Interview: JOE ICONIS & FAMILY Are Back With Another Blowout at 54 Below

(Header photo credit: Gabriella Spiegel)

Joe Iconis, one of the songwriters behind hit musical Be More Chill is returning to 54 Below. Joe Iconis & Family is back for a blow-out run that promises to be their biggest shows yet. Shows run nightly from Tuesday July 30th through Saturday August 3rd, all at 7 pm. Featuring a massive cast of Iconis’s beloved Rogue’s Gallery of showtune punks, expect to hear classic tunes from Joe’s musicals, world premieres, and works-in-progress. Part cabaret, part rock concert, this is new musical theater come to blazing life all around you. At an Iconis & Family gig, you simply never know who will pop up on stage… or at your table! Spill a drink, make a friend, and join The Family. (You can find the lineup, and tickets, are available on 54 Below’s website.)

We spoke with Joe Iconis about the upcoming show and the origin of the Family.

What are you looking forward to about the Joe Iconis and Family show?

It’s been a while since we’ve done a proper Iconis and Family gig. Since our last run at 54 Below, which was the annual Christmas show, I've had the world premiere production of the Hunter S. Thompson musical that I've been working on and I've done a whole bunch of gigs here and there as a solo artist. But doing the Family shows is really kind of the artistic high point of my year. It's a chance for myself and all of these artists who I frequently collaborate with to really do the thing we kind of love best and put on these shows that are hybrids of rock concerts and sort of old-fashioned showtune cabarets.

And so, I'm really excited to return to my favorite venue with all the people I love and welcome some brand new folks who've never performed with us before.

How do you put together your performer list for these shows?
Sort of like how I have created this thing that is known as the Family over the years is really just, I'm an obsessive fan of actors. I truly love great actors. And throughout my career, when I’ve met actors through an audition or at a bar or a show, who I really liked, I have tried to make it my business to work with them.

And if we get on, I try to make it my business to work and collaborate with them as many times as I can. And so, a good number of the people who are going to be in these shows are people who I’ve been working with for 5, 10, 15, 20 years. It's sort of like a core group of artists. And the shows, the way they're put together, it's kind of a wild thing where, because everyone who's in them does a million things... there's plenty of people who do my shows who are quite successful and credentialed, and they often are doing Broadway shows or regional gigs or movies or what have you. There's many people who do my shows who are incredibly talented and have not had the luck that others have had, and so they're working 9 to 5 jobs and they're taking care of their kids. And so it really becomes about scheduling more than anything.

It's like, okay, of these 40 people who I have a really, really close relationship with, who are the 20 who are available to do this run? And then because of people's availability, the sort of happy side effect of that is that the cast of the show is different every night. And then because of that, the songs are different every night.

And so that's sort of like how the, the main core group is decided for these shows. And then as far as the new people, I love to use these shows as an opportunity to collaborate with artists who I’m digging on. Like the first time I worked with Betty Buckley was at an Iconis and Family show.

The first time I worked with a lot of our guests who I've developed work with was through Iconis and Family shows. This time I'm really excited about Ali Louis Bourzgui, who just finished his run of Tommy yesterday.

Ali was someone who I was so knocked out by in that show, and I had never met him before. I'd never seen him before. But I just loved his performance so much in Tommy and I hit him up and just said I was a huge fan. And, then I later found out that he had sort of been a fan of mine for years because he's from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, which is where Barrington Stage Company is.

And so, he's seen, from a very young age, a lot of the shows I've done with Barrington, and so I'm excited to get to collaborate with him for the first time during these shows.

Have you already pre-planned, which, which pieces from your works in progress that you're going to include in these?
Yeah. For sure. At 54 Below there’s a really strict time constraint. And so, the shows can have to be under 75 minutes, which for me is always the most challenging part of doing these shows, because in addition to involving a million people, I sort of write really long songs. And so it becomes this, like, insane jigsaw puzzle of, what songs can I do? What cut of them can I do so that I can maximize the time that I have? And so that just sort of necessitates a tremendous amount of pre-planning. People come to see the shows and the sort of artistic idea behind them is that it's real, sort of rock-solid theater tunes performed with a boisterous rock and roll band.

And the vibe of the evening is intentionally loose and explosive and feels alive, like it feels almost like an improv show where anything can happen. But the truth is that it is meticulously planned out, which is, I think, the only way that you can kind of achieve the atmosphere that we achieve at our shows without it feeling amateurish or sloppy or something.

You've been doing the show for a while. Do you have a favorite moment so far from the years that you've done it?

It's kind of cheesy to say, but every time we get to do a run, it feels like every performance is my favorite one. I'm very much like, every show is your last show. And it kind of feels like the highlight of whatever the last show we did is my favorite moment. But in general, I really love the sort of like, nervous excitement of the very top of the shows, which I classically have always started myself. And so, I usually go out to the piano and I'll start a song, just me, and over the course of the evening, the space fills up with more and more performers.

And so, I love the... it's like excitement and slight terror right before I begin. And that first minute where I'm trying to engage with the audience, I'm trying to take stock of like, okay, are people chatty? Are people listening? Is it a full house? Is it a light house?

It's like a real adrenaline rush. And then the moment at the end of the show where we always close the show with a song I wrote called “The Goodbye Song.” With each passing year it becomes more and more emotional and it feels like the song itself gets bigger and bigger and means more and more things.

So by that time in the show, I'm usually physically completely exhausted. I’m mentally and vocally completely exhausted. And so, there's this absolute elation and relief that we, like, got to the end. And so, I feel like those are always my favorite parts, the very top and the very end of the shows.

Is there anything else you want to add about the show?
A lot of the songs are from my album, which is available on Ghostlight Records, which is called Albums. The artist is Joe Iconis and Family. I'm excited for people to continue to hear material from that album. We're going to be doing a few songs, that we've never done in concert before.

I'm going to start the show with a brand new song that I have yet to write. I guess we'll see if I write it, if anyone reads this and comes to the show. If the show does not begin with a new song then I failed. [laughs]

Good luck with that! Is there anything else that you want to plug?

There's a restaurant and performance space in New York City that announced that it's closing very soon. It's called the West Bank Cafe. And the name of the performance space inside of it is the Laurie Beechman Theater. It's a place that I have a very, very, long history with.

The institution itself is a piece of New York theater history. The play Side Man began in that theater. It's where they rehearsed the original production of Sunday in the Park with George. There's a million things like that. There's going to be, there's going to be a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for that spot in the hopes that the owner can keep the doors open. And so I just wanted to alert people to that.

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Tickets to Joe Iconis & Family Tuesday July 30th through Saturday August 3rd are available on 54 Below's website.

Learn more about Joe Iconis on his website.

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