My friend Chris recently staged a play – Crossroads (or The Piano of Death) – in Portsmouth, NH. For part of his pre-show music, he put together a mix of covers with ties to our own little part of New England. So, when this week’s mix came around, he suggested taking that soundtrack and sharing it with you lovely people. Here’s Chris’ description of the process:
The pre-show entertainment for my recently produced stage play, Crossroads (or The Piano of Death), was broken into two parts. Both parts were designed to set the scene for the story that followed, and though we’re still working on putting together a recorded version of the songs that the fabulous Mary Casiello played during the live part of the pre-show, we’re happy to share now the songs we played each night to build up to Mary’s set.
When I began assembling this list, my goal was simply to build a playlist of songs by local artists I loved. The trouble was that I had too many songs to choose from. So, as I so often do in my storytelling endeavors, I set myself an artificial constraint. Because the play is about a character who becomes well known for her strange cover songs, I used only cover songs in the mix. The result was a strange but fun blend of tunes that established a mood for the audience from the moment they walked into the theater.