A Conversation with John Bucchino

My dream was a career of writing songs, recording them in state-of-the-art studios with the best engineers and side musicians, and releasing albums that would have enough of a following to afford me the opportunity to write and record more. I planned to sing them myself in the confessional singer-songwriter mold of Joni Mitchell (whom I’d grown to worship by then.) Strangely, perhaps, I never fantasized about touring or performing live. I was thinking more of The Beatles trajectory of a series of increasingly sophisticated studio albums with an adoring fan base that would hang on my every release. Well, that didn’t happen.

What did happen was a move to LA after college to record my first professional demo tape in hope of securing a record deal, zero interest from record labels, years of waiting tables and playing cover songs and standards in piano bars, accompanying other singers, and sporadic concerts of my own songs in tiny LA venues to small, only mildly interested, audiences.

But there was never the slightest doubt that songwriting, piano playing, music was my language, my gift, my aspiration, my deepest expression, and, in fact, my only skill. I just had to figure out where what I did fit in, an ongoing process which continues to this day.

You’ve had some remarkable champions and relationships in the musical word throughout the years. Who do you feel helped to shape your writing the most?

The work of The Beatles has inspired me most, both in its creation and production. I continue to be blown away by its diversity, compositional and sonic scope, poetry, imagination, playfulness and sheer musicality. Also, Joni Mitchell has been a big influence, not directly on my writing, but in a more general sense as an example of the integrity with which an artistic life may be lived.

One great gift of 20-plus years of writing in total anonymity was that I was only writing to please myself. So I got to develop my unique compositional voice as well as create a trunkful of songs that don’t sound dated because they weren’t written to align stylistically with any particular time period or commercial trend.

My mom loved Broadway, so I grew up hearing showtunes as well as standards, which I’d had to learn for my work in piano bars. But I had no interest in writing for theatre until, in my mid- thirties, I met Stephen Schwartz and, a couple years later, Stephen Sondheim, who both encouraged me to move to NYC and give musical theatre a try. By then, my “I love you, you don’t love me, I’m really miserable…” personal-life inspiration for many of my songs was wearing thin, and it was exciting to imagine branching out to write songs from other people’s/characters’ perspectives.

Naturally, Schwartz and Sondheim’s work was both inspiring and dangerous in that I might have fallen into the all-too-common trap of thinking “This is what good theatre music sounds like,” and imitated them rather than staying true to my own style and adapting it to theatrical writing. I like to think I’ve managed to avoid that pitfall and retain my individuality.

What song do you feel was a personal turning point in your career?

I can’t think of one song that was a turning point, although “Grateful,” my best known and most performed song, would be the most likely candidate. Certainly the 2000 CD Grateful, The Songs of John Bucchino and its companion songbook were a turning point in terms of visibility in the world. That songbook, and later the It’s Only Life songbook, made my songs available to many more singers, including students in musical theatre programs, which led to decades of my giving master classes in performance of my songs – my favorite thing to do.

Another turning point, my entree into writing for theatre, came after I’d moved to NYC in 1992 and was asked to contribute a 10-minute piece to an evening called Short Attention Span Musicals. I enlisted an LA playwright friend to write the libretto and he proposed that we create our mini-musical out of an urban legend called “The Ghost Hitchhiker.” We set it in the 1920s and renamed it Lavender Girl, and it seemed to work. So, encouraged by the enthusiastic response, we decided to create a full-length musical from a series of short pieces each based on an urban legend, and called the show Urban Myths. Actually, “Grateful,” as well as a number of other of my best-known songs, including “Temporary,” “Dancing” and “This Moment,” were written for the show. We enlisted a director, Stephen Schwartz’ brilliant son Scott (whom I’d known since he was 12!), did several readings in NYC, and were eventually given a full production in Wichita in 1998. I learned so much about theatre writing and mounting a production from this experience. Sadly, Urban Myths was never performed again, but a few years later, Hal Prince asked me if I had anything for a triptych of short musicals he was putting together, and I contributed Lavender Girl. The evening was called 3HREE, and we had a run at the Prince Theatre in Philadelphia (where The New York Times gave us a rave) as well as the Ahmanson in Los Angeles. Hal tried to get backing to bring the show to Broadway but, much to his surprise and all our disappointment, could not make it happen.

Perhaps the two biggest career turning points were with my 2004 revue, It’s Only Life, and my 2008 musical, A Catered Affair.

It’s Only Life was suggested by director Daisy Prince, who was familiar with my work and wanted to put together a revue showcasing it. I remember sitting with Daisy in her living room, lyric sheets from a quarter-century of writing strewn about on every flat surface, choosing which songs to include. We decided to have five singers with piano accompaniment and an emotional arc over the course of the 80-minute show, from urban dwellers living their lives from a place of fear to at least seeing the possibility of living from a place of love. As simple, and complex, as that. The revue begins with the words “I’m afraid to be too little / I’m afraid to be too much” and ends with a song that includes the lyric “Fear is what we learn / Love is who we are.” The show may be performed by any number of singers, and I’ve had the great pleasure of providing piano accompaniment for various casts around the world. An original cast recording featuring Billy Porter, Andrea Burns, Gavin Creel, Jessica Molaskey and Brooks Ashmanskas was recorded by PS Classics and released in 2006.

My journey with A Catered Affair began when Harvey Fierstein, who was a fan of my Grateful album, called to ask if we could meet to discuss a project he had in mind. Harvey had been wanting to adapt the movie The Catered Affair for decades, and asked if I’d be interested in writing the score. It had originally been a teleplay by Paddy Chayefsky, which was adapted for by Gore Vidal for a 1956 movie version, which starred Bette Davis, Ernest Borgnine and Debbie Reynolds. I agreed to co-write the show, which emerged as a bittersweet “kitchen sink drama” with songs that flow in and out of dialogue in a way I hoped extended the Rodgers & Hammerstein theatre writing tradition. After a run at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, our A Catered Affair moved to Broadway for 116 performances and 27 previews. The production received 12 Drama Desk Award nominations, the most of any show from the 2007–08 season, three Tony Award nominations, and the Drama League Awards for Outstanding New Broadway Musical and Distinguished Production of a Musical. The original cast recording, featuring Faith Prince, Harvey Fierstein, Tom Wopat and Leslie Kritzer, was recorded by PS Classics and released on May 27, 2008.

A more recent composition of which I’m especially proud is a 30-minute piece for men’s chorus and 5 soloists called A Peacock Among Pigeons. It was commissioned by the Boston Gay Men’s Chorus, based on a children’s picture book of the same name, and received its premiere in March of 2023. Through characters who are various kinds of birds, the piece whimsically deals with surviving bullying and reclaiming one’s self-esteem. Here’s a video of the Boston performance:

You write both musical theatre and stand-alone pop. How is the practice of your craft influenced by these distinct modes and how has that found its way into your stage musicals?

I thought I wrote stand-alone pop, but it turns out I don’t. I only write what I write, “John songs”: songs that are as much art songs as they are pop or theatre. There are, I’ve been told, inherent storytelling and character elements in what I naturally do, so I can apply those qualities to theatre songs. And, as influenced as I was by 1970s radio music, there is a hint of pop sensibility now and then, especially in the more up-tempo ones. But nothing I’ve written has ever made it to AM radio, and I haven’t had a commercially successful musical – as proud as I am of them artistically. While there’s something gratifyingly renegade in defying classification, that’s also been a factor in the lack of greater success in either the musical theatre or pop world.

I think perhaps I’m the songwriter equivalent of a miniaturist painter, where the goal is for each small work to reveal its own intricate universe. Being able to accomplish that with a few minutes of music and lyrics gives me the most satisfaction.

What are the themes that find their way into your work?

Someone once pointed out that I write a lot about time, its passage, the impermanence of things. That makes sense, because I’m greatly upset by change. As many young writers do, I used to write a lot about unrequited love. I think my songs are often my higher self telling me things I need to hear. Increasingly, there’s an undercurrent of yearning to grow, to understand myself and the world, to progress, to connect, to be a better human. Those are things for which I’m striving in my everyday life, so they naturally find their way into my work.

What one song do you want people to play a hundred years from now?

My favorite of my songs is “Unexpressed.” I think it represents the best of what I can do with music and lyrics, so if I were to be judged by one song that’s the one I’d choose. “Unexpressed” includes a 6-note passage that is an unintentional, exact musical quote from a Brahms Intermezzo Op. 118 in A Major, and a psychic told me I was Brahms in a past life (which I LOVE, of course!)

To license a show by John Bucchino, visit Concord Theatricals in the US or UK.