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From pop-rock albums to television comedy to Broadway acclaim, David Yazbek has had a varied and illustrious career. And while his projects span the worlds of music, stage and screen, and cover a range of diverse topics, Yazbek’s knack for melody, smart lyrics and humor combine to form a distinctive voice. He visits Mountain View for a one-night performance on Feb. 8, presented by TheatreWorks Silicon Valley perennial favorite Hershey Felder.
“David Yazbek: My Broadway” will incorporate songs from Yazbek’s oeuvre, along with musings on his experience. He described it as the story of his trajectory in show business, “and also somewhat (my) spiritual and human trajectory,” he said. “My journey from an anxiety-ridden successful joke writer to somehow – and weirdly – kind of one of the top composers in musical theater.”
Yazbek is probably best known for his work on Broadway shows including “The Band’s Visit” (for which he won Tony and Grammy awards), “The Full Monty,” “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” “Women on The Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,” “Tootsie” and “Dead Outlaw.”
As a pop-rock recording artist, he’s released numerous original albums including “The Laughing Man,” and, among his other projects, won an Emmy Award for writing on “Late Night with David Letterman” and even co-wrote the iconic theme song to “Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?” (which may now be stuck in your head). Just this week, he won a second Grammy Award, for co-producing the original Broadway cast recording of “Buena Vista Social Club,” which was named Best Musical Theater Album.Â
Since much of his work is done behind the scenes, “David Yazbek: My Broadway” gives him the chance to get back in front of an audience and present his songs and story directly.
“I still have that impulse of a writer, and of a student of Buddhism, to share some of what helped me,” he said. “I have the impulse as a pianist to get my chops good and play stuff for people in the same room.” While he works with many collaborators, “most of it is me sitting alone writing songs in my studio. I’d like to get out there and actually be with people.”
Felder, the pianist, actor and writer who’s wildly popular with local audiences and is currently presenting his own autobiographical musical show with TheatreWorks, encouraged Yazbek.
“Hershey, who has very kindly given me one of his nights, kind of convinced me. He heard me play and he just said, ‘You should do what I do,'” he recalled. “‘You should do a one-man show, just you and the piano,’ and it just clicked for me. I’ve written, like, 600 songs. I really would like to put them in front of people in person.”
As Felder put it in a press release announcing the show, “When you have a friend who’s a real genius, you want to share them with all your other friends.”
Yazbek said he “lucked into” his Broadway career, as he was offered the job of writing the music for the 2000 musical “The Full Monty” thanks to his singer-songwriter material. Growing up in New York, his parents exposed him to some musical theater classics, such as “Guys and Dolls,” “West Side Story” and “Hair,” but he was drawn instead to The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and, eventually, jazz.
“I was never primarily into musical theater. I’m still not,” he said, laughing.
It took him time, he said, to fully appreciate that his theater writing could be a powerful means of expression and connection. For his first two musicals, which were both comedies based on popular movies, “I was kind of writing almost on assignment – serving the story, serving the humor, serving the characters – and then if I could find a way in … it’s almost like being an actor. You find your way into the character and give it something of yourself,” he said. Eventually, “I realized, ‘Wait, I can also choose material that has themes that I really want to write about and sing about and do music about.'”
His most recent show, “Dead Outlaw,” which opened on Broadway last year, tells the strange-but-true story of Elmer McCurdy, the titular dead man who dreamed of becoming an outlaw and in 1911, died in a standoff with the law. His mummified corpse became a sideshow and film prop and ended up in a Southern California amusement park, eventually identified in the 1970s.
“I knew in my gut for many years it could work, but I also knew it couldn’t be like anything I’ve ever seen before. … Your main character is dead for half the story,” Yazbek said of bringing “Dead Outlaw” to the stage (Erik Della Penna co-wrote the music and lyrics, with a book by Itamar Moses). Calling McCurdy, in life, a “voraciously hungry ghost” (in Buddhism, the concept describes those tormented by desires that can never be sated), Yazbek was inspired not only by the bizarre and macabre story but the potential for pondering larger issues of identity, fame and internal emptiness. The show explores “the themes of life and death that have fascinated me since I was a kid; of, ‘What is so fascinating to us about when we see a dead body?'” he said. The Broadway production has now closed but the quirky and darkly funny show, which Yazbek called his best experience collaborating with others so far, lives on in an Audible edition, and he is hopeful for other ways of resurrecting it in the future. He’s also finishing up a long-awaited new album, with hopes for a May release.
And he plans to keep developing and performing his one-man live show, having now brought it to a few venues, with more gigs on the horizon. Because he’s still fine-tuning it as he goes, local audiences will be getting a peek into a work-in-progress of sorts.
“This is, in a way, a chance for them to be part of a process. It’s basically a new musical. I think that’s kind of cool,” he said.
“David Yazbek: My Broadway,” Feb. 8, 7:30 p.m., Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro St., Mountain View; $60-$85; tickets.mvcpa.com/eventperformances.asp?evt=736.
