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