Speaker 1: Hello, you and me, both listeners. I'm currently traveling abroad,
Speaker 1: so while I don't have a new episode for you
Speaker 1: this week, I want to share with you one of
Speaker 1: my favorite episodes from last season in case you missed
Speaker 1: it the first time. I hope you enjoy listening to
Speaker 1: my conversations with Brandy Carlisle and Andre Dea Shields as
Speaker 1: much as I enjoyed talking to them. I find them
Speaker 1: both so inspirational and don't we need that right now?
Speaker 1: And stay tuned for next week when I'll be back
Speaker 1: with a new episode. I'm Hillary Clinton, and this is
Speaker 1: you and me. Both Believe in yourself. You know, it's
Speaker 1: a piece of advice we hear a lot, but for
Speaker 1: many of us, it takes years, if not a lifetime,
Speaker 1: to actually get there. And then there are those rare folks,
Speaker 1: immensely talented and hard working, somehow always knew that they
Speaker 1: would be somebody. Today, I have the pleasure of speaking
Speaker 1: with two people who believed in themselves from the get go.
Speaker 1: Later we'll hear from the incredibly talented actor, director, and
Speaker 1: choreographer Andre Deshields, but first I'm talking to multiple Grammy
Speaker 1: Award winning singer and songwriter Brandy Carlisle. I first discovered
Speaker 1: Brandy back in twenty nineteen when she performed her song
Speaker 1: The Joke at the Grammy Awards. That year, she was
Speaker 1: nominated for six, yes, six Grammys for her album By
Speaker 1: the Way I Forgive You. I immediately tracked down as
Speaker 1: much of her music as I could. I've been a
Speaker 1: fan ever since. Brandy grew up in Washington State with
Speaker 1: very young parents who struggled to make a living and
Speaker 1: provide a stable home, but she was also surrounded by
Speaker 1: a lot of love and a lot of music. She's
Speaker 1: drawn on those roots to build a beautiful family of
Speaker 1: her own with her wife Catherine, and their two daughters,
Speaker 1: Evangeline and Elijah. Brandy writes about all of this in
Speaker 1: her memoir titled Broken Horses, and that's where I wanted
Speaker 1: to start our conversation by asking her what it was
Speaker 1: like to pull up those memories, the good, the bad,
Speaker 1: the wonderful and write this incredibly open, revealing and compelling book.
Speaker 2: I had always kind of mined my past for experience
Speaker 2: and songwriting and things like that, but just in little
Speaker 2: random verse without the detail, you know. But when I
Speaker 2: actually really sat down and kind of meditated on it.
Speaker 2: Everything came back smells and floral prints on couches and
Speaker 2: you know, whatever vehicle we happened to have at that time,
Speaker 2: and just my childhood became really clear and really vivid,
Speaker 2: and it poured out of me. I didn't hesitate. I
Speaker 2: didn't worry about what I was saying about mom or
Speaker 2: dad or you know, my brother and sister, or the
Speaker 2: way that we lived, or what was going on and
Speaker 2: our lives at that time. I didn't think about embarrassment
Speaker 2: because I think in the back of my mind I
Speaker 2: knew I could always go and take anything out, I
Speaker 2: could edit anything.
Speaker 1: And then I just didn't From what I read, not
Speaker 1: only about your parents, but your grandparents aunts, uncles, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of love, there was a lot
Speaker 1: of fun, and there was a lot of unpredictability, instability
Speaker 1: and chaos. Yeah, that's true. How would you describe your
Speaker 1: mom and your dad? You emphasize how young they were.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were, and in some ways and that I mean,
Speaker 2: this is a compliment. Are very young, and there's an
Speaker 2: energy about them and the endless opportunity for adventure and
Speaker 2: fun and honestly mostly chaos. There was always this kind
Speaker 2: of undercurrent of like, well, we're different and we don't
Speaker 2: have to do things the way other people do them.
Speaker 2: And it was like a little bit like that film,
Speaker 2: you know, Captain Fantastic. There was a lot of late
Speaker 2: night discussion, and I was privy to a lot of
Speaker 2: things that I don't know if I needed to be
Speaker 2: privy to. But I was also given great wisdom and
Speaker 2: insight at a really young age, and for some reason,
Speaker 2: I just feel like I knew what to do with it.
Speaker 2: And that kind of narrative of like we're different, we
Speaker 2: live different was what made not being at the same schools,
Speaker 2: or having a lot of different houses, or a little
Speaker 2: bit of upheaval not just okay, but what I thought
Speaker 2: would be a preferable way to grow upright. And looking
Speaker 2: back on it, I don't know that I don't feel
Speaker 2: that way now. I feel a pull all the time
Speaker 2: to raise my kids eccentrically with a little bit of chaos,
Speaker 2: a little bit of spontaneity, a little bit of we
Speaker 2: don't know what's going to happen, and my wife makes
Speaker 2: me resistant, but.
Speaker 1: I don't want to leave your childhood yet. Because you
Speaker 1: can also describe the very serious illness you had as
Speaker 1: what a four year old? Yeah, can you talk about that? Yeah?
Speaker 2: When I was four years old, I contracted meninjacock meningitis
Speaker 2: and presented as really, really sick. But my mother was
Speaker 2: really young, I want to say, like twenty at the time,
Speaker 2: and knew right away that something was wrong. But she
Speaker 2: was the kind of mom where she thought something was
Speaker 2: wrong all the time. You know, she had the speed
Speaker 2: dial if they even had that, you know in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty what was this been, nineteen eighty five two four nurse,
Speaker 2: And she told my dad that something was really wrong,
Speaker 2: and you know, he didn't believe her, and my mom
Speaker 2: was on the phone with two four nurse and two
Speaker 2: four nurse asked my mom to have me touch my
Speaker 2: chin to my chest, which I guess is like a
Speaker 2: telltale sign that somebody could have meningitis, and it made
Speaker 2: me pass out, and I just remember waking up in
Speaker 2: the backseat of the car on my way to the
Speaker 2: emergency room and wound up being in the hospital in
Speaker 2: a coma for quite some time before I came to
Speaker 2: and didn't get out of there till after my fifth birthday.
Speaker 2: And there's still a bit of trauma I think for
Speaker 2: both my parents but mostly I think my mother about
Speaker 2: thinking that I wasn't going to pull through that, and
Speaker 2: it gave me a sense of specialness. You know, I
Speaker 2: was the first grandchild on both sides of the family,
Speaker 2: and everybody had this kind of Brandy's got a mission thing,
Speaker 2: and it gave me a quite inflated sense of self importance.
Speaker 1: What was your earliest memory of making or listening to music,
Speaker 1: because the other part of the book, which I love
Speaker 1: is that you had a somewhat musical family, and I
Speaker 1: see pictures in the book of you as a really
Speaker 1: little kid, all dressed up, You're on stage, you're singing.
Speaker 1: What are your earliest memories?
Speaker 2: There's music on both sides of my family, country music
Speaker 2: and bluegrassm My dad's father played dobro and followed bluegrass
Speaker 2: bands around in his RV, and I didn't get to
Speaker 2: spend much time with him musically. He was a quiet
Speaker 2: guy that you know. But on my mom's side of
Speaker 2: the family, her dad was a cigar salesman and a
Speaker 2: country music singer and yodeler, and he was a very
Speaker 2: outward personality, big influence that I think about in here
Speaker 2: in my head all the time to this day. But
Speaker 2: he died really young of als, which is the worst
Speaker 2: disease in the world. And when he died, kind of
Speaker 2: the last thing he did, whether he knew it or not,
Speaker 2: was light of fire in my mother to continue on
Speaker 2: the music.
Speaker 1: And she did.
Speaker 2: She took all that grief and that little bit of
Speaker 2: money and got a PA system and put together a
Speaker 2: band and started singing and thought to include me and
Speaker 2: my brother. And so I was like seven or eight
Speaker 2: years old the first time I got on stage and
Speaker 2: sang a Roseanne Cash song Tennessee flat Top Box at
Speaker 2: the place called the Northwest grand Ole Opry. I just
Speaker 2: want to be a cowgirl.
Speaker 1: I loved that. Well. I also really love your mother's
Speaker 1: gutsiness that she got that PA system and put herself
Speaker 1: up there. That is really making yourself vulnerable. And I
Speaker 1: think it's another real tribute to her as a mom
Speaker 1: that she knew to include you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she was really good. She looked great, huge hair.
Speaker 2: You know, she'd fixed my hair and put our clothes
Speaker 2: together and everything, and she just yeah, she'd always tell
Speaker 2: me she'd be sitting the front righter, just going move Brandy,
Speaker 2: move your body. Stop wrapping the mic cord around your hand.
Speaker 1: Oh God, we're taking a quick break. Stay with us.
Speaker 1: The other thing about your upbringing is that you know,
Speaker 1: you grew up in a religious family, in a religious community,
Speaker 1: and I really like the way that faith and spirituality
Speaker 1: run through your story like yours. Yeah, like mine exactly,
Speaker 1: and how it evolves. And it was so touching to
Speaker 1: me and heartbreaking to read your description about a pastor
Speaker 1: refusing to baptize you. I guess because he knew you
Speaker 1: were gay and insisted that you renounce, literally renounce yourself
Speaker 1: in order to be baptized, and you rightly refuse to
Speaker 1: do that. Can you tell that story?
Speaker 2: Yeah, he really knew I was gay. Like that's really
Speaker 2: one of the hardest nuances about that stories, that he
Speaker 2: really knew I was gay. Like, I was totally unapologetic
Speaker 2: about it. I presented that way. I brought my little
Speaker 2: girlfriend to church for some reason. I don't know why.
Speaker 2: I didn't expect that it was in the sermons, it
Speaker 2: was in the subtext. Next, you know, I did have
Speaker 2: a sense of audacity that I can't I would love
Speaker 2: to reconnect with actually, but yeah, he did, And there
Speaker 2: was like a well, the Baptists are very big, by
Speaker 2: the way, on public declarations. Oh yes, right, converting to
Speaker 2: possible public humiliation. And I already liked being on stage,
Speaker 2: so you know, I went up to the front of
Speaker 2: the church and on one Sunday and said I'd like
Speaker 2: to be baptized, and was applauded and hugged and given
Speaker 2: a schedule of, you know, going to lunch with the
Speaker 2: pastor and learning the things I need to learn in
Speaker 2: the scriptures and understanding what was going to take place,
Speaker 2: inviting people, and then got to the church that day
Speaker 2: to be baptized, and our town and our family and
Speaker 2: our friends kind of filled the church, and the pastor
Speaker 2: at the last minute asked me, which was I thought
Speaker 2: was really strange, asked me if I quote unquote practiced homosexuality,
Speaker 2: and I just remember just furrowed brow looking at him.
Speaker 2: I said, you know, I'm gay. I'm coming to church
Speaker 2: with my girlfriend, you know, and we go we go
Speaker 2: to pizza Hut yesterday, like you know, you know, and
Speaker 2: chose that moment to tell me that he wasn't going
Speaker 2: to baptize me. And I had to kind of run
Speaker 2: out the church in front of everyone. And it's probably
Speaker 2: one of the biggest humiliations in my life without trying
Speaker 2: to wrap it up into an attractive box and say
Speaker 2: that everything's fine now. Without that experience, I wouldn't have
Speaker 2: known how much support I actually had, how upset The
Speaker 2: people that came to see that happen for me were
Speaker 2: holp set. My dad was, and I always felt I
Speaker 2: was kind of gay nineties accepted, you know, kind of
Speaker 2: like we accept this, but don't put it in our
Speaker 2: face kind of thing. Until that day and everybody becoming
Speaker 2: so upset, I felt, you know, more seen in that
Speaker 2: way than I ever had before, also more rejected than
Speaker 2: I ever had before. But it pushed me into another
Speaker 2: life that I needed to be pushed into.
Speaker 1: But also from that time forward, you really threw yourself
Speaker 1: into your mute music and thinking back to being put
Speaker 1: on the stage as this, you know, little girl, three
Speaker 1: decades of performing and of writing. How has your relationship
Speaker 1: to music evolved over that period of time. Well, I
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that's the moment that music became
Speaker 2: mine and I just I had to really separate my
Speaker 2: soul from some things, you know, And so I started
Speaker 2: getting interested in getting on airplane. I started getting interested
Speaker 2: in going to a big city, meeting different kinds of
Speaker 2: people and less and less interested in country music. I
Speaker 2: remember that night of my botched baptism. I call it
Speaker 2: putting my little CD player Jeff Buckley's Grace on repeat
Speaker 2: on Hallelujah, just over and over and over and over again,
Speaker 2: and it occurring to me like I want to leave, yeah,
Speaker 2: And I want to write. I want to write a
Speaker 2: song like this. I don't care if it's a twelve
Speaker 2: minute song.
Speaker 1: A longer song for a longer story. But I also
Speaker 1: love the way that you found some extraordinary music icons
Speaker 1: that became mentors. I mean the kind of relationship that
Speaker 1: you describe with Alton John from a far, far distance.
Speaker 1: There you are in Washington State, Elton's you know, in
Speaker 1: England or Atlanta, wherever he might be, and you are
Speaker 1: discovering this extraordinary human being, to say nothing of his,
Speaker 1: you know, almost cosmic talent.
Speaker 2: I fall in love with Elton John over a six
Speaker 2: fifth sixth grade book report about Ryan White, never hearing
Speaker 2: a note. I loved him because of his contribution to
Speaker 2: this boy's life. Who died I think it was in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety one. It's in the nineties. He died of aids.
Speaker 2: He had hemophilia. He contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion.
Speaker 2: I did a book report on him and school. I
Speaker 2: chose the book myself.
Speaker 1: You didn't even know what the book was about.
Speaker 2: I just saw a cute boy on the book and
Speaker 2: I picked it up in the school library and I
Speaker 2: did a book report. And in the end of the book,
Speaker 2: he befriends this British gay rock star. He's being politicized,
Speaker 2: he's being asked to become the poster child for the
Speaker 2: church as a person affected by sin in the world
Speaker 2: created by homosexual men. And this was a subtext that
Speaker 2: I had been taught in church and was thinking about
Speaker 2: this and talking about this a lot in my own home.
Speaker 2: And here's this new perspective in a book, Thank God.
Speaker 2: And in the end he meets this rock star, and
Speaker 2: this rock star has got a couple of songs that
Speaker 2: are mentioned in the book, and he sings a song
Speaker 2: at this kid's funeral called Skyline Pigeon. And I went
Speaker 2: to the King County Library and checked out the CD
Speaker 2: here and now Elton John CD a couple other Elton
Speaker 2: John c d's in a book by Philip Norman Elton John,
Speaker 2: Elton John and I dove into this rock star, and
Speaker 2: before I ever heard him sing, I was already obsessed
Speaker 2: with him. And then I heard Skyline Pigeon, and then
Speaker 2: I heard Funeral for a Friend and Benny and the Jets,
Speaker 2: and I just I went in to everything Elton John.
Speaker 2: By the time I was like fourteen, there wasn't a
Speaker 2: square inch of my bedroom walls that weren't covered with
Speaker 2: Elton John memorabilia. I made homemade Elton John jewelry, and
Speaker 2: I began playing piano. My parents got me a eighty
Speaker 2: dollars toys r us Cassio keyboard and totally changed my life.
Speaker 2: And yeah, now he's like, he's my friend.
Speaker 1: He is your friend. But Ryan White died in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety and he had such a an amazing effect on
Speaker 1: so many people.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: There eventually was a piece of legislation, the Ryan White Act,
Speaker 1: to provide more support on resources for people living with
Speaker 1: HIV AIDS, and Elton just connected so immediately with this,
Speaker 1: you know, young boy from Indiana. But neither Ryan nor
Speaker 1: his mother ever allowed people if they could stop it
Speaker 1: using them in a negative way. I mean, they were
Speaker 1: big hearted, they were open minded, and I want to
Speaker 1: just make one other point, you got that book about
Speaker 1: Ryan White in your school library. There are people right
Speaker 1: now who want to take a book like that out
Speaker 1: of public school libraries. You know, impressionable children shouldn't be
Speaker 1: learning about Ryan White. You know. It's just another perfect
Speaker 1: example among countless examples of why, you know, we have
Speaker 1: to stand up for the right of kids to you know,
Speaker 1: seek out and find information, and obviously a school library
Speaker 1: is one of the best ways to do that. When
Speaker 1: and how did you finally meet Elton in person?
Speaker 2: First of all, that's a really really good point. And
Speaker 2: books like that that I had access to and my
Speaker 2: school sculpted a lot of things about my life, and
Speaker 2: that's just one of the many that gave me, you know,
Speaker 2: the worldview that propelled me forward in really really big ways.
Speaker 2: So I love that you made that point. What was
Speaker 2: the second question, Yeah, When and where did you meet Elton? Okay,
Speaker 2: So I met Elton just like you'd hope I would,
Speaker 2: in a Las Vegas casino basement recording studio. He called
Speaker 2: me like ten years prior to that, or it was
Speaker 2: me five years prior to that when I put out
Speaker 2: the story, but I hadn't met him yet, and I
Speaker 2: always wanted to meet him. I wrote him a letter
Speaker 2: when I made my album give Up the Ghost, and
Speaker 2: asked him to play piano in one of my songs,
Speaker 2: and he just he called me up and said, yeah,
Speaker 2: can you get to Vegas? So I did. Oh, and
Speaker 2: I just never forget it because I remember coming down
Speaker 2: this corridor and I could hear him talking, and I
Speaker 2: had all of the every live VHS tape that he
Speaker 2: had ever recorded, every interview, and I'm like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: that's Elton. I'm gonna walk around the corner and I'm
Speaker 2: gonna see Elton John sitting there. And I did, and
Speaker 2: he was sitting there in a tracksuit, and he just
Speaker 2: gave me an enormous hug and then stayed with me
Speaker 2: all day for four hours, just talked to me about music,
Speaker 2: just gave me everything that I could have ever hoped
Speaker 2: to be given by meeting my very worthy hero. And
Speaker 2: by the time I got home, he'd sent me one
Speaker 2: hundred CDs with sticky notes.
Speaker 1: Oh oh, talk about the day that you found out
Speaker 1: you were the most nominated woman of the twenty nineteen Grammys.
Speaker 1: Described that because to me, it just blended so much
Speaker 1: about what your life is like right now.
Speaker 2: I mean it was the middle of the night because
Speaker 2: we're on the West coast and I just got the
Speaker 2: phone call that from relative obscurity. In terms of the Grammys,
Speaker 2: I had been nominated for six of them, and I
Speaker 2: was just in total disbelief. I knew it was going
Speaker 2: to be a watershed moment. I knew it was going
Speaker 2: to change my life, and it really did. Mean it
Speaker 2: was my publicistant friend Asha, She's just like, they just
Speaker 2: kept saying your name.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: I wasn't even awake. It was pitch dark, and I
Speaker 2: woke up everybody in my house. But you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, because you're a Grammy winner, right, Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: right for the spoken word, that's true for the spoken
Speaker 2: where's your Grammy? I'm looking for it in the background.
Speaker 1: I don't see it. I have it in our library.
Speaker 1: It's part of history. Okay, Well, before we go, I
Speaker 1: have to ask you. I know you love fishing, and
Speaker 1: you know you write in the book nothing's really ever
Speaker 1: got a hold of me the way fishing and music have. Okay,
Speaker 1: what is the biggest fish you've ever caught? And was
Speaker 1: it the same feeling you had when you got all
Speaker 1: those Grammys.
Speaker 2: It was the same feeling, I mean, nearly identical, because,
Speaker 2: as I said in the book, fishing is merely an
Speaker 2: attempt to connect to something that you know is there
Speaker 2: but can't see a perpetual series of occasions for hope.
Speaker 2: The biggest fish I ever caught was in Alaska on
Speaker 2: the Kenai River. It's a forty three pound king salmon.
Speaker 1: That's one big fish.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: I've actually fished for salmon in Alaska, and those fish
Speaker 1: are big. They are big, that's right. And they're delicious too.
Speaker 1: Did they pack your fish and prepare it so that
Speaker 1: you could go and eat it later? I prepared it.
Speaker 1: You prepared it?
Speaker 2: No, girl, But you know something about that?
Speaker 1: Huh oh yeah, Oh my gosh. But I also love
Speaker 1: I mean, your definition of fishing is almost like a
Speaker 1: perfect definition of faith. I'm going to remember that. I
Speaker 1: think that that's exactly what I parallel it with. Well,
Speaker 1: Randy Carlia, I cannot thank you enough. This was such
Speaker 1: a true delight. Do you have any parting words or
Speaker 1: any yeah, I singing words or anything you want to
Speaker 1: leave us with.
Speaker 2: I cannot tell you how much talking to you today
Speaker 2: has meant to me, and I almost can't do anything
Speaker 2: else for the rest of the day. Now, I just
Speaker 2: I think that you are such a special person. You're
Speaker 2: such a gift to the world and a gift in
Speaker 2: my life. You know the song we keep skimming over,
Speaker 2: the joke that I sang at the Grammys. I wrote
Speaker 2: that first line in the second verse about you. Oh,
Speaker 2: I'm getting over a cult, so I'm gonna do my best.
Speaker 2: You get discouraged, don't you.
Speaker 3: Girl.
Speaker 2: It's your brother's world for a little.
Speaker 1: While, Longer, a little while.
Speaker 2: Just a little while, younger, not too much, Thank you,
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Randy Carlyle's memoir is Broken Horses. One of my favorite
Speaker 1: shows on Broadway in recent years is the Tony Award
Speaker 1: winning Best Musical Hades Town. In this modern retelling of
Speaker 1: Orpheus and Iriticy, the character of Hermes, messenger to the gods,
Speaker 1: carries us through the entire show, and who better to
Speaker 1: play a god than the larger than life personality Andre Deshields.
Speaker 1: Following a shutdown during the pandemic, Hadestown is up and
Speaker 1: running again with Andrea at the helm. But this is
Speaker 1: just the latest chapter in his long and glorious history.
Speaker 1: At age seventy six. Andre has been performing in the
Speaker 1: theater for over fifty years, starting with his professional debut
Speaker 1: in the hit rock musical Hair Back in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: nine and I hate to tell you that I actually
Speaker 1: saw it way back then. But since then he's appeared
Speaker 1: on film and TV and in more musicals like The
Speaker 1: Whiz and Ain't Misbehavin. Three Tony Award nominations and one
Speaker 1: win later, He's truly a living legend of the stage.
Speaker 1: Andre was born in the nineteen forties and grew up
Speaker 1: in Baltimore as the ninth of eleven siblings. His mother
Speaker 1: was a domestic worker, his father was a tailor. The
Speaker 1: stories he tells of how he got from there to here,
Speaker 1: always believing in himself along the way, or an inspiration
Speaker 1: to anyone with a dream of making it, of making
Speaker 1: something that you really can be proud of. I was
Speaker 1: so delighted to speak with him. Good morning, Oh, good morning.
Speaker 1: I love your red background. Wow.
Speaker 3: We may not know this, it's my aura.
Speaker 1: I can understand that, my friend. You know. I was privileged,
Speaker 1: as you know, to see you in Hadestown, for which
Speaker 1: you won a Tony in twenty nineteen. Yes, as you
Speaker 1: marked your fiftieth anniversary of working on the stage, and
Speaker 1: I want to go back to the beginning because I
Speaker 1: want our listeners to have a little idea of where
Speaker 1: you come from, what your roots are. I think it's
Speaker 1: really a great American story, but it's more attribute to
Speaker 1: your energy and your resilience and your determination in your aura.
Speaker 1: So what type of kid were you? Andre? Were you shy?
Speaker 1: Were you somebody who liked attention? I know you were
Speaker 1: one of eleven kids.
Speaker 3: My roots are in Baltimore, Maryland, and I would not
Speaker 3: describe myself as shy. I would describe myself as secretly ambitious.
Speaker 3: I come from meager beginnings and that was my impetus
Speaker 3: to achieve. There were very few of us who lived
Speaker 3: in the innermost of the inner cities in Baltimore who
Speaker 3: dared to dream. We were not encouraged to dream. We
Speaker 3: were not encouraged to be ambitious. We were not encouraged
Speaker 3: to think that we could have a slice of the
Speaker 3: vaunted American pie. But that was my first conscious thoughts.
Speaker 3: I want my slice of the American pie.
Speaker 1: Did anyone in your family know about your dream? Encourage
Speaker 1: your dream?
Speaker 3: Yes, everyone knew about my dream. I shared it with everyone.
Speaker 3: I wanted to be Sammy Davis Junior, who arguingly is
Speaker 3: the greatest entertainer of the tween kidh century. However, the
Speaker 3: response was, oh, you must be out of your mind.
Speaker 3: So when I didn't get the biscerport, I thought, well,
Speaker 3: let me put this in my vest close to my heart.
Speaker 3: Let me keep it there so it wouldn't be sullied.
Speaker 1: So Andre, tell us about your parents. They clearly had
Speaker 1: some kind of influence on you, as all parents do,
Speaker 1: one way or the other, and tell us about that.
Speaker 3: When I was old enough to have an adult conversation
Speaker 3: with my mother and father, my mother shared with me
Speaker 3: that her life's dream was to be a chorus girl.
Speaker 3: And I thought what she said? Yes, she didn't use
Speaker 3: the term dancers. She said chorus girl, my parents having
Speaker 3: been born around the turn of the twentieth century. And
Speaker 3: I said, so what happened? Her response was her father
Speaker 3: said to her, colored daughter of mine is going to
Speaker 3: shuffle her way through life. We've hardly shuffled our way
Speaker 3: off the plantation. Now that is very meaningful for me,
Speaker 3: because my maternal grandfather was the son of his master.
Speaker 3: So I decided, with that information I should ask my
Speaker 3: father amazingly, but in retrospect not amazingly at all. His
Speaker 3: response was his life dream was he wanted to be
Speaker 3: a singer. He had a beautiful tone of voice, and
Speaker 3: he sang in church, and he had a club that
Speaker 3: he sang with. And I said, well, what happened to
Speaker 3: that dream? He said, his father, my paternal grandfather, said,
Speaker 3: how do you expect to be a responsible husband? And
Speaker 3: father was such an irresponsible career. I tell that story
Speaker 3: because what happened is that both my parents deferred their dreams.
Speaker 3: I believe that I am the manifestation of those deferred dreams,
Speaker 3: because from the morning on a cold January day that
Speaker 3: I was evicted from my mother's womb, that was imprinted
Speaker 3: on my spirit. You are the manifestation of the deferred
Speaker 3: dreams of your parents. I've never had a question about
Speaker 3: my path in life.
Speaker 1: That's a great manifestation.
Speaker 3: I knew that in order to overcome these invisible but seeming,
Speaker 3: the insurmountable walls that we build around ourselves when we
Speaker 3: are constantly told that we cannot achieve, and that there
Speaker 3: is a demarcation in the society that says you stay
Speaker 3: where you are, there is no mobility.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, yeah right, And you know, sadly it is
Speaker 1: as you just said, sometimes from the people that you're
Speaker 1: living with, people who love you, who are afraid.
Speaker 3: For you, and they want to protect you.
Speaker 1: They want to protect you, and they unfortunately often evidence
Speaker 1: that in a way that you know, kind of tries
Speaker 1: to pull you down or push you back so that
Speaker 1: you don't get out into that world where you will
Speaker 1: get hurt. And then of course on the receiving end,
Speaker 1: you've got people who are you know, not expecting much
Speaker 1: or who are outright, you know, prejudiced and biased against
Speaker 1: you and your dream.
Speaker 3: I want to say something about protecting people. I know
Speaker 3: it is meant for good, but you cannot protect an
Speaker 3: individual from himself. You cannot protect an individual from his ambition.
Speaker 3: You cannot protect an individual from his destiny. You have
Speaker 3: to encourage an individual, especially when he's young. You must say,
Speaker 3: go forth and be the most authentic individual that you can.
Speaker 1: I want to ask one last question about this. So
Speaker 1: when was the first time you performed in public and
Speaker 1: you knew that the dream was not just a dream
Speaker 1: you kept close to your heart, it could be your reality.
Speaker 3: After the dream that I was protecting, I had the epiphany,
Speaker 3: and that was seeing the film Cabin in the Guy
Speaker 3: John Bubbles Sublette. When I saw his performance in Cabin
Speaker 3: in the Sky, the quiet voice that lives in the
Speaker 3: core of our souls and speaks to us only the truth,
Speaker 3: said to me, Andre, that's what you're going to do.
Speaker 1: Because all of a sudden you had an epiphany. Because
Speaker 1: you know, there's that old saying you can't be what
Speaker 1: you can't see exactly, and you saw it.
Speaker 3: I saw it. So as a young precocious Negro boy
Speaker 3: in Baltimore. You know about the society of friends, Yes,
Speaker 3: I do. They came to me through the Central Scholarship
Speaker 3: Bureau and said, you're a young man with potential. We
Speaker 3: would like to offer you a scholarship to go to college.
Speaker 3: The condition is that you must attend the college of
Speaker 3: our choice. I jumped at the opportunity, the first child
Speaker 3: in the family to go to college. Wilmington College in Wilmington, Ohio,
Speaker 3: a pristine, intimate Quaker school. And when I was going
Speaker 3: to college, and I know you remember this, it was
Speaker 3: derry girl to do your junior year abroad. I did
Speaker 3: my junior year in Denmark, and when I arrived in Denmark,
Speaker 3: I was received as the very opposite to the way
Speaker 3: I had been treated in Baltimore. In Baltimore, in many ways,
Speaker 3: I was discoming the earth, and I'm not exaggerating. In Denmark,
Speaker 3: I was royalty. Can I touch your skin? Can I
Speaker 3: touch your Can I touch your hair?
Speaker 1: I'm not kidding.
Speaker 3: There was in nineteen sixty seven. It blew through my mind.
Speaker 3: It opened my eyes to not only the place in
Speaker 3: which I had arrived, but the place from where I
Speaker 3: had come. And at that time, all the major cities
Speaker 3: were experiencing their urban insurrections, and I thought to myself,
Speaker 3: that's where I come from. So when I return, I
Speaker 3: have to leave that pristine Quaker environment and go to
Speaker 3: where the veil was being ripped from the eyes of
Speaker 3: political America. So I ended up at the University of Wisconsin,
Speaker 3: one of the hot beds of political change.
Speaker 1: You did jump right in, right right. But what an
Speaker 1: incredible realization that you had about yourself and your life
Speaker 1: as a relativetively young person. I mean, you're still what
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty years old when you decide exactly nineteen, I've
Speaker 1: got to get out into this world that's waiting for me.
Speaker 1: I've got an idea. Now where I came from and
Speaker 1: where I want to go. You graduated from Wisconsin Universe
Speaker 1: consin to Madison in I think nineteen seventy right.
Speaker 3: And the month I graduated, I won a position in
Speaker 3: Tom o'horgan's hair.
Speaker 1: That's so great.
Speaker 3: That was my first professional performance. Now that's the equation
Speaker 3: I want to share with anybody who's curious about ambition, accomplishment, destiny,
Speaker 3: any of those huge ideas. First you must have the dream. Second,
Speaker 3: you must have the epiphany. The third part of the
Speaker 3: equation is once on that Thursday, when someone comes to
Speaker 3: you and puts a check in your hand and pay
Speaker 3: for the dream that has now become the work. That's
Speaker 3: the equation. From there, your destiny will rise up, shake
Speaker 3: your hand and say welcome. I've been waiting for you
Speaker 3: all this time.
Speaker 1: But the epiphany and the opportunity also requires work. Once
Speaker 1: you were offered that position, you know in hair, you
Speaker 1: had to put in the work, didn't you.
Speaker 3: That is correct, But the work starts long before the
Speaker 3: paycheck arrives.
Speaker 1: You know. It strikes me that it was in the
Speaker 1: Wiz that you had your incredible breakout national moment, and
Speaker 1: how appropriate it is that a musical retelling of the
Speaker 1: Wizard of Oz through Black culture and music would be
Speaker 1: the groundbreaking success it was, and also your opportunity to
Speaker 1: manifest that dream. How did you end up in the Wiz?
Speaker 3: So I had gotten my first professional gig in Chicago.
Speaker 3: We're in the early seventies now, and we are creating
Speaker 3: an off loop theatrical experience, which is tantamount to what
Speaker 3: we call off Broadway. And a group of us from
Speaker 3: the University of Wisconsin founded the Organic Theater Company and
Speaker 3: created a show called Warp Warp. It's the science fiction show.
Speaker 3: Producer saw it and thought, wow, this would go well
Speaker 3: in New York. He brought us to New York in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy three. We were sumarily dismissed by the New
Speaker 3: York critics and the consensus was, listen, you dirty foot hippies,
Speaker 3: go back to Chicago now. When the company returned to Chicago,
Speaker 3: I said, guys, I love you all. You've been my
Speaker 3: family for four years. But now that I'm in New York,
Speaker 3: I'm going to take my chances here. And by the
Speaker 3: grace of four women friends of mine who were in
Speaker 3: New York working, and these four women would allow me
Speaker 3: to couch surf, take care of my cat, and you
Speaker 3: can sleep on my couch. Wash my dishes and you
Speaker 3: can sleep on my couch, and that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: As my mother would say. I didn't have a pot
Speaker 3: to piss in or a window to throw it out of.
Speaker 3: But I was right. But I was in the camelot.
Speaker 3: All I had to do was to discover my coat
Speaker 3: of arms, if you will. Ken Harper, the producer of
Speaker 3: The Whiz, cast a net. We are looking for the
Speaker 3: actress who would essay these roles. I got an audition.
Speaker 3: I was cut for the scarecrow. I was cut for
Speaker 3: the Lion. I was cut for the tin Man. Didn't
Speaker 3: matter to me because I wanted to be the Wizard.
Speaker 3: But I had to beg for it. And Ken Harper
Speaker 3: said to me, all right, I think he thought he
Speaker 3: was getting rid of me. Will allow you to audition
Speaker 3: for the Wiz. Now. When I got the call back,
Speaker 3: I had pulled my hair out to it's Jimmy Hendricks length.
Speaker 3: I was wearing my five inch silver study platforms. I
Speaker 3: was wearing my hot pants. I was wearing my halter
Speaker 3: that had love embroidered all over it. I was wearing
Speaker 3: my misie earrings. I was glorious and I went in
Speaker 3: and I sang and I think this is part of
Speaker 3: your growing up too.
Speaker 1: Midnight hour. Oh perfect right.
Speaker 3: I'm going a way till the midnight hour. So I
Speaker 3: get to the end of the song and Charlie Small's,
Speaker 3: who was the composer for The Wiz, stands up and shouts,
Speaker 3: that's my Wiz.
Speaker 1: Hallelujah, hallelujah.
Speaker 3: That's what I'm talking about. When you do the proper preparation,
Speaker 3: the destiny unfolds in one golden step after the next,
Speaker 3: not immediately. It takes time. But if you continue to
Speaker 3: apply yourself, if you continue to cultivate patience, if you
Speaker 3: continue to know yourself and be yourself and understand that
Speaker 3: authenticity is everything, you will receive the blessing that has
Speaker 3: your name written on it.
Speaker 1: I love that you know, you know. So much of
Speaker 1: what happens in live theater is ephemeral, but The Wiz
Speaker 1: was one of those moments where it was just like
Speaker 1: a great earthquake came down from on high and shook
Speaker 1: the foundation of American musical theater. In fact, I think
Speaker 1: your costume is now in the Smithsonian that is correct.
Speaker 1: National Museum of African American History and Culture. Did you
Speaker 1: know when you were in the Wiz it was literally
Speaker 1: a moment of destiny for the culture.
Speaker 3: Yes, we all knew as a community that we were
Speaker 3: part of a tectonic change in a paradigm, because prior
Speaker 3: to the Whiz, the only impact that black culture had
Speaker 3: on Broadway had come many years earlier with Lorraine Hansby
Speaker 3: Raising in the Sun. It was time that the traditionally
Speaker 3: inhospitable terrain of the Great White Way underwent the conditioning
Speaker 3: for what we now call diversity, equity, and inclusion. We
Speaker 3: didn't use those terms in the early seventies, but we
Speaker 3: knew that we were setting the stage for a change.
Speaker 3: And here's the miracle of the Whiz. Stephanie Mills played
Speaker 3: the role of Dorothy. Once you see Dorothy as a
Speaker 3: young girl of color, that is what universalizes the message
Speaker 3: of the Wiz, which is there's no place like home.
Speaker 3: That's a great lesson to learn. That's one of the
Speaker 3: greatest lessons to learn in someone's life. It is we
Speaker 3: go searching for our purpose everywhere, and then at some
Speaker 3: point we learn, oh, there's no place like home. As
Speaker 3: long as that was the exclusive domain of a young,
Speaker 3: although brilliant white girl. It didn't resonate for the majority
Speaker 3: of young people. Once Dorothy has melanin in her skin,
Speaker 3: then that message of there's no place like home becomes.
Speaker 1: Universal, becomes a message for everybody, everybody. We'll be right back. Well.
Speaker 1: You know. The other thing that, of course I love,
Speaker 1: is in Hadestown, where you are again starring, which I
Speaker 1: also think of as a groundbreaking musical. You're playing a
Speaker 1: Greek god, Kermes, and you are omniscient. You are someone
Speaker 1: who is like leading the whole audience and all of
Speaker 1: us through the story. I loved your performance. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Thank you, absolutely just was knocked out when I think
Speaker 1: about it. Though. You are now again because after the pandemic,
Speaker 1: Hadestown reopened, so you're back on the stage. You are,
Speaker 1: I think, still doing eight shows a week.
Speaker 3: Eight shows.
Speaker 1: Look, that's not an easy schedule at any age, any age.
Speaker 1: And when you accepted your Tony Award, I'll never forget
Speaker 1: this in twenty nineteen, you shared with the audience your
Speaker 1: three Carnival rules for sustainability and long ngevity, and although
Speaker 1: you put it in the context of the arts, I
Speaker 1: would say I think these are pretty good rules for anybody.
Speaker 1: Could you share them with our listeners on this podcast.
Speaker 3: I'd be happy to the context in which I learned
Speaker 3: it was the arts. Anything you want to do, anything
Speaker 3: that you want to master, will be enhanced if the
Speaker 3: arts are part of your preparation. You don't have to
Speaker 3: become an actor. You don't have to dance, you don't
Speaker 3: have to sing. You just have to bebble the hard
Speaker 3: edges by saying or understanding that you are an artist.
Speaker 3: You are a good mother, you have cultivated the art
Speaker 3: of parenthood. You're a good construction worker. You've mastered the
Speaker 3: art of building things. You are a good cleaner, garbage collector,
Speaker 3: you have massive the art of sanitation. Cultivate the artistry
Speaker 3: of whatever it is you do, and then you can
Speaker 3: apply these three cardinal rules Colnal rule number one. Surround
Speaker 3: yourself with people whose eyes light up when they see
Speaker 3: you coming Coldinal rule number two. Slowly is the fastest
Speaker 3: way to get to where you want to be. Colon
Speaker 3: the rule number three. The top of one mountain is
Speaker 3: the bottom of the next, so keep climbing.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate the way that you took those cardinal
Speaker 1: rules and expanded them to what we do in our
Speaker 1: everyday lives, making it clear everybody can be an artist.
Speaker 1: Yes in his or her own way.
Speaker 3: Yes, do what you can do. It's a potlucks, bring
Speaker 3: your best dish.
Speaker 1: You Literally, I could talk to you all day, my friend.
Speaker 1: I just wish you all of the blessings of this
Speaker 1: extraordinary life that you're leading. May it continue with joy
Speaker 1: and gratitude and you continue to find ways to share
Speaker 1: it with Thank you. It really means the world to
Speaker 1: me personally.
Speaker 3: May I have the last word?
Speaker 1: Yes, you may.
Speaker 3: Hillary Rodham, Clinton, Madam President, Thank you for allowing me
Speaker 3: to have this conversation with you. I'm taking it to
Speaker 3: everyone whose eyes light up when they see me.
Speaker 1: Come You and Me Both. Is brought to you by iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: We're produced by Julie Subren, Kathleen Russo and Rob Russo,
Speaker 1: with help from Juma Aberdeen, Oscar Flores, Lindsay Hoffman, Brianna Johnson,
Speaker 1: Nick Merrill, Lona Valmorro and Benita Zuman. Our engineer is
Speaker 1: Zach McNeice and the original music is by Forrest Gray.
Speaker 1: If you like you and Me Both, tell someone else
Speaker 1: about it, and if you're not already a subscriber, what
Speaker 1: are you waiting for? You can subscribe to you and
Speaker 1: me both on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening, and, as Andre says,
Speaker 1: keep climbing. I'll see you next week.