ALBUM PODCAST with Joe Iconis and Jennifer Ashley Tepper
ALBUM PODCAST is a behind-the-songs deep dive into the creative process of writer and performer Joe Iconis. Through a series of conversations with his friend/collaborator Jennifer Ashley Tepper, Joe will offer a behind the scenes glimpse of the writing and producing of his 44-song epic Album.
All Episodes
"Try Again" (Joe Iconis & Family)
Try Again was written in July 2015, after Joe's musical Be More Chill opened amid a wave and hype and received a show-killing review from the Grey Lady. The song deals in the specifics of an artist's life, but the hope is that it is relatable to everyone.
"Last on Land" (Joe Iconis & Family)
This group 11 O’Clock number is the centerpiece song from Joe's Bloodsong of Love. The entire original cast of that musical are featured on the track, along with a resplendent choir arranged by the oft-mentioned Joel Waggoner.
"Find the Bastard" (Eric William Morris)
Find The Bastard is about being on a mission and is the "theme song" of Iconis' Bloodsong of Love, his spaghetti western musical. Joe and Jenn discuss the style of theatre songs as stand alone songs and how the end of Album's track list becomes more and more like a live album as it wraps up.
"It's All Good" (Jason Tam, Nick Blaemire, Lance Rubin, & Jason SweetTooth Williams)
Joe Iconis boldly asked the internet, "What does music mean to you?" and got a beautifully sentimental response from a Long Island high school student that inspired the vulnerability expressed in It's All Good.
"Amphibian" (Will Roland)
From Joe Iconis' musical, The Black Suits, Amphibian is a song about songwriting. It was a surprise hit in the show that audiences responded to with enthusiasm. William Finn advised Joe about not dwelling on the imperfect rhyme between the words amphibian and oblivion.
"Party Hat" (Lauren Marcus & Eric William Morris)
"I'm gonna put a party hat on my cat", was an earworm that was stuck in Joe Iconis' mind for a long time until he brought it to fruition in the summer of 2012 for a concert at The Beechman.
"Flesh and Bone" (The Robot's Song) Jason SweetTooth Williams
This song uses technology as a metaphor. A robot's battery dies throughout the song while he dreams of being happy, human, and real. The production on this track is more electronic focused, incorporating synths and computer sounds.
"Tightrope Walker / Mountain Climber / Me" (Molly Hager)
Tightrope Walker / Mountain Climber / Me is one of two songs that were written specifically for Album. Joe wanted to write a piece specifically for Molly Hager and remembered a half-finished song from 2012 that he thought might be worth a second look.
"Starting to Forget" (Badia Farha)
The oldest song on the record, "Starting to Forget" was written when Joe was an undergrad at NYU. It's based on source material from Brighton Beach Memoirs and inspired by Joe's own grandfather who passed away a few years before he wrote this song.
"Him Today, Gone Tomorrow" (Shakina Nayfack)
Him Today, Gone Tomorrow is a rock and roll banger created with Shakina Nayfack for her musical, Manifest Pussy, an autobiographical story of Shakina's journey to gender affirming surgery. This song's sentiment speaks to how the middle of a transition is just as valid as the beginning or the end.
"Velociraptor" (Liz Lark Brown)
Written for the incomparable and ludicrously talented Liz Lark Brown, Velociraptor is a song about a creature who doesn't fit in. While the specifics involve a dino on the dating scene in modern-day New York City, the tune has become something of a theme song for a wider range of humans.
"My Best Friend's A Skeleton" (George Salazar & Jeremy Morse)
An ode to an unconventional friendship in a whimsical yet ghoulish context. Joe wrote this song using the "my (blank) is a (blank)" format he'd been trying to crack for a while!
"Muthers R Speshel (Wen Yer Sad)" (Lin-Manuel Miranda)
Muthers R Speshel (Wen Yer Sad) is a unique collaboration between Joe Iconis at age 6 and Joe Iconis at age 30. The track is an updated version of the first song Joe ever wrote, interpreted here by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Ad-Libs by Lin.
"(Do) The Slide Whistle" (Lance Rubin and Jordan Stanley)
This song was born... out of a joke. One of Joe's trashiest songs, this is ironically one of the most suitable for children. Sort of! There was this one time that Lance Rubin made up a fake dance craze called The Slide Whistle.
"I Was A Teenage Delinquent!" (Lauren Marcus and Molly Hager)
The song that inspired the musical LOVE IN HATE NATION. Originally written as a one-off love song paying homage to 50s/60s Girl Gang films, Joe ended up adapting his own standalone into a full-length musical romance.
"Social Worker" (Nick Blaemire)
Another song from THE BLACK SUITS, "Social Worker" made the final cut of the musical. Joe regards this as a song that begins to bridge the gap between his early work and later work.
"Joey Is a Punk Rocker" (Annie Golden)
The character of Megan got cut from The Black Suits and along with her went her big number: "Joey is a Punk Rocker." Here, it makes a dramatic return nw, as sung by the incomparable Annie Golden, a woman who truly embodies the ragtagness and youthful energy of rock and roll music.
"A Guy That I’d Kinda Be Into" (Seth Eliser)
One of the few songs on this album that can also be heard on an OCR, "A Guy That I'd Kinda Be Into" is from Be More Chill, but this is an extra special version meant to live on its own outside of the show. The multi-talented Seth Eliser is the performer and arranger of this rendition.
"52" (Danny Burstein)
The writing of this song led to one of the last fights that Joe and Jen ever had. Joe waited until the last minute to write this song for a concert Jen was producing, Jen needed the song a week in advance, Joe didn't deliver until hours before the show, and Jen was (rightfully) PTFO.
"The Prisoner's Christmas Song" (Grace McLean)
This is the first full Christmas song that Joe has ever written. He loves New York City, he loves a cocktail, but he REALLY loves Christmas (the holiday garbage, not the religious stuff). Much to Jen's dismay, this song is not secretly about Bernie Madoff.
"Right Place / Wrong Time" (Eric William Morris & Katrina Rose Dideriksen)
This song is one of Joe's absolute favorites he's ever written. It's about feeling stuck, like your ship is waiting to come in and may never arrive. Very autobiographical, the feeling of this song is what Joe was feeling in the exact moment it was written (and even more recently when Joe and Jen recorded this episode).
"(Run Away From You)" (Jason SweetTooth Williams)
This is a song title in parenthesis so it won't spoil the joke. Once you listen, you'll get it. Sung by Jason SweetTooth Williams, who Joe Iconis is simply in love with, was basically born to sing this song. The episode devolved into a SweetTooth lovefest...
"Norman" (Lance Rubin)
Inspired by the movie Psycho, this song "Normal" was penned in 2010 and first performed a Halloween gig at The Beechman. The idea was writing a cheesy love song from the point of view of Norman Bates. Sung by Lance Rubin, this song only gets better every time he performs it.
"The Saddest Girl in the World" (Kerry Butler)
Learn how to "pull an Iconis" by listening to this episode. In addition, this song "The Saddest Girl in the World" was written specifically for Kerry Butler, who played a one-legged dancer in a 24-Hour musical Joe wrote with the great Jonathan Marc Sherman.
"Out of Sight / Out of Mind" (Krysta Rodriguez)
Initially called "The Buddy Song", this is another tune that Joe renamed to include a slash in the title. As interpreted by Krysta Rodriguez, the song turned into something different from its original intent and Charlie Rosen's period orchestrations provide a reframing that serves the message of the song well.
"The Nurse and the Addict" (Taylor Trensch)
Based on Stephen King's Misery this is a song that truly gets under your skin and brings the subtext of King's novel to the forefront. A rumination on the cyclical nature of addiction and how it relates to the life of an artist.
"Helen Sharp" (Lorinda Lisitza)
This is a song in which Joe channels the jealousy and envy he feels toward other musical theater writers and filters it through the lens of Robert Zemeckis's 1992 film Death Becomes Her.
"Sympathy for the Killer" (Liz Lark Brown)
"Sympathy for the Killer" is a peculiar little 1920's-style number which repurposes the classic horror film killer-victim scenario as a metaphor for a modern relationship. Sung by the fearless Liz Lark Brown, the song aks the question: who is really pursuing who?
"Haddonfield, 15 Years Later (For Judith)" (Joel Waggoner)
Have you ever wondered what a song inspired by the plight of HALLOWEEN's Michael Myers might be like? Well, Joe Iconis sure did. A nod to his love of Halloween (the day and the movie), "Haddonfield, 15 Years Later (For Judith)" tells a simple story of Mike Myers getting out of the hospital, putting his mask back on, and heading back to his hometown.
"Building a Fort" (Harrison Chad)
As a kid, the disappointment of dropping an ice cream on the ground feels like the end of the world. As an adult, the circumstances of our disappointments change, but the feeling is the same. "Building a Fort" is sung by Harrison Chad, who is always able to embody youth and adulthood.
"Yesterdays / I Can’t Relate" (Jason Tam & Jason Veasey)
Originally written for a proposed T.V. project, this ode to the complexity of nostalgia is performed by The Jasons: Tam and Veasey. Hear about the origins of the song and the implications of being nostalgic for a time you weren't around for in the first place.
"All The Mistakes That He Made About The Girl" (Joe Iconis)
A companion piece to the previous episode "The Song", this one is brings the underlying to the surface. It's about a writer, still definitely not Joe Iconis, who is coming to terms with only being able to write his life versus living it.
"The Song" (Joe Iconis)
Upon hearing that multiple people in his life were worried that Joe would write a song about them, he did what any jerk songwriter would do: he wrote a song about it. Is this song about Joe himself? Nope. Definitely not. Is it about Emily? Who can say...
"The Actress" (Katrina Rose Diderikson)
A tragic and hideous tale of an actress navigating a path through a dangerous obstacle course of high-belting and tasteless riffing. Joe's lifelong collaborator Katrina Rose Diderikson expertly acts her way in and out of this epic story-song which is both critical of and complicit in our current musical theater vocal landscape.
"Play the Princess" (Destinee Rea and L Morgan Lee)
A cut song from the Joe Iconis musical "Bloodsong of Love," which itself is a wild musical theater interpretation of the Spaghetti Western film genre, "Play the Princess" is another song about art and theater, this time examining the boxes society places us in and the roles we are assigned.
"64" (Alan H. Green, George Salazar, Jose Restrepo)
A song about the history of an actual New York City street, "64' takes us back to the past, before Lincoln Center existed, to explore the less glamorous side of tearing down the past to build the future. Performed by Alan H.
"Jeff" (Jeremy Morse)
Depicting a real-life situation almost every New Yorker can relate to, "Jeff," sung by Jeremy Morse, tells the story of a man seeing a neighbor in the buff in a nearby building and the existential crisis that follows. What happens to him in the end?
"The Protector" (Jason SweetTooth Williams)
An intentionally mysterious song involving impossibly complicated states, both mental and geographical. A character piece written for Jason SweetTooth Williams, who navigates the strangeness like no one else could. http://BPN.fm/Album to get the music.
"Lydia's Song" (Lauren Marcus)
Sung by Lauren Marcus, this haunting song was inspired by a certain character in a certain movie featuring a ghost-with-the-most. It wasn't part of the subsequent musical based on the movie, but we're sharing it with you nonetheless nonetheless nonetheless.
"The Answer" (Aaron Tveit)
One of the oldest songs on ALBUM, "The Answer" is from Joe's first full-length musical, The Black Suits, written as his NYU Tisch Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program Senior thesis.
"Archie" (Andrew Barth Feldman)
A straightforward explosion of maximalist pop that conveys the youthful optimism and dilated-pupil enthusiasm of Riverdale’s favorite son; “Archie” is performed by Andrew Barth Feldman, who Joe first saw as a 14-year-old Roger in RENT.
"Kevin" (Andrew Rannells)
Sung by Andrew Rannells and written to meet a deadline for a concert of songs about Brooklyn (the place, not the show), KEVIN takes us to an urban headspace full of apathy and incident... nothing like the real borough. Or maybe exactly like the real borough.
"Ammonia" (Heidi Blickenstaff)
What happens when Heidi Blickenstaff records her viral YouTube hit in a studio for the first time? Did you know Joe wrote "Ammonia" specifically for Heidi 10 years ago and this is the first time they've returned to the material?
"Album" (Joe Iconis)
The title track of ALBUM, this discussion of the song “Album” dives into why the hell Joe decided to create this 44-song opus in the first place. Join legendary composer Joe Iconis and longtime friend and collaborator Jennifer Ashley Tepper as they dive into the past, present, and future to figure out just what makes this ALBUM tick.
ALBUM PODCAST - Trailer
ALBUM PODCAST is a behind-the-songs deep dive into the creative process of writer and performer Joe Iconis. Through a series of conversations with his friend/collaborator Jennifer Ashley Tepper, Joe will offer a behind the scenes glimpse of the writing and producing of his 44-song epic Album.
© Broadway Podcast Network, All Rights Reserved