The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
‘Something Rotten’ this way comes
Nashville songwriter talks about writing comedy musical with screenwriter brother
Wayne Kirkpatrick will take them any way they come. ¶ A Nashvillebased songwriter, he has penned hits for artists ranging from Garth Brooks (“Wrapped up in You”) to Michael W. Smith (“Place in This World”) to Eric Clapton (“Change the World”).
Sometimes inspiration just comes; at other times he has to dig. He may sit at a piano; he may hold a guitar.
“The process is kind of a bit ‘any way and every way’ that I can land a song,” Kirkpatrick says during a phone interview to promote a Cleveland-bound touring production of the musical he wrote with his brother, Karey, “Something Rotten.”
“Generally speaking,” the Louisiana native continues, “I tend to work from music. In other words, I don’t tend to put music to lyrics as much as I put lyrics to music.”
While he doesn’t like to think of it as going off to a 9-to-5 job, Kirkpatrick on most days goes to a studio to work. One way it differs from other offices is the varying levels of productivity.
“If I’m just not feeling it — there’s nothing worse than forcing a creative moment when you don’t have some sort of inspiration,” he says.
“Sometimes you do have to go, ‘I just need to sit out here and wait for something to happen.’
“I might come out here to the studio and go, ‘I’m not really feeling anything yet, but maybe I’ll just listen to some music or I’ll watch a TV show or something, just something to kind of distract from the fact I have no ideas. And you kind of inadvertently come across some sort of idea or get something that sparks you or inspires you.”
Over time, he’s learned to deal with dry spells.
“I used to … kind of panic and go, ‘Oh, I’ve lost it. The last thing I wrote was a week ago, and that’s it — I’m done.’ After a while, you just gotta go, ‘It’ll come back.’ You gotta be patient. You can’t force it. It comes in peaks and valleys.”
Getting a recording artist to record one of his songs, he says, comes in two fashions. Most commonly, demos of songs are played for artists, usually via a music publisher, to see if there’s anything they feel is right for them. Sometimes, though, he’ll work with an artist at the beginning of the writing process, spending a bit of time getting to know them, learning their musical likes and dislikes and looking for common ground.
“If you get to write with an artist, then you get to eliminate all the middlemen and you’re going directly to the source.”
To hear Kirkpatrick tell it, the sensation of hearing a recording of one of his songs performed by Clapton, Brooks, Bonnie Raitt, Faith Hill, Joe Cocker, Nickel Creek — the list goes on — hasn’t gotten old.
“It’s quite a thrill for me anytime that happens, anytime someone thinks enough of something I’ve written to want to record it, add it to their repertoire. That’s just another dream fulfilled,” he says. “I (picture) myself in my 20s and sitting in my room and trying to imagine if I could ever write something that someone would want to sing — other than me.
“And then, of course, when it’s artists like that, there’s a little bit of, ‘Are you kidding me? You’re doing that?’ It’s so great.”
(Kirkpatrick did release one album — 2000’s “The Maple Room” — but, he says, he realized he was more interested in working on the craft of songwriting than everything that goes into being a successful musical artist.)
Is there a recording of one of his songs by another artist he likes best?
“It might be an obvious answer, but I was really blown away by what Eric Clapton and (producer Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds) did with ‘Change the World,’” he says.
In fact, he says he tends to dislike more than he likes when it comes to such recordings based on choices made by artists and producers. However, the reverse is wonderful.
“When you hear a song … and the reaction is almost like, ‘Whoa, I wrote that? That seems better (than what I did),’” he says with a laugh.
Sometimes he collaborates with other writers, as he did on “Something Rotten.” However, his brother, Karey, is another type of writer, a screenwriter whose credits include “James and the Giant Peach,” “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and “The Spiderwick Chronicles.”
The pair have long shared a love of theater, both of them performing in high school and Karey for a while pursuing a career as an actor.
“We always talked about (wanting) to write a musical,” Wayne Kirkpatrick says of he and Karey. “The idea that eventually became ‘Something Rotten’ was something that we casually talked about for about 15 years.”
While not exactly autobiographical, considering in part that it’s set in the 1590s, “Something Rotten” does involve a pair of brothers, Nick and Nigel Bottom, desperate to write a hit play. The lads’ main problem is they exist in the shadow of — as Broadway. com refers to him in its synopsis — “that Renaissance rockstar,” William Shakespeare. The Bottoms set out to write the world’s first musical but, of course, face challenges along the way.
The brothers — Kirkpatrick, not Bottom — had a friend in Broadway producer Kevin McCollum (“Rent,” “Avenue Q”), to whom they pitched the idea and played him a few songs they’d been working on for the show. McCollom, Kirkpatrick says, thought they had something and encouraged them to keep working.
“At that point, it was like, ‘We really have to write this.’ That was the moment of truth,” he says.
For another four or five years, working around their other professional commitments, the Kirkpatricks worked to craft a show that is loaded with humor, one that jabs playful fun at the world they’ve since entered.
“If you really love musicals, you would enjoy this,” he says. “And if you hate musicals, you might enjoy it, too, because it makes fun of them in places.”
The music and lyrics of “Something Rotten” are credited to Wayne, with the book credit going to Karey and John O’Farrell, with direction and choreography by Tony Award winner Casey Nicholaw (“The Book of Mormon”). Speaking of Tonys, the show was nominated for 10, including Best Musical, after its 2015 Broadway opening.
Told there sometimes can be a drop-off in talent quality when a show moves from Broadway to a tour, Kirkpatrick says it was a relief when three key players from the Broadway production — Rob McClure and Josh Grisetti, as Nick and Nigel, respectively, and Adam Pascal, who portrays Shakespeare — signed on for the roadshow.
“And then some of the other people that signed on to do it — I mean they are as good, if sometimes not better, than some (Broadway performers),” he says. “It’s amazing; we just got really lucky with the cast that we have.”
The show runs April 25 through May 14 in the Connor Palace at Playhouse Square.
Given the show’s success, it’s not surprising the Kirkpatricks are continuing to work as a pair.
“We’re working on another musical that we have been asked to not announce what the title is so the producer can announce it himself, but we are working on another musical,” he says. “And then we’re working on some film projects that are not official yet, either, but we are starting to get into that world.”
After noting it’s a good time to be making a movie musical, he is asked about a big-screen adaptation of “Something Rotten” and says it is not something in the works.
“That has been discussed, and, of course, we are open to that,” Kirkpatrick says. “It would be down the road if it happened.
“That’s definitely something we would love to see happen.”