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[0:08] Jeff Malone: Welcome to Half Hour with Jeff & Richie, the theater and pop music podcast. I'm Jeff.

[0:14] Richie Grasso: And I'm Richie. And on today's show, we have a very special guest, Dominic Fallacaro. Dominic is a producer, composer, and multi-instrumentalist based in Brooklyn, New York.

[0:25] Jeff Malone: His productions and performances have been featured on numerous albums and across film and television. And most recently, he is the music director and provided additional orchestrations for & Juliet.

[0:37] Richie Grasso: The new musical featuring the music of Max Martin is now playing on Broadway. So, Dominic, welcome to Half Hour Podcast, and thank you very much for joining us today.

[0:46] Dominic Fallacaro: Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here.

[0:48] Jeff Malone: This is awesome. We would love to dive right into & Juliet, of course. We have tons of things we want to talk to you about that. But before we do that, we just figured we'd start with a kind of an icebreaker question, get our listeners to know you a little bit more about just some of your past experiences with music and what kind of led you up to & Juliet. So if you want to kind of go and kind of start there.

[1:07] Dominic Fallacaro: Yeah, of course. So I've been playing piano since kindergarten. It's my whole universe. And so I studied jazz in high school and played in a lot of bands in high school. And then I came to New York to study jazz music. But honestly, what I wanted more than anything was just to play in any band that would have me, any songwriter, any person that would have me. I wanted to be involved. And more than anything, just really wanted to be in the recording studio. That's really where I kind of found my home. And through working on a number of different things, sort of ended up in the universe of children's music briefly. And through that, met my collaborator Bill Sherman on & Juliet, who sort of pulled me into this world of theater.

And so it's been a kind of learning journey through the whole thing. And so my role in & Juliet was definitely providing sort of the pop sensibilities and other sort of like production sensibilities and sort of picking up the theater parts from other folks as I go, which has been great.

[2:16] Richie Grasso: Well, we saw & Juliet in the fall when it opened. We loved it. It's playing currently, for those of you listening who don't know, it's playing in New York City at the Stephen Sondheim Theater. And we just were so, so impressed with this pop and theater hybrid combo piece. And that's kind of where Two Worlds Entertainment as our company comes from. I come from a theater background. Jeff comes from a pop music background. And so we kind of hybrid those two ideas. So this was like literally what we always talk about.

[2:46] Jeff Malone: Yeah, exactly. Worlds colliding.

[2:48] Richie Grasso: Yeah, that was always our topic. How do we combine both of us together and what we love?

[2:53] Dominic Fallacaro: Yeah, and I've turned that into a six or seven year professional journey here.

[2:58] Richie Grasso: I love that. And so because of that, we wanted to just kind of talk a little bit about what the process of this show was like in terms of taking these famous pop songs, reorchestrating them, rearranging them. And also, where did you kind of fall? I guess my question is more of what came first, the chicken or the egg, right? So was it the story and the music was added? Was it let's do a story and just use this music? Like where did you kind of fit in on the journey of the show and choosing the specific songs for the specific moments in the show?

[3:29] Dominic Fallacaro: Yeah, of course. So I think like everything in the show, a lot of it was story driven, book driven. And shout out David West Reid, our amazing writer. You know, he already coming in had such a good musical sense. I mean, we were given such free reign over the embarrassment of riches that is Max Martin's song catalog. And so, I mean, if you go and see the show like you two have, I mean, there are some of the biggest ones of all time, but then there are some deeper cuts in there. And it is whatever sort of worked for the show the best. There's definitely plenty of things and versions on the cutting room floor of things that didn't quite work as well or a mashup that didn't go exactly the way that we thought it would or pay off as good.

But I think the spine of the show from the moment I entered working on it in like 2017, the show, the details are a lot different, but the show itself is very much the same. And like Juliet's Journey and sort of the show within a show of Shakespeare and Anne sort of pulling on the strings, that was always such the thesis statement. But it's only through doing workshop after workshop after workshop that you start to realize like, oh, this works or this isn't really serving as the story as well as it could. And then you sort of, you know, you add person by person. You know, you start and it's the book writer and Bill and I just talking about music and sort of anything is possible. Whole songs go in and out.

You add our amazing director, Luke Shepard. You add our amazing choreographer, Jen Weber. And so then you start to get the like, oh, this could have a dance moment. Oh, this could have this sort of beat. So it's really an amazing collaborative room through all of it. And it's a lot of trial and error. There's so much of what you see on stage that was like workshop kind of just busking it out, just sort of seeing what worked.

[5:27] Richie Grasso: When you joined the project, what stage was the show already in?

[5:32] Dominic Fallacaro: So, I mean, there was already like a very full draft of everything, although different songs. There was I think I'm trying to remember what's what sort of things were in and were out. I think this show originally had Juliet waking up with Katy Perry's Wide Awake at a certain point and like certain things. Yeah, you try so many different versions of things, but there was very much a script, very much the narrative structure. So most of the music was already slotted when you came in.

[6:03] Dominic Fallacaro: I would say all enough music to make a show work was the amount of songs that were in that version to what are in the final version. I don't know, two thirds ish, like certain things coming and going and then certain things. Yeah, certain yeah, certain things being replaced, certain things being added, certain mashups being added. Yeah, it was definitely an evolution. Like one thing on the opposite end, something that remained untouched from draft one is the Teenage Dream break free scene with the Lance and the nurse up on the bed like that worked on day one. And like, no, no notes like that just sort of went the whole time and it just crushed in every room that it was. And, you know, shout out to Melanie Libari for just playing for year after year. That was a great moment.

[6:55] Richie Grasso: I know there's so many good moments. What do you think about that? I mean, I'm a huge Celine Dion fan, so that's the way it is. Might have been my moment where I grabbed my armchairs a little tight. But this is so great because I just love, you know, and speaking about the musicality of it, it's amazing what you all did with taking the song and not I mean, not to bash shows that have come before it with which are jukebox style shows. Right. Where the song sounds like maybe Mamma Mia, for example, the song sounds the exact same in the show as it did Abbott prior. Right. This was this like really, really wonderful way of like vocalizing and re-instrumenting and just making it more theatrical without changing any of the root of the song. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, I felt that I'm sure you, of course, you all did.

[7:40] Dominic Fallacaro: I take that as the highest praise. That's the nice thing you could say. To me and to Bill, this whole thing was about paying tribute to the like absolute iconic nostalgia and what this what this music means to certain folks. And there are and we're not just we're not just a wedding band, just sort of doing our approximation of can't stop the feeling like we we have access to Max and his brain and sort of the vault of sounds. And so we are when when it's my life happens, it's not sort of the talkbox sound. It is the exact talkbox sound dialed in like perfectly. And so the things that we did close, we wanted to really serve and really like pay as much tribute to how you remember them. And then just the gut punch of hearing all those sounds come out of the speakers all at once.

But when we did take adventures, we wanted to kind of take you far away from it. We wanted to like, you know, the that's the way it is sort of has like this like sort of step touch kind of shuffle in the original. But like, what if we really put you all up in your feelings and like let Betsy Wolf take you there and really just the like balladesque nature? Like, I mean, a testament to Max is just the supreme love of melody. And those are the things we really didn't change. Melodies, by and large, as like as a rule, Bill and I were like, we're not messing with melodies. It's just what what kind of sonic trickery or like other orchestrational things that are story driven? Can we take you on? And a lot of that is using our strings and using kind of the power of the orchestral nature of our band to kind of like overlay that emotive side and the extra storytelling kind of judge.

[9:23] Richie Grasso: I was listening to the soundtrack again yesterday because I just wanted to hear more in detail. Someone like the musical theater elements that were brought into this pop score, which is great. And do you feel like some songs were more challenging than others? Like what would have been the most challenging out of all of them?

[9:37] Dominic Fallacaro: Yeah, definitely. I mean, certain things, certain things right away worked really easily when it's when we realized we could take a big risk thinking about things like maybe one more time. We realized like what if we just completely flip it on its head that you what you know from this is the iconic piano. Boom, boom, boom. So like no piano. Let's do it. Guitar driven and like how can we intersperse those kind of that heartbeat, that kind of sound amongst other things? And if you go back and listen to that, the sort of like plotting heartbeat of that piano thing is given to our strings is given to our bass. It's like the DNA of stuff is always finding its way into other instruments. And so sometimes it was really easy to do when we had a kind of aha moment about how we could execute it.

Certain things that were harder. I'm thinking of a song like Problem in Act Two where that chorus is whispered in the original and that sort of thing. And again, a lot of credit to Bill for for knowing that like that would absolutely die on the vine on stage. Like you can't go up on stage in a big number and whisper like it just won't translate. It won't work. And so then this is one of the few things that I think is in the exception category to changing melodies. But we needed to melodize it. We need to do something to put something behind it. And so Bill came in with sort of this kind of idea of putting the melody through it. And then we sort of sat by the piano and thought about how we could pivot through, I don't know, five or six different key changes through doing it and mash it up with the weekend.

Some, you know, somewhere in the middle. So that one was more challenging. I think another fun challenge was we were given one more try in Act Two, which was the only song in the show that's written for the show. Like that song didn't exist beforehand. So it was so many of the other things you're referencing the original or you're pulling from other sort of things. And this was like Max sent us a demo and we just sort of went with it. And so I think of all the musical theater things in the show that to me, I want it to be the most that because there was no pop sort of element at that point to pay tribute to. So we really tried to make that a real ballad moment, the way it slows down, the way it kind of gets grandiose and key changes for each person singing. And they do it at the end. We really tried to do that. So that was another sort of kind of musical challenge.

[12:01] Richie Grasso: So since Max sent a demo there, what was his like full involvement in the show and had Max had done anything in theater before this?

[12:09] Dominic Fallacaro: No, I think so. This was Max's first foray into the theater as well. And I think the coolest thing about the show and a testament to Luke and a testament to our producers, a testament to sort of everyone is that it was really run. You had a circle of people and this includes our actors too. You had a circle of people that there are certain people in that room that are experts, have done it a million times and other people that it's their first. And that so Max has done hit after hit after hit, knows how to do the recording studio, knows how to do all those things. But it's his first time translated into theater. And you have certain actors in our company that this is, you know, they've done a bunch of shows.

But then you have some we have a lot of Broadway debuts in our cast. And so it was a room that was run in a way that was very like equitable and best idea wins. And so watching Max kind of bring his very egalitarian, collaborative studio attitude into a theater setting was amazing because we were all sort of learning from each other and together. And so, I mean, Max very easily could have done a situation where he just sort of shows up at the end and was like, that was great, guys. But Max was super involved. He's sitting in the theater during tech tweaking the snare drum like, you know.

[13:21] Dominic Fallacaro: If there's a synthesizer sound that's not quite right, he's coming down to the pit with me, and we're fiddling with knobs, and we're talking about how to make these analog synthesizers work in a Broadway setting. So it's really amazing that he was so involved. And that sort of was the best cherry on top for me, is really getting to work with him in a collaborative setting. It was amazing. Yeah, because he's such a major person in the industry, especially the pop industry, and writing banger after banger that we've all fell in love with and known today. He kind of dominated so much of the late 90s and all of the 2000s, which is so cool. Some of the selections were interesting to me, though, because I was like, oh, why did they leave some really big artist out of the final setlist? For one, Taylor Swift, were they not allowed to use her music? Or is there just, you know, drama there? I'm curious.

[14:18] Dominic Fallacaro: Yeah, sure. So there is a catalog that is absent. And yeah, I think there were earlier versions that, yeah, sort of had those things a part of it, and the later versions do not. And I'm very proud with sort of where we ended up, I think. I was going to say, I think there is a very low drama answer of just that we, I mean, there's three other musicals of songs that still could be used, that we still left on the floor. It's crazy.

[15:00] Jeff Malone: Does that mean we're getting a sequel?

[15:01] Dominic Fallacaro: I mean, if the audience demands it, I'll be first in line to start building it. That's great. Yeah, this was so much fun to work on. Yeah. And talking about, you know, I always feel like with these hybrid type shows, there's like two models, right? There's like the let's tell the story of Carole King or Neil Diamond, right? Or there's let's use their music and create an original story with the music of, like what Mamma Mia was, or even what, once upon a one more time on Broadway right now, right? So in your opinion, where do you see Broadway moving in the future? Do you see the, let's tell the stories? Do you see the, let's do the next version of Julia? Do you see both? Like, where do you kind of see this trajectory going now that this is kind of happening so frequently?

[15:55] Dominic Fallacaro: You know, I really have been sort of learning about the theater industry and the state of Broadway kind of as I go. And all I can say is from my perspective, people really respond to the story element of this. One of my favorite things in the world. So part of my job as music director on the show, other than playing it, you know, eight times a week is once per week, I go out into the audience, I watch, I give notes, I sort of, you know, take notes of how things are going. But in that is one of my just biggest joys is watching people watch it. And, you know, I love that. I mean, Max's catalog spans so much time that like you have a parent that had the Backstreet Boys poster on their wall, bringing a kid that knows Ariana Grande.

And it's such a long period of time of banger after banger. But one of my favorite things, though, is watching older folks that are the generation or two generations above, you know, this music that the music doesn't come for free for them at all. Like since you've been gone means nothing to them from a nostalgia standpoint. They just have to take in the story and it is amazing to watch folks like that and kind of go on the ride and like, you know, Julia goes up on the balcony and they're sort of flabbergasted. And in the best of ways, you're just like watching people experience the sort of joy bomb of our show. And I, you know, I think it's no shade to anything that is just like, I guess, biopic or just kind of put the songs in to put the songs in.

But I know that our recipe of things is a really special one. It allows you to go a notch beyond just what the music gives you. And I think that's an amazing thing to bring to people, because even if you have people that love Baby One More Time, there's still a percentage of folks that come. They're like, how are they doing this? I don't know. I'm well, I'll wait and see. But by the end, but by intermission, they're full. The hook has been set.

[17:43] Jeff Malone: Who do you see like responding to it the best? Do you think?

[17:46] Dominic Fallacaro: I mean, one of my favorite things is when like school groups come and like other younger folks come. There was a talkback that we did during it's like Family Night or Family Week on Broadway, and all our actors talked about like, oh, my first Broadway show was this. My first Broadway show was this. And you have to sort of do the math backwards that, you know, there are some kids that come and yes, it's just a fun field trip. But then there are some kids that are coming. We're like, this is a fork in the road. And they saw something on stage and they want to pursue this now. And you know that you're like putting a tattoo on someone's brain of just like there was I thought life was this way and it is now this way.

And, you know, all of our actors have that sort of genesis. And so, you know, that like someone is watching young, young people. It just full stop. Watch Julia go up on the balcony and just any of these things. It's like we really celebrate what like life could be, you know, and a lot of in a lot of ways. And so to kind of see that wash over young folks face is amazing, which is like such a big moment in the show to seeing Julia go, especially just watching Lorna up on that. We I was like this. She is a star. I mean, when we did this podcast episode, we were like, we're watching a star get born into the industry right now. And we were just blown away by her.

[19:12] Dominic Fallacaro: Yeah, it's an amazing I mean, she is wonderful. She is an incredible vocalist. She is really like funny and in such an organic way. And like her take on Julia, her read on it is so different than what we had built in London. And she really brings her own thing to it. And just, yeah, an absolute like showstopper vocal, which is just as a musician and music director is the best gift in the world. I mean, she's fantastic.

[19:39] Dominic Fallacaro: And and so now outside of in Juliet, you know, what is your life like in terms of your music career? Do you perform anywhere? Are you working on any other future projects that you're like allowed to say now?

[19:52] Dominic Fallacaro: Yeah, that's this for you. So you know, I've been with Juliet for since 2017. And both putting it up in London, Toronto here, and then sort of the journey of getting us to the Tonys this past whatever like it's it has been a very like all consuming sort of journey to kind of put it up. And so I'm now just starting to kind of groundhog my my head above sand and sort of think about what's next. I'm starting to work with artists again as a producer. And I'm starting to really like from this experience in theater, start to work with some younger, up and coming theater writers on some very, very new stuff.

[20:28] Dominic Fallacaro: Cool. And so that that stuff is very promising to me kind of learning through Juliet, what you what is possible on stage and what you can kind of from both a narrative and just like music and technology sort of standpoint, like how far you can push it. And that's that's the kind of stuff that's very interesting to me is like, how much of the pop universe can you put into this setting? So I'm, I'm excited to be working with a couple younger writers that are into that pursuit.

[20:54] Jeff Malone: That's awesome. Good for you. That's awesome. Yeah. Speaking of some pop artists, we've seen like people like Kelly Clarkson perform with the cast before we saw Katy Perry kind of show up. Have any of the other pop performers been involved in the show in any way?

[21:10] Dominic Fallacaro: I don't know if there was any feedback in terms of like, the artist impacting the way the song sounds, but it's been amazing to watch folks show up. I mean, because of the sort of like rarefied air of Max and sort of what comes with it, the amount of folks that have dropped by is crazy. Everything from Robin to Katy Perry to I mean, Ed Sheeran has come I think multiple times in multiple places. It's ludicrous the amount of folks that that show up. I think Harry Styles came to our one of our rehearsals in London. I mean, it is bananas. The folks that pop through. And it's great. I also love being that that like stratus of folks. I love being their first Broadway show to have just like, whoa, OK, I didn't know it was this. Yeah, that's that's like my favorite thing in the world is to sort of bring that, you know, Katy Perry coming up and being like, oh, this is like serving full vocal. And it's that's the best compliment that you could possibly get.

[22:10] Jeff Malone: So much fun. Oh my gosh. We're getting close to having one final question here. This is something that we like to do when we're interviewing now, but we wanted to ask this to all of our guests. So what's a fun behind the scenes moment or memory from and Juliet that you can share with us?

[22:27] Dominic Fallacaro: Sure, there are so many. I'm thinking of one of the most amazing things was that in the London process, we did so many workshops over there when we found out that we were going over there that. By the time we were doing like our second to last kind of workshop before we had a theater over there, most of our cast was sort of with us and in place. So my favorite thing was just that you're sort of building this show kind of for the folks doing it. And I think one of the coolest things about our show is that we sort of alternate between it feeling like a rehearsal room because they're sort of putting on this show and then Super Bowl halftime show like confetti, everything. And that sort of aesthetic of like, wait, there there was pyro.

But then like our actors sort of move the furniture as well was the aesthetic of just the sort of charm of these brilliant actors sort of like bringing so much of themselves into it. And I'll never forget sort of in the workshop process, they're very long days for the creative team because you're with your actors during the day. And then it's like, oh, they leave at 6 p.m. They leave and it's like, OK, this and this and this needs change. But this and this was great. What can we do? And there was a whole chunk of time where basically what audience knows as like the beginning of Act Two just sort of got dropped into place. And so sort of by surprise to all of our actors, like all of a sudden they came back and then what do you want from me?

And these other like emotional beats of the show, just watching them sort of read it and watching it envelop them was so gratifying and so cool. And I also think something that happened in a similar way was watching the basically the entirety of the scene of Overprotected happen. And just what I didn't know in a theater world, and maybe this is only London or I don't know if it's a tradition over here as well, is some of the highest praise I think you can get from actors in a rehearsal room is them throwing their shoe in praise. And so they did Overprotected and people are screaming and just going absolutely bananas for the comedy and for the songs. And we finish it and people are just throwing their shoes.

So like that as like the show, Outward Show of Love was one of the most, it was so great to watch and just kind of that joy that's in the show is because it's in the rehearsal room, it seeps into everywhere and it's part of just what we do.

[24:53] Jeff Malone: I love that. Do they throw shoes every time?

[24:56] Dominic Fallacaro: I don't know. I've not heard of that in the New York scene, but maybe. In college when people could sing, like they could belt, people used to take their shoes off and throw it. I went to music business school, so people and a lot of the vocal performers when they would be doing a showcase or something, people would take their shoe off and they would throw it on the stage. So maybe. Yeah, you know, whatever, whatever sign of affection there is. Great compliment, right?

[25:18] Jeff Malone: Well, listen, unfortunately, we are out of time. We have to wrap this. I could spend hours talking about this. When it comes to the music and theater and pop music stuff. Yeah, I'll gab for hours. I love it. But we thank you all so much for listening. And we thank you so much, Dominic, for being here and sharing some insight with us on just this world. We love the show. We definitely want to come back and see it sometime. It was wonderful.

[25:46] Dominic Fallacaro: Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

[25:49] Jeff Malone: Yeah, we hope you enjoyed the conversation with Dominic. Dominic, if our listeners would like to learn more about your work, where can they find you?

[25:53] Dominic Fallacaro: keyofdom.com is a way to find me on the Internet. And I still keep a Twitter active at Key of Dom.

[26:00] Jeff Malone: Amazing. Love it. Well, to all our listeners, if you have any suggestions of future episodes you'd like to hear about, we'd love to hear from you. And you can also connect with us on Instagram and TikTok at half hour podcast. Also, if you'd like to check out our full review and thoughts of and Juliet, you can go back and listen to our past podcast episode all about it, which is linked in the description of this podcast episode. And we'll also link your info in the description as well, Dominic. So thank you so much for joining us today. Dominic, we can't to see what's in store for you next. I'm Jeff and I'm Richie saying tata for now.