Behind the Scenes With John Lloyd Young in an AN EVENING FOR FRIENDS

When I had you, I treated you, I treated you back

Oh, see, don't you know

Sit around with my head hanging out And I wonder John Lord Young needs no introduction, ladies and gentlemen

And I am so happy to tell you that he is here in Los Angeles this evening

Going to do his concert act called an Evening for France Here at Sterlings upstairs at the Federal

This evening, October 13th. October 13th and tomorrow evening, October 14th. Welcome again to Sterling's upstairs

Well, good to be here as the performer this time. As the performer this time. He's been coming in

seeing some of our shows recently, which we appreciate. This is a good space. Thank you. You know

it's the oldest building in the San Fernando Valley. It was built in 1926 as the Federal Bank

And there's some great history in this room. Oh, I thought it was the Federal Prison

It's a bank. Okay, goodness. I think that's a little. Exactly. And you're, you're, you're

performing in on our stage is that it was the actual vault well there you go

so if you feel the money tonight that's that's where it's kind of all right yeah so we should

have called it John Ler Young in evening from the vault Can I make this change in me

Oh, it's true. So you're going to be doing a show this evening here at the club

that you did at the beautiful Carlisle in New York, which is based pretty much on his beautiful new album My Turn We built the playlist for the Carlisle and recorded the album for the Carlisle

But that's East Coast, and I live out here. And all of these musicians that are playing with me tonight are on the album

We recorded it out here. And this is the first time that we're actually taking these songs and doing them live here on the West Coast

Fantastic. I'm happy that we're doing it at your venue. And we're happy about that too, but there's an interesting story about how these songs came to be for the album

Can you tell us a little bit about that? Well, not surprisingly, you know, you do a show like Jersey Boys

which takes songs from the 60s and turns them into Broadway standards, you know, overnight

And when one gets notoriety for something like that, tend to be asked to do songs from that period

So all of these years since the first opening Jersey Boys, I've been asked to sing songs from that period all over the country

And the audience has always gone kind of nuts for them. And so when we got together with our music director, Tommy Farager

to do an album, we said, let's take the best of these songs that have been working so well

you know, all these things that we've been doing all over the country, and put them on one album

and put a show together for the Carlisland. And we did that, and we had a really successful run at the Carlyle

We've been there three times now, so it's about time that we bring this show to our home base

Yeah, exactly. John recently did my radio show, State of the Arts

with LA Talk Radio, and he made mention of the fact that this project

the album project, took five years to collectively come together. Well, there's a little bit of a kind of identity crisis

when you're singing songs from the 60s on a Broadway stage, and yet you're in a Broadway musical

that wins best musical at the Tony Awards for Broadway. There's a genre kind of identity crisis

that's started on Broadway probably about 15 years ago, but now there's traditional Broadway

and there's pop music finding its home on Broadway, and they're both living there together

you know, with like beautiful this past season, Motown. it now it there to stay And so these songs kind of qualify as Broadway songs but I had to decide am I going to sing traditional Broadway songs or am I going to sing rock

And I've found, over the years, that the rock songs, the pop songs are more accessible sometimes in places that aren't as Broadway-centric as New York

And people always know those songs, though they may not know a song from Les Mis or whatever

And, you know, I had a great time playing Le Mizz right here in California at the Hollywood Bowl a few years ago

But I had to decide where my playlist was going to go. And it seemed like a better and more appropriate fit to choose to sing classic songs from the 60s as modern standards

You know, standards, even all these years later, are understood as songs that were written in the 30s, 40s, and 50s

and sung by people like Sinatra and Tony Bennett. But these songs from the 60s that were rock songs are now 50 years old

And it's about time that they become part of the standard repertoire too

So that's kind of our project. And at least with the audiences that we're exposed to and with this album

And it's been very satisfying. These are still lyrics that have, they're not the kind of pop song where the lyrics don't have integrity anymore

So you can still get behind these lyrics as an. actor and still make the songs mean something because it's not just one lyric repeated over and

over and over again. There's a beginning, middle, and ends to these songs. There's a contained story there

And it's actually a really natural fit for an actor who finds himself having to choose what

songs he's going to say. Exactly. Now, at this point in time, I know the album is new and it's still out there

And if you haven't gotten your copy of it, you should, absolutely. Because it was self-produced and we'd like to pay back our investment

So can you help us with that? There you go. Little Kickstarter

But the truth of the matter is what he just said. These songs are American standards

And 50 years later, now they're being given a new thrilling rendition by John Wardown

I've heard the cuts, and they're pretty amazing. Is there another album in the works for you that you, are you at that point of looking ahead and saying

what the next album going to be on Yes Yes but there two things going at once One is original material which will take longer because we want to make sure that they the right choices

and writing is a kind of a new thing. We're writing with Tommy, our music director, who is a

songwriter already, and other songwriters. But in the meantime, perhaps working on

like on my turn two, the songs that, some of the older songs that didn't make this album

that we still want to sing. And one of them, I'll sing here tonight on the stage

It's not on the album, but it may be on the next one. So we've been accumulating a list for several years

Like you said, it took five years to decide what we wanted our first album to be

And all of those years, you know, I have a journal that I've been keeping for like seven years now

that has all these songs in it that I want to get at. And so some of those are probably going to end up on it

The next album will probably be old songs again treated as standards

Old rock songs treated as new standards. Very nice. We are so happy that you are doing the show here this evening based on the album that is so beautiful

And if you don't have it, go and get it. I've got a copy of it. You can get it easily on Amazon, CD Baby, iTunes, you name it

It's out there. John Lloyd Young, thank you for stopping by Broadway World TV

Glad to be here. Michael Sterling. We'll see you soon. Kiss me, kiss me when you do, I know that you're missing me, minting me if we ever say I do it so

Kiss me, kiss me, make me tell you I'm never. You never, never let me know

Never, never, never let me know. Never, never, never let me go