.”

Of course, one can hear Creel nightly at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre or on the recently-released Ghostlight CD of Hair. “I think that on the CD, you can hear the show very cleanly and that’s great,” he says. “But it definitely has more danger and more power in the theater. I think Hair is the kind of show that benefits from the live experience — it needs to be seen and heard. Maybe someday we’ll be able to do a live CD or video, where you can even hear the audience making noise. These days, the show really feels like a rock concert.”

ROB EVAN: FIVE WILL GET YOU TENOR
Rob Evan can make one guarantee about The Rock Tenor, which recently began a two-month run at Philadelphia’s Wilma Theatre: you’re bound to like at least one song you hear in this unusual show, which spans the music of everyone from Handel to Stephen Sondheim to John Lennon to Jon Bon Jovi. “It’s a true fusion concert,” he says. “I do a lot of symphony concerts, which I love, but where I feel I’m part of a Broadway cover band. What we’re doing here is fusing songs together from diffferent genres and arranging them in a special way, whether it’s lyrically, melodically, or thematically. But this is definitely not supposed to be karaoke. It’s still about honoring the songs; I don’t want purists to be upset.”

The show, co-created by Vincent Marini, will feature a nine-piece band, singer Morgan James, and a rotating list of guest stars, including Kate Shindle. But its main attraction will be the way it allows Evan to meld his various musical personalities. “When I was at the University of Georgia, I was going to be an opera singer, but i got frustrated about the long path to success. I like instant gratifcation,” he says. “And i was also a rock band guy. But after I saw Les Miserables at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, I knew I had to move to New York to do theater. And the following fall, I ended up playing Enjolras on tour and later ended up on Broadway as Jean Valjean.”

Evan’s greatest theatrical success has been playing the title roles in Jekyll & Hyde, but fans many not get to hear any of that show’s songs in The Rock Tenor. “I will be doing some songs by [Jekyll & Hyde composer] Frank Wildhorn; I tend to be involved in any new project that he’s working on. I love his stuff,” he says. “But as for ‘This Is the Moment,’ I’ll probably skip it — although if the audience really wants to hear it, maybe I’ll make it an encore.”

NATE CORDDY: TRUE BELIEVER

While Nate Corddry may be best known for his television work on The Daily Show,Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and Showtime’s The United States of Tara, his heart belongs to the WIlliamstown Theatre Festival, where he’s returned to play the role of Austin in Sam Shepard’s True West opposite Paul Sparks, starting on July 14. “This is my eighth summer here. In 1998, I started by pushing the set for The Matchmaker,” he says. “What I will always carry with me is that Williamstown is where I first saw what it meant to be a working actor and not just a star.”

Originally, Corddry was supposed to work on the show with his brother, actor Rob Corddry, until a scheduling conflict caused him to drop out. “It would have been a special experience, and it was frustrating for a moment, but the most important thing to me was the chance to play Austin. I love that his journey is to go from one side of the earth to its complete opposite; he’s watering plants with a vaporizer at the beginning and an hour later, he’s choking his brother to death. It’s a challenge to have it all make sense. And I love all sorts of plays about families — whether it’s this one or Pterodactyls — I think they’re universal.”

Still, had he worked with his brother, Corddry says it would not have been a case of art imitating life. “Rob and I are 6 1/2 years apart — we have a sister in the middle — and we never had that kind of violent relationship,” he notes “When I was 7, I threw a full glass of orange juice in his face, and a couple of years later, he tripped me and broke my arm, but that’s it.”

As much as he loves stage work, Corddry is committed to making it in Hollywood, and will be seen later this year in the 10-part miniseries The Pacific, which has no less than Steven Spielberg as one of its executive producers. “I have been very lucky to work with people like Jon Stewart, Aaron Sorkin, Toni Collette, and now Steven,” he says. “TV is a big minefield full of trash, and to have been involved with such classy people is amazing.”