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[0:00] Joe Iconis: Hi, I'm Joe Iconis and I'm Jennifer Ashley Tepper. You're listening to the ALBUM PODCAST and today we're talking about Do The Slide Whistle. Now this is a very special track because it's a dance number brought to life on the album by Jordan Stanley and Lance Rubin and the whole gang. It's a song that you should listen to and then probably attempt the dance at home and on this episode we'll tell you where the hell this weirdo thing came from.

[0:57] Joe Iconis: This episode is about Do The Slide Whistle, a fascinating show in Joe Iconis and family history. Joe, this song is like none other that you have ever written. How were you inspired to write this song?

[1:12] Joe Iconis: Okay, this song was born out of a joke. Haha. Truly. This is definitely the trashiest song on the album, for sure. It's trashy in every way. If this whole album is about the dance between highbrow, lowbrow, uptown, downtown, Do The Slide Whistle is like lowbrow, downtown.

[1:43] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: You just described it as trashy and yet I can't think of a better song on the album for children to listen to. So it's sort of a lot of different places.

[1:51] Joe Iconis: Yeah. No, but trashy and it's very inelegant. It's like a fast food song or something. I was in Sharon, Connecticut doing a show with John Simpkins, my favorite director and great collaborator. He ran this theater called the Sharon Playhouse in Sharon, Connecticut for a while. And we were doing a concert, a family concert there. And we were rehearsing. And it was myself and Lance Rubin and Jordan Stanley and a couple other people. I think maybe Molly Hager was there. Maybe Lauren was there. I don't remember. But I definitely know Lance and Jordan were there. And we were hanging out around the piano, rehearsing songs. And it was a time when I had a lot going on and we were about to do a show in New York City.

And I was trying to finish the song, I Was a Teenage Delinquent while I was there because I knew that I wanted to premiere it at this concert that was happening in a few days. And so I was trying to finish the song so I could get it sent off to the ladies who were singing it, Rachel Lee and Jenny Donahue. And so I'm trying to finish, I Was a Teenage Delinquent. It's on my brain, trying to rehearse the song, the show that we're going to do at Sharon, Connecticut. That's like a night of my songs. And we were just sort of screwing around during rehearsal. And Lance started making up this fake dance called the slide whistle.

[3:37] Joe Iconis: Because we were using a slide whistle on the show, I guess. And so Lance was just truly screwing around. And he was like, let's do the slide whistle. He was just being an asshole, essentially. And then I started playing piano. And if you know me, you'll know that I'm not a big jam person. I don't like to jam. I do not like to just play piano and have people make up things on other instruments. And I don't like musical improv, really. It's like making up songs on the spot. That's so not my thing. But in this moment, it was kind of funny enough where I was sort of going with it. And I was sort of playing this like 60s-ish riff. And then this idea of this fake dance craze called the slide whistle was born.

And so then, a few days later, I was like, you know what? I'm just going to write this song for real. And I wrote Do The Slide Whistle as if the dance craze was a real dance craze. And I thought it would be so funny in the concert that we did if I pretended like the slide whistle was a real dance.

[4:53] Joe Iconis: And we did the song as a sort of surprise secret song coming out of banter. So in the same way that when I was hanging out with Lance and Jordan, we sort of organically started making up this nonsense about a fake 60s dance craze. When I was bantering in the concert, I would sort of naturally get into talking about this dance craze I remember from when I was a kid. And then we would just do this full song. And yeah, and that's what happened. And that's why that song exists. And we've done it a few times. I've always loved novelty songs of the 50s and 60s, and especially ones that have dances associated with them like, you know, Locomotive or the Monster Mash or anything like that. And I always kind of imagined that Do The Slide Whistle would be like, would be like the B side of a better song by a group that only ever put out one record.

Like, I think that Do The Slide Whistle is like some group that was like, we got to capitalize on this dance craze shit. And they hastily put together this song that was not very good, just to get it out real quick. And so I think that is where the slide whistle comes from.

[6:08] Joe Iconis: I will say I love this song so much. I don't know that I would have expected it to make it onto the album just because it feels like such a special novelty. Like it was a surprise to be like, oh my god, we're actually including it. I love that you did. It's performed also, you know, talking about Jordan Stanley, folks who know the Christmas show might know him as Yo-Ha, or many of the other roles that he's played over the years in the show.

[6:37] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Very well.

[6:38] Joe Iconis: Yeah, this song. I also almost expect like this to be the song that just like how Flanagan's Law, like whatever you believe that's going to happen, it's the opposite that will happen. This will be the song on the album that someone discovers. And it's like, can we put this in a 1950s sequence in our big Hollywood movie? Like, yeah, this would be the unlikely choice from this album to break through in some funny way.

[7:02] Joe Iconis: Yeah, I think it's very possible. There's just like nothing. Yeah, there's just nothing to it. You know, and it's something that I love about it is that when I decided that I wanted to put on the album, I was like, and we have to treat it like it's just as important as all of the other songs. And so the, you know, the arrangement, it's huge. It's like so humongous sounding, this song that probably does not deserve the care with which we gave it. But it just feels like it's like a misfit song. You know, it kind of doesn't belong. It doesn't really go anywhere. It sounds kind of wrong. You know, it's like it doesn't fit. The song just simply doesn't fit. But I love it a lot. And the, you know, we had Jordan and Lance just kind of, you know, just kind of riff, just kind of do a bunch of stuff.

And there's some fun like 1950s lingo that I put in there, like, come on snakes, let's rattle. I love sort of like, you know, arcane phrases like that. So there's a lot of that. And you know, there's moments in the song where it's like, Lance and Jordan are talking over each other. And it's just, it sounds like madness. It sounds like such a mess in a way that I love, you know, and I remember in mixing in like, was like trying to make it neater. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, just like put them on top of each other. So it sounds like it sounds like what is going on in that recording studio, where it's like, there should only be one of them. You know, it's like Jordan is like singing the lead vocal, and then Lance is doing the dance like there should probably only be one. But I like that. It's just like, it's extra. It's the most extra song on the album, needlessly extra.

[8:44] Joe Iconis: Lance doing this dance is honestly one of the funniest things I've ever seen. It's you can't no one else could ever do this dance like him ever. It's the most like Lance Rubin ask hilarious, like physicalization of this song. Seeing it live in concert is always so so funny. I guess I won't say no one there could be a whole army of lances that create the recreate his dance, but it's it's very, very good.

[9:06] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yeah, it's just it's just special. You know, it's special when he when he does it. I think because he's not a dancer first that him doing this dance feels it just feels very alive. That's really it's really incredible. I will say though that I rewrote or I wrote I wrote two lines for this song for the album. Because when it's performed live, it had it was it has always been really short because a lot of the song is about teaching the audience the dance. And so I thought I better write another little mini verse. And, and so it says, the line is tell tell Susie and Jenny and Terpsichore. Now it's time for everyone to dance with me. And Terpsichore is the muse of dance. No one ever everyone always asked me about that. And then Susie is a call out to to love and hate nation. And Jenny is a call out to rewrite.

[10:01] Joe Iconis: I love that. I love knowing that. I learned the Terpsichore thing from the genius lyrics when I was reading them because it's like a footnote to shout out to everyone who does the footnotes on genius lyrics. And you know, I always enjoy reading those. But yeah, I love the album version of this song. It's dance at home in your living room kids. Yeah, dance it dance at home and you know, invite your neighbors over to do the slide whistle. Don't forget to wear 1950s poodle skirt.

[10:34] Joe Iconis: Hey, thanks so much for listening or watching to my podcast. Do me a favor and go to wherever you just listen to or watch this thing and subscribe or like or give us a great rating or review and then head to bpn.fm slash album to find out even more information about this podcast. More ways to watch more ways to listen and check out my album album. Thanks so much for hanging out. Album podcast is executive produced by Liz Armstrong, produced by Dori Berenstein, Alan Seals, Kim Garris and the rest of the team at the Broadway Podcast Network. Be sure to visit bpn.fm slash album for both audio and video versions of this podcast and to listen to album.

[11:19] Joe Iconis: Hot dog. That was a jam. That's a one. I love my slide whistle.