JT Harding, Peter Zinn’s ‘Music City: A New Musical’ To Premiere In New York

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JT Harding with cast

Music City: A New Musical from hit songwriter JT Harding and Peter Zinn, alongside Bedlam Artistic Director Eric Tucker, is set to make its New York debut beginning Oct. 27 and opening Nov. 17 at the West End Theatre.

The musical draws viewers into a first-hand account of talented unsung songwriters passing their time and sharing their art in an east Nashville watering hole. As their lives unfold around their songs, and their songs reveal the emotional contours of their lives, the musical also tells stories of America’s drug epidemic, the plights of those who join the military and one struggling artist’s encounters with both these wars as he seeks success as a songwriter.

Zinn and Harding have been friends since middle school in Detroit. Zinn had moved to New York to attend NYU Tisch School of the Arts and was working as an actor and director when a mutual friend gave him a CD of Harding’s featuring a song called “How Did I Get Here?” about his experience performing for troops in Afghanistan. Zinn was struck by the song’s theatricality, and reconnected with Harding to urge him to turn his material into a musical. Harding responded that, instead, Zinn should write it and he’d provide the music, so they began to build a play around that song. Music City now contains Harding’s radio hits alongside songs written specifically for the piece.

“The most unexpected and thrilling part of this journey is how real the characters have become to me,” says Harding. “I’d come back to Nashville after sitting in on rehearsal and start writing songs about them as if they were real people because Peter’s story is so great. Then those, too, would be incorporated into the script, which became more and more about the realities of drug addiction and poverty in this scene where people are just trying to make it — and how, for every Carrie Underwood or Kacey Musgraves or Blake Shelton, there are thousands of people right outside my door that have so much talent but will never ‘make it.’

“Our mantra, which is one of the lyrics, became ‘in Nashville, heartbreak’s the only thing they hand out for free.’ Peter wrote that story so beautifully, and Eric taps into it so magically, tugging at the heartstrings while also creating a piece that’s a real party.”

The cast for Music City includes Drew Bastian as Newt/Drums, Leenya Rideout as Tammy/Leeanne, Andrew Rothenberg as Bakerman/Stucky Stiles, Jonathan Judge-Russo as Drew, Casey Shuler as “23,” Stephen Michael Spencer as T.J. and Grace Bernardo as understudy. Musicians include Ann Klein (guitar) and Tony Tino (bass).

Lorie Hollabaugh
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