Interview: Keith Carradine Talks Returning to His Roots with Encores! PAINT YOUR WAGON

Two-time Tony nominee Keith Carradine will star in the Encores! production of PAINT YOUR WAGON this month (running March 18 - 22), alongside Alexandra Socha and Justin Guarini. The show, set in a mining camp in Gold Rush-era California, is the story of a dreaming gold miner and his daughter whose world is changed when the daughter finds gold-and love-near their camp. Meet the cast below!

PAINT YOUR WAGON opened at the Shubert Theater on November 12, 1951 and ran for 289 performances. It has a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. The original production was directed by Daniel Mann and choreographed by Agnes De Mille. Songs include "They Call the Wind Maria," "I Talk to the Trees" and "I'm On My Way."

Earlier this week, Carradine took a break from rehearsals to chat with BroadwayWorld about the process so far. Read along as he discusses his connection with the musical, other roles he'd like to take on one day, and so much more. Check out the full interview below!

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Congrats on making your Encores debut! How have rehearsals been going so far?

Fabulous! Obviously, it's an extremely accelerated process, but I'm having a great time with that. I find it to be an exhilarating challenge. One day's worth of rehearsal in this process is equal to a week anywhere else. The amount of work we are getting done in the time we have to do it is really amazing. It also creates certain energy. I think that's why these Encores! presentations are so popular. The audience can feel that! It's so exciting to be a part of.

This is your first stage show since HANDS ON A HARDBODY, right? Is it good to be back in the rehearsal room?

Oh yes, it's always good to be back working on live theatre. It's my great love. The more time that I can spend at it, the happier I am. So yeah, it's really great to be back.

I don't think that PAINT YOUR WAGON is a musical that people are super familiar with. Did you know the show before signing on?

I've actually been familiar with the material for a long time. "Wand'rin' Star" is a song that my father used to sing. It was a part of his repertoire. He dragged me and my brothers when we were kids and we'd end up at some piano bar. He'd get half-lit and he'd invariably end up singing "Wand'rin' Star." He had a whole list of classic songs from musicals that he liked to sing. So I've known that song since I was a little boy. And I've of course been familiar with a lot of the music fro PAINT YOUR WAGON because we would stand around the piano and my mother would play. My brother and I loved to sing that stuff.

And of course the musical itself I became more familiar with when they made the movie. The movie of course is quite a departure from the original musical that Lerner and Lowe created. In that movie, Lee Marvin played 'Ben Rumson', and Lee and I were friends from the time that we worked together in the early 70s to the time that he passed. I was very appreciative of his work in that movie and of Josh Logan's rendering of it in the cinema. So it has had a special place in my heart for many, many years! I've been waiting a long time to age into this role. The fact that it's here and that I have the opportunity to do it now is a dream come true for me.

And of course you get to sing this beautiful Lerner and Lowe score...

I'm a huge fan of theirs and this is them at the top of their game! This is before MY FAIR LADY and CAMELOT. It's 1951 and it's such a quintessentially American score. It IS Americana at its best. It's got shades of Copeland laced with throughout. It draws from the American folk tradition and all of those wonderful tunes that came over from Ireland. It's just so resonant of our melting pot culture. It's so uniquely American... so rousing. The presentation of it here is going to knock people's socks off. I can't wait to hear it in the City Center, with a 31piece orchestra. And it's so male-centric. It's about a bunch of men in a mining camp, so it's the kind of thing that I don't think audiences in New York have heard in quite a long time. I think they will be delighted. And especially those people who aren't as familiar with this Lerner and Lowe score, as they are the others that have penetrated popular culture more that this one has.

What I really love about this series is that it's bringing shows to people's attention that hey might not know about otherwise. What does that mean to you to get to share a show like this with a New York audience?

This musical has a very special place in my heart, so to be a part of an ensemble that is bringing this back to New York City, and reminding the New York theatre audience of this show, I think is a privilege beyond compare. I cannot wait for the response. I think they will go through the roof!

Are there any other old shows that you would drop everything to do?

Oh yes. There are a bunch of them! There's a lot of classic musical theatre that I think I could fit into in this stage of my life and career. I've always been very fond of MY FAIR LADY. I think I could render a Higgins pretty well, even though I'm not a Brit! And I think I could do Arthur in CAMELOT if that ever got a proper revival. There are so many great roles, and I'm sure I'd think of others if I stopped to think about it. It's interesting that as we performers age, we start to think, "Well, what can I do now? I'm 65 years old. What can I fit into?" When Ben Rumson came along it fit like a glove. And that's the beauty of musical theatre...that there are parts out there for guys like me. There are some classic roles out there that if I had the chance, I would certainly jump at.

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Carradine is best known to theatre audiences for his Tony Award nominated performance as the title character in The Will Rogers Follies. He won the Outer Critics Circle Award for Foxfire with Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, and appeared as Lawrence in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels at the Imperial Theater. He was seen on Broadway most recently in Hands on a Hardbody. Recent television roles include Wild Bill Hickock in HBO's "Deadwood", FBI Special Agent Frank Lundy on Showtime's "Dexter" and Agent Carl McGowan in the new season of CBS' NUMB3RS. Carradine appeared with brothers David and Robert as the Younger brothers in Walter Hill's film The Long Riders. He appeared again for Hill in Southern Comfort. His first notable film appearance was in director Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller. He went on to play Bowie in Altman's Thieves Like Us and one of the principal characters, callow, womanizing folk singer Tom Frank, in Altman's critically acclaimed movie Nashville. His song from that movie, "I'm Easy", was a top-ten Billboard hit and Carradine won an Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Original Song for writing the tune. He starred opposite Harvey Keitel in Ridley Scott's The Duellists.

Photo Credit: Joan Marcus