Interview: Viral Comedy Band Lewberger Talks First-Ever Musical THE WIZARD OF FRIENDSHIP

Three-man comedy band Lewberger, featuring Keith Habersberger, Alex Lewis, and Hughie Stone Fish have been seen and heard by millions thanks to their viral songs, live performances, comedy special 'Lewberger: Live at Lincoln Hall' on Amazon Prime, podcast 'Celebrity Theme Song' and appearances on America's Got Talent and NBC's Bring The Funny. Now Lewberger is making their Off-Broadway debut with their first-ever musical, THE WIZARD OF FRIENDSHIP running March 1st - March 26th at NYC's Theatre Row!

THE WIZARD OF FRIENDSHIP follows Lewberger, who get into a fight so big it breaks the heart of the Wizard of Friendship. Lewberger is sent on a musical quest in NoFriendia, where they must venture to the Handsome Forest, through the Adults-only Haunted House, and many more wacky and whimsical places all while being guided by a giant sausage man.

The cast of THE WIZARD OF FRIENDSHIP features Brian Wohl, Nya Noemi, Shaq Hester, Emily Martínez, and Aria Renee Curameng.

Being presented in tandem with THE WIZARD OF FRIENDSHIP, you can also catch LEWBERGER IN CONCERT, as the boys perform their classic hits from their days at Buzzfeed to their most popular songs on Youtube and Tik Tok.

BroadwayWorld spoke with Lewberger about what went into the process of creating their first ever full-length musical!

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Lewberger is making its Off-Broadway debut in March with THE WIZARD OF FRIENDSHIP. How are you all feeling about making your Off-Broadway debut?

Keith: It's very exciting to do something like this artistically. We've done lots of touring around the country, done lots of shows in LA, done lots of shows in the digital space, but this is a whole new beast. And I say that because we knew it was going to be a lot of work, but let me tell you, it's a lot of work! We're uniting and conquering, and dividing and conquering. There are things all of us have to be together to do for eight hours a day at a time, and then we leave those times together and spend another five hours each working on something else. But, as much work as it is, I think everything that we do makes us more and more excited to put up a show in New York, have that theatrical dream and accomplishment. So, it's pretty exciting.

How did the idea come about for you to create a full-scale musical?

Alex: Originally what had happened was we put out a comedy special about two or three years ago, and it went to Amazon Prime and all sorts of places, and we signed with a company that told us, "It's going to be great, it's going to be really exciting." And then pandemic hit, and we were thinking, "This is the perfect opportunity for us, because everyone is trapped at home with nothing to watch!" And nobody watched it! [laughs]. What ended up happening that same year was a lot of really fantastic comedy specials came out. You had Bo Burnham's 'Inside', our good friend Danny Jolles came out with these comedy specials that were filmed in a few different locations, everybody was being really creative with their comedy specials. And I said to the other guys, "We're not a normal standup act, we should create a musical, and that should be our next comedy special." So, that was sort of the genesis.

What did the creative process look like for this? Did you start with an idea? Did you start with a song and then build from there?

Hughie: So, a lot of these songs that are in the show are actually songs that we've been touring, and workshopping, and playing all across the country and online. We had this collection of songs, and we knew it was time for a new album, and we thought, "Let's not just release a new album, let's make something even bigger and grander with it." So, we wrote a narrative that actually works a lot of these songs in, and we made it make sense. It's such a fantastical musical we can say, "Okay, now we're going to the Handsome Forest where we're going to see the handsome trees, and we're all going to sing a song about four equally handsome boys!" And it allowed us to really make this zany narrative that jumps from place to place, but also makes sense.

And then similar to what Keith was saying, there was a lot of dividing and conquering. Alex really took the lead in getting this story together, and getting these pages together. And then Keith and I are pitching jokes, pitching story ideas. Then there's a new draft that we're changing. Now we're working on the album, I'm producing all the tracks and we're bringing it to Jay [Marcovitz], and then Jay is making it better. And then we're all coming to the studio, and then Jay and I are on Zoom for four hours. Then we're all getting back into the studio, then we're all listening to mixes. It's a lot of dividing and conquering, and unifying.

Alex: On top of that, Keith has been not only preparing to direct the whole thing, but he's also become this one-man video editing band, he's creating these amazing backgrounds and things that we're going to perform in front of. Because we're not doing physical sets, we're doing all digital sets, and Keith has created this amazing virtual show that's going to happen behind us. It's amazing.

Keith: Something we realized just the other week is this show encompasses all the skills and talents that we've developed over our lives, and it's all funneled into this one project. So, everything from knowing how to juggle, to knowing how to video edit, to knowing how to produce music, to singing, to dancing, to working with the lighting designer, it's everything.

Can I ask a little bit more about the process of creating the music? Does it start with a joke? Do you all work on one song? Do you each have specialties?

Keith: It's sort of yes to all those things. Everybody definitely has specialties. There are sometimes when one of us will write 75% of a song in lyrics and have sort of an idea of the melodic structure, we'll bring it to each other, Hughie will start pounding out ideas on the piano and say, "Maybe like that, maybe like this," and I'll say, "Oh, that's better than what I had, let's go with that," and we're recording a rough on our iPhones, we're just hitting a voice app and getting an idea of a song. And then Hughie will go away, and make a track for us to build on, and work out what it really is, we come back, we change it again. Then we get into, "Okay, what is are our harmonic structures for this?" Then we start drilling how we want to sing the song.

For some songs we're like, "This song is really great, for this show it's probably 40 seconds too long, so what's the most cut-able section?" Then we start removing stuff that's weaker until we whittle down into a unique song. And sometimes it's literally built off one joke. There is one joke we really love and, "How do we make a minute and a half song to get us to this joke, because this joke is so silly and fun." And some of it is like, this character in the musical, The Wizard of Friendship, the Wizard themself needs to be a star, so we need to give them a solo that feels like a pop diva moment in this otherwise sort of overture song that's about the Wizard of Friendship. We need to think about what these characters need, how these characters would sing, and the shape the song around them.

What is your favorite thing about working with one another?

Hughie: I can say, for me, Alex and Keith are both so talented and funny. The way that their brains think about comedy is so unique and awesome.

Keith: I think actually performing, when the three of us are on stage doing shows, is the most fun part of the job because there is lots and lots of work, some of it is not fun, some of it is super fun, but they all lead to this thing. Our jobs when we're on tour, we like to think of the job as everything up until we get on stage and after we get off stage, and on stage is like kind of actually the pay. The pay is always a question mark, I don't know how much we're going to make, but the pay is getting to perform songs that you wrote, and doing stupid dances that you wrote, and jokes that you wrote and you've written together, and getting to perform it for, whether its 100 people, or 300 people, or 800 people, either way, it's really fun and gratifying, and special. And it's rare when you get a really good cast of characters that have great chemistry, that are all as dedicated to the project, especially with something like a band, people don't all lift the same amount of weight, and I think everyone is all working equally as hard on this project because we care about it a lot.

Alex: Plus one to what Keith and Hughie said on both accounts, but these guys are both hilarious, funny people that I get to work with, which is really exciting, and I love getting to perform live with them, and on top of that, one of my favorite things is literally driving in the car for hours with them, and it's us making each other laugh all day. It's the funniest car rides you've ever been a part of, where we're all just not able to stop laughing. And a lot of creativity comes from those moments. When we wrote our classic song 'That Sausage is a Roasted D*ck!' we just were making each other laugh in Hughie's apartment with this dumb song over and over again, and it just lasted for the next few weeks, we would just keep singing it, like, "Well, I guess we should make this stupid line we keep singing into a song!"

And with the creation of The Wizard of Friendship, plot-wise, it's so wacky, and fun, and heartfelt. How did that idea come about? Who was like, "This is what our musical should be," and how did the building process go?

Keith: Well, Alex really loves David Bowie's Labyrinth, and I grew up watching this really bizarre, straight to VHS folk song movies, they were called 'We Sing'. If you know what those are, they're really bizarre, but they're mostly just jukebox musicals for folk songs. And they are really good for four to seven year-olds to learn the basics of simple songs that you're going to hear for the rest of your life. But they always had this really bizarre production value, it was always kind of cheap, but also they poured a lot of money into the costumes, and they were both cute and kind of horrifying at the same time, and they were always clearly inspired by some sort of psychedelic, they are always traveling to another dimension through a rainbow tunnel. And so, we were like, "Okay, let's take elements of The Wizard of Oz, and Labyrinth, and We Sing, and combine it all together."

The story came from all those inspirations, and also figuring out how to make a jukebox musical of our songs. And it's funny to say that because some of these songs no one has ever heard before, so it's weird to be a jukebox musical in that sense. But for us, we've known these songs for a while, so compiling them in a way that makes them make sense. Also, the secret storyline going on in the show is that it's Hanukkah. So there's a lot of little Hanukkah references, and we also have some songs about latkes, and figuring out how to get these to make sense, and make them really bizarre. It's very mystical and goofy.

What would you like to say to audience members who are coming to see this show?

Hughie: I would like the audience members to come in and have a great time. We are going to be having the time of our lives up there, we are so excited to do this, we are all dancing every single day, singing every single day, working on every single aspect of this show, and the reason we are working so hard right now, is so that when we get to New York City, and the first show opens up, we can just get on stage and have a blast. So, our plan is to have the most fun possible there, and that's exactly what we want for the audiences.

Keith: Yeah, this is achieving a dream of ours, so it's great for audiences to come and experience that with us. We do so much stuff online where millions of people get to see it, this is a show where only 2300 people could see, that's the amount of shows we're doing in this theater. We're also doing Lewberger in Concert for 11 shows, which a totally different show, completely different music, so we have it that on the weekends you can come see both shows and get two different sets of songs, so about 35 different songs. So, a lot of music. It's cool, it's special. There's really nothing like live theater, there is nothing like putting up a musical in New York, you get to live our little dream with us and that's really cool.

Alex: Audience members will also probably be excited to know that we've got some really special guests that are planning to be a part of every show. If you've seen our TikTok duets, you'll know that we've got some really cool Broadway friends, and a lot of them are going to make little cameos, every show we're going to have a fun little cameo from a Broadway star.

Keith: Sometimes Broadway, maybe sometimes the world of YouTube, sometimes other characters from our lives, but there will be some special guest in every single show in this one little moment. It will be a fun little surprise every time. A fun little Easter egg.