Interview: Clint Holmes of BETWEEN THE MOON AND NEW YORK CITY at 54 Below

Clint Holmes is a showman.  Genuine Showmen (or women or gender-fluid folks) are as rare as can be these days. Sure, there are artists with wonderful voices who can really put over their material. However, a showman has that little extra "oomph" - that wonderful something extra that dazzles an audience, making them feel like they are in the presence of a remarkable talent. Holmes is one of those people.

On June 1st through the 4th at 7:00 pm at 54 Below, find out for yourself when Clint Holmes salutes the famed Australian showman, Peter Allen in "Between the Moon and New York City." I sat down with Clint and chatted about Peter Allen, Holmes' life and career, and about the fascinating people with whom he's worked.

This article has been edited for space and clarity.

Clint, how many times have you been at 54 Below? This isn't your first time.

Second time, as a performer. I've been there to see friends and performances, but, as an artist, this is my second time. We did Between the Moon and New York City last September for two nights and they invited us back for four. Wonderful.

You've written and performed a few one-man shows dedicated to one artist, like Nat King Cole.  So why Peter Allen?

It's been in the back of my mind for a long time because Peter was a friend back in the 80s when we were both... well, he was in New York, and I was actually in New Jersey, but I was in New York. We shared a manager, we worked together a couple of times in Atlantic City. We spent some social time and, in my life, there have been two entertainers who have influenced me the most:  Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Allen.  And I've gotta throw Harry Belafonte in there too. Peter was somebody I admired, and I loved his personality. He was very kind. He was very funny. So, in the back of my mind, knowing that Peter is one of those people who, everyone is going to know the name of many songs, they're gonna go, "Oh, I love that song!"  The people who know Peter, love it, you know?  Then I ran into Michael Orland who, as you probably know, taught all the kids on American Idol for 17 years. We were talking, about a year ago, and he said "What do you have?" And I said, "Well I'm thinking about doing a Peter Allen show," and he said, "Oh my God, I love Peter Allen. I wanna do it with you." I said I can't afford you, he said we'll make it happen... and we did.

We just started working on it and, like most things, when you research them, you find out a whole bunch of stuff you didn't know - you know about (Peter's) life, about his father, about how much Judy Garland was an influence in his life... it's a very interesting life and the music is workable. So Michael and I, director WILL NUNZIATA, and producer Sunny Sessa, and my dear departed friend Bill Fayne (Ed: Bill Fayne was an arranger) worked for probably six months to make this show happen.  I'm really proud of it.

That's great.  Peter Allen was renowned for his flash and his sparkle. Are you getting out the Hawaiian shirts and the sequins?

I am not.  I'm not trying to impersonate Peter in any way at all.   It's (the same) kind of idea with the  Bobby Short show - the whole key to it was not to pretend to be Bobby Short but to honor the music, honor what he brought to it.  I'm trying to do the same with Peter. It tells the story through his music. We all know The Boy From Oz, a wonderful show with Hugh Jackman. This (show) is just his words, his songs, and the reason he wrote them. So I'm not doing the dressing, the flash, the dazzle. We do have two special guests who bring the Flash and Dazzle. We have Nikki Renee Daniels, who is a wonderful Broadway star, she was just in the last production of Company on Broadway, and she is my duet partner in the show. And there's this woman I met in Las Vegas who kind of looks like Ann-Margret, who comes out and dances - my wife (Kelly Clinton).  So it's Kelly doing that. 

I remember meeting Kelly. She's great. Do you guys get to tour together very much?

Not a lot, honestly, we don't.  We've talked about that but she has her own career, doing her own thing, mainly in Las Vegas.  Right now I'm in New Jersey working on a  whole other project and she can't she come - she'll come next Monday before we open. 

Which of Peter's songs is your favorite to sing?

That's a hard one, for different reasons. I love doing "Tenterfield Saddler" - that's the only song that he wrote about his childhood, and I really relate to that because I wrote a whole play about my childhood.  I love that song, I think it's wonderful.   "Once Before I Go" is a sensational song we do.  I'll tell you what was my best surprise. Do you know a song called "6:30 Sunday Morning"?

I actually am not familiar with that one. 

Well, Michael, as we were researching and building the show, Michael Orland said, "Do you know this?" I said no, he played it for me, and I fell in love with it. It's basically an atmospheric song he wrote about being in New York on a rainy Sunday morning and what it feels like. So that was my great surprise, finding that there's more than one song I didn't know - that one is just wonderful, we do that and it gets right into what they call Between the Moon and New York City - they really go together well.

My favorite Peter Allen song, very few people actually know it, is "I Could Marry the Rain."

I absolutely love the song. It's one of the prettiest, and he's fabulous in that number because he just caresses it.

This is totally off-topic but let me ask you about your work on La Ronde with Frank Wildhorn. It sounds very interesting.

That's the working title of the show, now. Frank and I have been friends for a long time, but we hadn't written together, then the pandemic hit and Frank and I were talking, and he said "Why don't I send you some melodies?"  He sent me some melodies and we started writing, and that turned into the initial, I think, first 12 songs for that project.  Hopefully, by the end of this year that'll be up and churning, but, in the meantime, Frank and I are writing for other artists.  We both say to each other, "How come we've known each other for 30 years and just started writing a year and a half ago? What's wrong with us?"

And your director for the Peter Allen show is Will Nunziata.  Tell me about his involvement.

What Will has brought to it is a vision for the whole thing. He's very smart and very respectful. He knows that I "have been doing this a long time and I know what I'm doing," so he doesn't walk in and say "Here's what you need to do." He watches and he makes suggestions and he looks at the overview of the piece.  Will is a smart person who gets the whole thing and pushes it forward - this show would not be as good as it is. It's got a little magic.  I'm gonna say everything that I've done and put myself into, I feel, is good.  This one has a little magic, and I think it's largely because of what Will brought to it, overall. Will has done a great job with this and Michael Orland is a fantastic musical director. 

How does your personal life story relate to the Allen Songbook? 

There's a song that we open the show with that he wrote called "All the Lives of Me." The opening lines are "Everywhere I go, I'm followed by a lot of people, such a lot of people that it's almost a parade. And if you could see all the people, They're everyone I ever was and everyone I ever will be. All the lives of me." That's my life.

Wow.

That's my life. And it's that idea that we, as entertainers, and as people on stage, bend to our audience, want to please our audience. One of the lines is "If you smile at someone, then I will just become that one and throw in all the others for free."  When I knew Peter, what we shared most is our love of going on stage, that rush, that credible part of us that we couldn't be who we were, without - that's the basic place that we come from, at heart, you can't take that away. You can't take the stage away from either (of us).

That makes a lot of sense. 

Michael, I gotta say one more thing. Here was one of the first flamboyant, if you will, gay performers of his era, there wasn't any doubt about it... and then you have a soft edge... when you have a song by the name of Bi-Coastal, you kind of figure it out. That's the second song in the show.

Oh really?

Yeah.  So that's another area, that we come from different places, and meld them together to make ourselves. That's another area, that commonality that I have with Peter. 

You're a Vegas institution. You tour, you've done TV, you've been Joan Rivers' sidekick - her 90th birthday is coming up.

Yes, it is on June 8th.

Do you have fond remembrances of Joan? I have a million, she was so good to me.

I'll tell you what - I used to tour with her before she had her TV show. And I read that she was gonna get a new show on Fox. That's prime time.  So the next time we were on tour, I said, "Hey..." I was living in New Jersey, she was in LA, and I said, "How's it going out there? What's it all about?" And she said, "We have this great bandleader and we don't have an announcer."  The next thing I know, she flies me out to LA to audition to be an announcer.  Serious circumstances. I got the job and we moved back to LA.  The network people didn't want me. They wanted somebody else... and she fought for me: she said, "I know Clint. I work with him. I trust him."  I got the job, so I'm indebted to her.  I gotta tell you, I absolutely, absolutely, adored her.

I'm so glad to hear that.

It's always good to hear good things about people; it's good to hear about them when they're here, but even after they're gone, it's nice to hear those things.

Yeah. So you're winding up this show on June the 4th and are you taking it anywhere else after this?

We're at the Kravis Center in Palm Beach, next season. We've done it in San Francisco, we've done it in Indiana, St. Louis, we've done it in Vegas, LA, and New York.

I hope you can take it to Australia, they would probably adore it, would you?

I'd love that. Absolutely.

Well, Clint,  I appreciate your time. I really do.

Thanks, Michael.  Take care.

Bye, bye.

Clint Holmes BETWEEN THE MOON AND NEW YORK CITY plays 54 Below June 1st through the 4th at 7 pm.  For information and reservations visit THIS link.

THIS is the Clint Holmes website.

Read the Broadway World Cabaret review of Between The Moon and New York City HERE.

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