GO DADDY-O! HEPCAT CASEY MACGILL FINDS HIMSELF LIVING A DREAM:
MONTHS AFTER LEAVING SPOKANE, HE'S FEATURED IN A MUSICAL ON BROADWAY
By Jim Kershner Staff writer
The Spokesman-Review
12/09/1999
The lights go down in New
York's St. James Theatre, the same theater where "Oklahoma!" made Broadway
history, where Carol Channing debuted in "Hello, Dolly!", where Laurence Olivier
and Anthony Quinn starred in "Becket."
From the darkness emerges
the swinging sound of a ukulele riff. Into the spotlight steps Casey MacGill, a ukulele
hipster wearing a fedora and a baggy, pin-striped suit.
Alone on stage, he starts singing a smoky solo version of "It Don't Mean a Thing If
It Ain't Got That Swing." He bends at the waist to improvise a few bars of
scat-singing, while the capacity crowd whoops and hollers and cheers him on.
Suddenly, MacGill points
upstage. The lights flash on and the big band kicks in. Then he points offstage and a
phalanx of swing dancers come flying in as if from 1940.
MacGill stands proudly in
the midst of this high-budget frenzy, ukulele in hand, presiding over "Swing!",
billed as Broadway's newest swingin', dancin' sensation.
Not bad for a guy who was
playing weddings in Spokane two months ago.
If there were a heaven
designed specifically for Casey MacGill, 49, this would be it.
He's performing the music
that has obsessed him since college, and doing it on the biggest stage of all -- Broadway.
Well-known in Spokane as
the leader of two popular bands -- the Planet Lounge Orchestra and Casey MacGill and the
Spirits of Rhythm - he was plucked out of Spokane in October by director-choreographer
Lynne Taylor-Corbett ("Footloose'') to become one of five lead vocalists in this new
show. Ann Hampton Callaway, a cabaret singer, is the show's biggest star. Everett Bradley
and Laura Benanti have a number of featured vocal spots.
Yet MacGill has a special
role in the show as the onstage bandleader and the personification of swing authenticity.
"I'm the specialist,'' said MacGill. "I'm pretty much Mr. Swing.
"I've been told to go out there and just present the whole idea as if I'm the one who
knows all about this music and I'm here to tell you all about it.''
MacGill not only sings
three or four numbers, but he wrote three of the show's songs and arranged some of the
show's standards, including "Swing, Brother, Swing.''
It all sounds like a
perfect show-biz fairy tale featuring the lovable guy from the boondocks who conquers
Broadway - except for one thing. It's too early to tell if this story will have a happy
ending.
"Swing!'' is still in
the midst of a five-week preview run on Broadway, and the official opening night isn't
until Thursday. That's the night when the critics will weigh in, possibly sealing the fate
of "Swing!''
Will the show be a hit?
Will Casey MacGill be a hit?
"Right now, we're just
trying to get the dancers healthy,'' MacGill said the week before Thanksgiving.
"We've had a lot of injuries. Hopefully, everyone will ready on opening
night.''
Hit or not, MacGill is
grateful to be on Broadway at all. In a show-biz fairy tale, it would have happened via a
cattle-call audition. In this case, it happened via CD.
Earlier this year, MacGill
made an infectious swing CD, "Jump,'' with his band, the Spirits of Rhythm. This
summer, the CD was selling well locally, but like most independently released CDs, it
wasn't exactly in the Top 40, or even the Top 400. But at least one person in Los Angeles
had a copy.
"Lynne Taylor-Corbett
was in a car with a dance teacher, and he played our CD for her,'' MacGill said.
"She said, 'Wait a
minute - what was that?''' It was exactly what she had in mind for her new musical.
So she tracked MacGill down in his home in Spokane that he shares with his two cats. She
told him she loved his band, and she wanted to know if he wanted to be involved with a new
Broadway musical from the same people who made "Stomp!'' and "Smokey Joe's
Cafe,'' among others.
"It was so hard to
believe, because it was so out of context, living in Spokane,'' MacGill said. "She
did seem like she was serious. It didn't sound like a practical joke.''
At first, the producers
were interested in using some of his songs and arrangements. So they brought
Casey out to New York in
May, and he wrote a song and did some arrangements with the show's band, made up of top
jazz and big band players.
At the end of the visit,
they offered him a part in the show.
He declined.
"At the time, it
seemed like my commitment needed to be to sell the CD and work with the band,'' MacGill
said. "We had made some touring plans.''
So as the summer progressed
and the swing scene began to shrink, and his band was playing country fairs in Yakima, he
began to wonder: What have I done?
"Actually, I was real
depressed,'' MacGill said. ``I was thinking to myself, did I totally blow it with this
decision?
"And I called up the
music director and said, "Is there any chance I can still get aboard this show?'
"The first thing the manager said was, 'Do you understand what kind of
commitment you're making?' And I said, 'Yeah, give up my life as I now know it.'''
He was willing to give it
up, because he was not exactly encumbered. He has no family except for a grown daughter in
California. His only real logistical problem was getting someone to cat-sit for him.
On Oct. 1, just two weeks
after the phone call, he was moving into an apartment on Broadway near Lincoln Center,
which was provided under the terms of his 39-week contract.
His life since then has
consisted of a set routine: Wake up, take a taxi to the theater, rehearse during the day,
do a show in the evening, and then go out to bars with the rest of the cast.
"It's like the work is
the inhaling, and going out afterward is the exhaling,'' MacGill said. "There's a bar
downtown in the neighborhood of a couple of the dancers, and there's kind of a surrogate
family that congregates there. There's nothing glamorous about this bar; it's just a
neighborhood bar.
"Sometimes, if a Frank
Sinatra song comes on the jukebox, they'll clear the floor and do a little dance
exhibition. These are professional dancers, so it's pretty impressive.''
The work schedule is
daunting. The cast must rehearse all day during previews, often working on revisions and
new material for the evening performances.
"We had a whole bunch
of vocal parts we had to learn in just a couple of days,'' MacGill said after one
mid-November performance. "If I had a kind of blank expression up there, it's
because I was forgetting about two-thirds of it.''
In one recent stretch, the
cast had five performances in one weekend. MacGill, however, refuses to feel put upon.
"Everybody says how
grueling this is, but I'm used to it,'' he said. "In Spokane in the summer, I'd
do two or three shows a day and have to haul all of my own equipment around and set it up.
Here, there's someone to help me change my clothes.''
MacGill spent the first 34
years of his life in the L.A. area. He graduated from high school in 1968 and enrolled at
Pasadena City College and later Cal State-L.A., where he majored in music and piano
performance. It was in college that he fell in love with boogie-woogie, stride, swing and
other forms of '20s, '30s and '40s music.
"I had some friends
who were quirky record collectors, and there was this kind of attitude among these fellas
that the cool things were the most obscure,'' he said. "At the time the obscure
things were blues and old 78s.
"So I had a couple of
mentors that turned me on to this music 30 years ago, and it has been a great gift to me,
a cultural backbone for me.''
Yet it has also been a
burden, since for most of MacGill's life this music has had little commercial potential.
In college he played more popular styles, including psychedelic rock in his first band,
called Magic Mushroom. But in 1971 he fronted a swing band called Pep Boys, which made a
minor splash in the L.A. scene. But swing music's time had not yet come, and the band
dissolved.
He married and had a
daughter in 1973 and continued to be a "perennial college student.'' He also
continued to carry the torch for swing music.
In the early 1980s, he
formed a new band, Mood Indigo, which played clubs in the L.A. area and even had a cameo
in the 1982 Jessica Lange movie, "Frances.''
Yet MacGill still found the
business aspect of music to be baffling. In 1984, divorced and burned out on the entire
L.A. music scene, he moved to Northern California for a year. He met another woman there
and moved to Spokane, where they both had friends.
"I just wanted to get
into a whole different lifestyle,'' MacGill said. "But after a couple of years
of that, I decided I really needed to play music.''
So he started the Planet
Lounge Orchestra in 1987, which proved to be an immediate hit in the club, party and
wedding scene in Spokane. Their style was eclectic and included plenty of the '30s and
'40s music he loved, as well as other music he didn't.
"We played a lot more
rock 'n' roll than I liked to,'' MacGill said. "You had to play things like
'Louie Louie' and 'Proud Mary' more for the survival aspect of it.''
The Planet Lounge Orchestra
had a good long run into the '90s, but MacGill started trying other things, too. He even
tried country music for a year.
"That was a
disaster,'' he said. "There was nothing difficult about it musically, but my heart
wasn't in it.''
His heart was still back in
the land of jive. But it was hard to make a living playing that kind of music, and at one
point he had to take a job as a parking attendant at the tony Spokane Club.
"That was an
excruciating experience,'' MacGill said. "I think that I'd rather starve than do
that. Really, I don't have any other skills outside of music.''
Fortunately, in the
mid-'90s, the nation began to develop a taste for swing music. MacGill put together a band
called the Spirits of Rhythm in 1995 and began playing jobs in Spokane, Portland and
Seattle.
The band became a staple in
the Northwest swing scene. Eventually the band landed enough financial backing to make the
"Jump'' CD, produced by band member Marc Sorger.
In the midst of all of
this, MacGill had one other watershed musical experience in Spokane. He played all of the
piano parts in the Fats Waller musical, "Ain't Misbehavin''' at the Spokane Civic
Theatre in 1994. His breathtaking stride piano technique helped make that show a hit.
"That was infinitely
rewarding, and I love to brag about that,'' MacGill said.
One other thing about
"Ain't Misbehavin''': It constituted the sum total of Casey MacGill's theatrical
experience until the day he walked on stage at the St. James Theatre.
MacGill said he has a
"callous developed'' from years of performing. Yet playing a part on stage, even a
part as a musician, was new to him.
He credits Broadway legend
Jerry Zaks, the show's production supervisor and a four-time Tony winner, with giving him
invaluable coaching.
MacGill has been amazed by
the level of talent surrounding him in his Broadway debut, both on the stage and on the
bandstand. He has also been amazed at how chaotic the creative process has been, even at
its highest levels.
"It just kind of
surprised me, because of all of the money and everything here in New York,'' MacGill said.
"But I'm just looking at it like: This is my karma. This is the way my process is,
but I thought that people here with more money riding on it would be a little more
organized.''
Theater? Organized?
It doesn't work that way,
although the people in the audience on one mid-November preview night didn't seem to
notice. They were swing-dancing in the aisles at intermission and giving the show a
standing ovation at the final curtain.
MacGill is hoping for a
nice long run and maybe even a tour afterward. And he hopes that his status as an original
cast member of a Broadway hit might pay dividends further down the line.
"I'd really like to
use this a springboard to other things, maybe in movies or TV,'' MacGill said. "I'd
like to explore the possibility of becoming the Hoagy Carmichael of popular music,
somebody who shows up in movies and TV as well as writing and performing.''
His director certainly
thinks he has what it takes to be a national name.
"Casey MacGill is to
swing what Pete Seeger is to folk,'' said Taylor-Corbett. "A walking
encyclopedia, a raconteur and a man who is fiercely passionate about his music.''
As MacGill makes his way
backstage at this historic theater, he stops to chat with star Ann Hampton Callaway, who
has become a good friend. She and MacGill trade off a couple of verses of an old swing
tune and then have a laugh together. MacGill introduces her to a Spokane acquaintance.
"Thanks for loaning
Casey to us,'' she says. "We love him.''
Casey pauses and then says,
"Loaning?''
Later, he confided that he
doesn't know if a return to Spokane is in his future except "as a place to visit in
down time.''
He said he might stay in
New York and he might go to L.A. In any case, he wants to "continue to be a part of
the entertainment business on this level.''
As for playing "Louie
Louie'' at weddings in Spokane - well, he'd rather not.
"I'm hoping I've
graduated from that now,'' he said. "There are plenty of other people who can do
that.
"I'd just like to have
more opportunities to do what you're seeing me do right here.''
