This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Joe Iconis: Hi, I'm Joe Iconis and I'm Jennifer Ashley Tepper.

[0:10] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: This is ALBUM PODCAST and today we're going to be talking about The Prisoner's Christmas Song.

[0:15] Joe Iconis: As sung by Grace McLean, this song is about lots of things, but might not be about what you think it's about.

[0:21] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yeah, but it's definitely a song for all the bad kids at Christmas time and every time really.

[0:29] Joe Iconis: She asked me, what do you mean? And I just had to come clean. I told her...

[0:38] Joe Iconis: Okay, so The Prisoner's Christmas Song is a song that premiered at the Lincoln Center event.

[0:44] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Correct?

[0:45] Joe Iconis: For the holidays. Am I right?

[0:48] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yes, the holiday songbook, I bet it's called. I'm pointing this out because so many of these songs have premiered at specific places we've talked about. And I think this is a new one.

[0:55] Joe Iconis: It's John Zendarsik's series at Lincoln Center.

[0:59] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yeah, at the Bruno Walter at Lincoln Center.

[1:02] Joe Iconis: Yeah, and it was a holiday concert of new musical theater songs. And I guess this was the first Christmas song I wrote because I think it predates Celebrate Christmas with Me.

[1:15] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Well, it's the first full Christmas song you've written.

[1:18] Joe Iconis: I would argue that there's a lot of Christmas songs in the Christmas show that, you know, qualify.

[1:23] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:24] Joe Iconis: The first full Christmas song I wrote. And you know, I love Christmas. I just love it. And I'm very, you know, about a lot of things. I'm really like, you know, I like... I'm actually not a cynical person at all, but I, you know, I like New York City. I like things that are real. I like, you know, like gritty stuff and all that, but like, I just like, I'm just a sucker for Christmas. I just unapologetically love it.

[1:52] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: I don't love it in like a hipster-y, you know, like I'm over it kind of way. I just love it. I think Christmas is super fun. I like all the iconography and all the, you know, just holiday garbage. I don't care about any of the religious stuff, but I like the characters.

[2:12] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Anyone who's seen the Joe Iconis Christmas extravaganza in the past decade plus, like, knows this about you, that like, you want December to look like Christmas. It's just thrown up all over everything. And so, you know, I like the idea of writing a proper Christmas song. And I feel like I always try to subvert the expectations of an audience when it comes to standalone songs anyway, but knowing that this song was going to be premiered at this concert of new musical theater songs, I had a pretty good idea of, you know, the types of Christmas songs that people are going to hear.

[2:49] Joe Iconis: And even the, like, the funny ones, I was, you know, usually when you got like a group of new Christmas songs, there's like the, you know, there's the, like, songs from a New World song rip-offs with like the, you know, like whatever, like disgruntled, you know, insert Christmas figure here, or, you know, there's like the, you know, the, you know, a gender flip on Scrooge. There's like all these things. And then there's like the ones that are about people's kids, just, you know, whatever. And they're all great. But I was like, I want to do something totally different than no one else is going to do. And so that kind of fuels this particular song about someone who's committed a crime at Christmas time.

[3:28] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: What year was this that you wrote it?

[3:31] Joe Iconis: This was probably 2009.

[3:33] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Right. So it was very much inspired by like real life events around that time.

[3:37] Joe Iconis: Yes.

[3:38] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: That's the question. Wait, was it?

[3:40] Joe Iconis: No, I just mean like...

[3:41] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Did I commit a crime?

[3:42] Joe Iconis: No, no. I mean, things in the news that like reflected this.

[3:47] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Am I wrong? Was it?

[3:48] Joe Iconis: No.

[3:50] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Wait, am I forgetting?

[3:51] Joe Iconis: I don't know. I always thought that this was inspired by a certain like, you know, millionaires that like did terrible things in the news at the time.

[3:56] Joe Iconis: Oh my God. No. This is a real record for us.

[4:00] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: No.

[4:01] Joe Iconis: Was it like a Bernie Madoff thing?

[4:03] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yes.

[4:04] Joe Iconis: Yes. That's what I was getting at.

[4:06] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Oh, wow. No. Wow. That's insane. I thought this was about that all these years.

[4:11] Joe Iconis: That's so... this is our first time.

[4:13] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: But this is, I guess, this is a thing of...

[4:14] Joe Iconis: But it could be.

[4:15] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: It could be.

[4:16] Joe Iconis: You know, you want people to think that the Buddy song could be about anything. So why can't the person write a Christmas song?

[4:21] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: But that is so... that's so funny.

[4:23] Joe Iconis: No. Like, I did not. I did not think of that. I honestly... And again, but that's the thing. I liked the idea of the, you know, I love in a movie when somebody has an eye patch or somebody has a scar or something and it's never explained because that's how we like move about life, you know?

[4:41] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yeah.

[4:42] Joe Iconis: We like, you know, don't have to go to the doctor and get a X-ray or everything. Sure. And so I love the idea of like a person saying crime, crime, crime, crime, crime, and never actually saying what the crime was.

[4:49] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Right.

[4:50] Joe Iconis: And it's, you know, that is fun and mysterious to me, especially in a Christmas song.

[4:57] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yeah.

[4:58] Joe Iconis: And so I will say that when I was thinking about it, I was thinking about it as a violent crime. But it could totally be, you know, a white collar crime or... I just feel like I thought that because it came out around...

[5:09] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yeah.

[5:10] Joe Iconis: ...that time. I mean, maybe that was informing me in some way, but when I hear it now, though, and especially in the Grace version, I think of it as a violent crime.

[5:19] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yeah.

[5:20] Joe Iconis: Yeah. Grace McLean really makes this song her own.

[5:22] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Wow. Does she ever?

[5:24] Joe Iconis: Man, you know, I just think she's the coolest.

[5:28] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yeah.

[5:29] Joe Iconis: She's the best. Grace... I've known Grace for years, but the two of us did a production of Pump Boys and Dinettes at the Weston Playhouse in Weston, Vermont, with Jason Sweettooth-Williams, and Seth Ellisar, and Molly Hager, and Lorenzo Wolfe.

[5:46] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Lorenzo Wolfe.

[5:47] Joe Iconis: Yeah. Yeah. And that was such a great production, and it was like my dream always to have a Joe Iconis and family production of a musical that you hadn't written, like a classic Broadway musical, and that was so perfect.

[5:57] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yeah.

[5:58] Joe Iconis: And it also was... I feel like it was exciting because a lot of people in that group have been in Joe Iconis and family for years, but Grace was part of it more so after that production.

[6:08] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yeah.

[6:09] Joe Iconis: Yeah. A hundred percent. And so this song, it doesn't get performed a whole bunch, but I've always really liked it a lot, and when I had the idea of having Grace do it, I was so happy when she said yes. And it's a song that I think works... It's worked real well when I've done it in the past. Jason Sweettooth-Williams has done it, Ray Munoz sang it.

[6:32] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[6:33] Joe Iconis: At a Christmas show. That was his only ever performance at the Christmas show because the Christmas show got too long and busy to hold my Christmas song in it, but she elevated it in such an unreal way.

[6:46] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yeah.

[6:48] Joe Iconis: Like it's, you know, we've talked a lot about people sort of reinventing songs or making them click in a certain way, and her vocal performance of it is just like, it just takes it to another stratosphere.

[6:58] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: She also, I remember being in the studio when she was recording it, and she's such an incredible performer in that you're like, oh my God, Grace is giving you like a 10 in terms of energy, in terms of vocals, in terms of everything about her performance as an actor. And then, you know, you stop recording and she's like, hey, like, does anyone see a Diet Coke? And you're just like, who are you? Like, how are you both of those people? She's just a very, like, very casual kind of like humble...

[7:22] Joe Iconis: I don't know. It's an interesting dichotomy.

[7:24] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yeah.

[7:26] Joe Iconis: She's so... the way that she performs, you expect her to be insane.

[7:31] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yeah.

[7:32] Joe Iconis: Like you inspect her, you expect her to be someone who's just like off the wall and like, you know, like all over the place and like, you know, some like, like, you know, character from like a Jonathan Demme movie in the 80s. And she's just not. She's like so normal, so cool, so warm, and so chill.

[7:49] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yeah.

[7:50] Joe Iconis: And her, like her stage persona and her, you know, performance go to is this like live wire, you know, explosion. She's just like, she's fireworks all the time. And yeah. And I really love, I love her. I love her performance of the song. And when I listen to it, and maybe that's why now I'm just like, no, it's no Bernie Madoff. Like, this is a violent crime. But when I listen to it, there is there's something so aggressive about the way she sings it, but also so alluring. And so, you know, again, charismatic, that it feels like as this, it feels like this person is, is, is, you know, obviously, like, furiously angry, and, and like a little bit like proud of what Yeah, you know, she has that sense of like, you know, like, I really, you know, I really gave it to him good.

[8:51] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yeah, whatever she did. I guess it's also related. I didn't think of it till now. But like her ability to transform just like we're talking about in performance and who she is, like, that's what gives her the ability to like, you can give her something where Oh, this song was typically performed by like, an older male actor or like, this is a song for a child or whatever it is. And she's very, like, she's just very transformative.

[9:13] Joe Iconis: Yeah.

[9:14] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Oh, yeah. 100%.

[9:17] Joe Iconis: Because she's like, she gets, you know, like many of the actors on the album, but like, she gets to the heart of it, you know, she's not like, she's not playing the character from the outside. She's playing from the inside.

[9:26] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: From the inside.

[9:27] Joe Iconis: And the like, and all the vocal scatting and the growling and all of the stuff, the screaming and it's coming. It's coming from inside.

[9:31] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: It's coming from inside the house.

[9:33] Joe Iconis: You know, she's not like, Oh, I'm playing this, like, you know, a hobo or like, it's, it's, it's all internal. And so it makes sense. You know, it is funny, I have, I have a lot of songs since, you know, since I started working professionally, that have been written for one, you know, someone who identifies as one gender, and then have then been performed by someone of another gender. And that's always been something that has just felt like, you know,

[10:01] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yeah, of course, people are people and people can interpret songs in different ways.

[10:06] Joe Iconis: Yeah. And it's like, and I, you know, I've always been somebody who's like, I never want to change pronouns in a song unless it like makes sense. And sometimes it does. Sometimes it's like, Oh, yeah, the song should be sung by, you know, a woman or a man or, or whatever. But like this, I love that she's, you know, then the opening lines of the song, you know, I've been a naughty little boy. It's just kind of like, I don't, I don't know, does that mean that she's playing a guy? Does that mean, you know, what does it mean? Who knows?

[10:33] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Right, right, right.

[10:34] Joe Iconis: Yeah. So and I, yeah, there's just it all, you know, I feel like in an effort to just sort of get to like the universality of all of it, it's, um, yeah, yeah, like full reaction to the song when it was performed in the context of like, here's a bunch of new holiday songs by writers. Like, I was there, but I'm trying to remember if people were like, Whoa, people were into it.

[10:58] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Definitely surprised.

[11:04] Joe Iconis: And you know, it has a this is one that has a really nice call and response. I love a call and response and a song. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. It's a neat musical theater song. I feel like, you know, I see I see more of them pop up now the call and response is when I started back in my day, there wasn't any call responses and musical theater songs, but I really do love it. And this one has a nice one because it's, it's, you know, it's like a it's like a it's a classic one. It's just so so people, people feel like they know it starts, which is always, always definitely responsible for this trend.

[11:41] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: And I also think like, I feel like I've been in a lot of new musical theater concerts where someone will do it and I'll be like, what, like, we can't remember all of those words or all of that. Like, I feel like it gets so and I'm like, Oh, my God, that's the that's the trick. I really, I really do love that. I love when I see something and I'm like, may rip that off for me. And it's like, they don't know how to do it.

[12:01] Joe Iconis: We should have had a plugin for like listeners at home where you could like, you know, click...

[12:05] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Well, I guess we'd have to have like Ableton for beginners.

[12:07] Joe Iconis: I don't know, but like, you know, so you can have the call and response with other people in your bedroom while you listen to the album.

[12:14] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: You can just do it yourself.

[12:15] Joe Iconis: Yeah. Just do it yourself. Call, response.

[12:18] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yeah.

[12:19] Joe Iconis: Anything else about The Prisoner's Christmas Song?

[12:22] Joe Iconis: I do have to say that this arrangement by Charlie Rosen is one of my absolute favorites on the whole Stinkin album.

[12:30] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yeah.

[12:31] Joe Iconis: It's just humongous. Jews are very good at Christmas songs. Jews love Christmas. But yeah, I really, I really, really, really am proud of how massive it is and how over the top it is. And it sounds it just sounds like it's like the you know, like the like the dirtiest bar in town.

[12:52] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yeah.

[12:53] Joe Iconis: You know, doing a Christmas pageant. And I really, really love it. It's like in my dreams of what it could sound like. That's what it that's what it sounds like. It's very good.

[13:01] 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.

[13:27] Joe Iconis: ALBUM PODCAST is executive produced by Liz Armstrong. Host 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.