Interview: Michelle Dowdy & Jordan Wolfe of TRICKS & TREATS at The Green Room 42 October 23rd

It's the Witching Season right now, a time of year that many wait for, seek out, and view as their most personal and favorite holiday, the holiday of Pumpkins, pumpkin spice, and horror... lots and lots of horror. And nobody knows more about Horror and Halloween than show business sweethearts Michelle Dowdy and Jordan Wolfe.

The longtime couple that has been making names for themselves as both solo artists and a boy-girl act has a new show coming up this weekend at The Green Room 42, an act appropriately titled TRICKS & TREATS that Jordan and Michelle promise is going to be a blast - a program filled with great music from varying genres, some villains, some goblins, and all things All Hallows Eve.

Last August, Dowdy and Wolfe stopped by my Midtown Manhattan photography studio for a photo shoot and a chat about TRICKS & TREATS, which two months in advance, they both already had a pretty solid feel for. Now, as their show looms on the not-to-distant horizon, we at Broadway World Cabaret are happy to welcome the spookiest lovebirds we know to the interview couch to talk about their work model, the vibe of their first-ever Halloween spectacular, and the ghoulish movies that they, most, recommend.

TRICKS AND TREATS plays The Green Room 42 October 23rd at 7 pm. Make reservations HERE.

Photos by Stephen Mosher. Visit the Stephen Mosher website HERE.

This interview has been edited for space and content.

How we doin' kids?

J: Good. How are you?

M: Great.

I'm well, tell me what's going on with you guys?

M: Well, sweaty though I feel good.

Is it the last day of August yet?

M: Not yet - tomorrow.

S,o as soon as it's September, it's going to be cool. Right?

J: I've got my jaunty scarves ready. (Michelle laughs.)

Are you a jaunty scarf boy?

J: Yeah.

M: He loves a scarf.

J: Michelle's idea of a good vacation is a pool and a beach. I like a winding cobblestone street with a scarf. That's my kind of vacation.

M: He's not a lay out by the pool or beach kind of guy.

Do you see how fair he is?

J: I'm a milk bottle.

M: And this is after I've gotten him out in the sun, as much as I possibly can. (Laughing)

J: I just catch fire.

So, right after the quarantine was lifted, you guys were already singing at West Bank Cafe. And that's the last time I got to see you guys work. What have you guys been doing since?

J: We've been doing lots of stuff outside of the city. We had a monthly show in Rehoboth, Delaware, for a bunch of summers, and we were doing shows in other parts of Delaware, from people we met there. We went to Florida, and we did a bunch of our concerts down in Florida on the Emerald Coast, which was really fun. We went down there a few times.

M: And did a bunch of master classes with some kids. It was so fun.

J: So, a show that I wrote called Night Of The Living Dead The Musical, which was off-Broadway a few years ago, the first-ever youth production of the show (which required a little editing) was right in the middle of the pandemic. It was this virtual production...

M: With a company in the greater Boston area.

J: And we, recently, got to go to Boston to do a show with all these kids and meet them in person for the first time.

M: They do a big cabaret every year with one of the people who've taught at one of their master classes. They get a lot of great people. And we got to do a show with them and sing with them. It was a whole tribute to the sixties, which is right up our alley because that's our thing - we have a whole show about that. And it was great. We got to sing with some of the kids and do a couple of duets and it was really wonderful. They're great.

When you say kids...

M: From eight to High School seniors.

So you guys are balancing out your solo careers, your duo career, and teaching master classes.

M: Yeah.

How do you find the time?

M: I don't know. I feel like, right when we came back, I feel like we had time. Maybe this summer, I feel like I haven't had a lot of time to myself.

J: But we've had a lot of things where we just don't repack the suitcase.. And we did the West Bank, but we haven't done any other shows in New York since we've been back.

M: Well, we had a residency at the Rose Room for a hot second...

J: A hot second, but we haven't really done our own show - we've done it outside of the city, but this October will be the first time we've done a show in the city...

M: Since before the Pandemic

J: ...that we've done a show that's ours. So, that's really exciting.

So you are premiering a new club act at The Green Room 42... or is this a show that you've tried out of town?

M: This is our premiere Halloween Spectacular.

And you guys are Halloween people.

M: Oh, we are big horror people. That's the main genre we watch, in any form. We've seen a lot of bad horror. In fact, we love to watch something that was maybe categorized as camp, from the seventies or eighties. We love to find a random B horror movie and "We gotta watch this!"

J: And what's funny is my parents asked me, "Oh, how did you get into watching scary movies?" And I was like, "YOU guys." They were like, "What are you talking about? We never watched scary movies." And I was like, "When I was 10, 11, 12, and we first were starting to go to Blockbuster and rent movies, the movies you guys got were What Lies Beneath and The Others - which are still two of my favorites.

M: I LOVE The Others.

J: So I'm like, "It was totally you guys."

M: That wasn't my case. My parents weren't like that.

You gravitated to it naturally.

M: Very much so. It's the Scorpio of me. I watched the Blair Witch Project from Blockbuster for the first time by myself, alone, at my grandparents' house in Texas, because they were just like, "Yeah honey, you can rent whatever you want. They didn't really check or look."

Those are good grandparents.

M: I have two tattoos that are dedicated to them. They were very formative in my youth and were unbelievably supportive of me and my talent. They were like, "Oh yeah, she's a ham. Let's put her in dance class." So every summer - I'm from Texas and then I moved to Florida - when I got to five, six, my mom would be like, "Hey, go to Dallas and see the grandparents and hang out, als,o go see bio dad for a week." My grandmother would put me in some kind of show, community theater, or a TV film class that was for the summer. And, then, I would do rodeo with my grandfather. They were very supportive. And she had every VHS of golden age musicals that you could think of, so I had seen all of these movies over and over again, learned the choreography, and would press rewind as soon as it was over and start again. So, once I went through her catalog, I would go to Blockbuster and we would find new things, and I love scary things. I was like, "Oh, I want to watch this." And she's like, "Okay."

J: I got a lot more into scary movies after working on Night of the Living Dead because I've always loved those kinds of musicals. I always loved Little Shop...

M: That was a big one.

J: ...and all that stuff. And after working on the show, after it played New York, and now it's having this whole regional life, which is very cool, and unexpected,

M: And collegiate life.

J: And college too - but after that, I really started getting even more into scary movies.

M: It became our thing.

J: Then it became our thing, and I've been getting my parents back into it. They're just like, "Hey, what are you guys watching?" I'm like, "You should watch this."

M: I'm usually the one that's like, "I think it's a little too gory for them, or a little too much."

J: We spent the whole first year of the pandemic with my mom out in Arizona and we put together a whole Halloween festival for her and she loved it.

M: Loved it!

J: She loved Scream.

M: I love Scream.

J: I gave her things like Vincent Price's House of Wax, which is one of my favorites.

M: Did we also watch Halloween with her, too? She'd never seen Halloween either. And I was like, "Susan? How have you never seen this movie?"

J: She was into it.

M: She was like, "Oh, I really loved it."

Did the horror movie thing bring you guys together when you met?

M: It came later.

J: More after Living Dead. We started watching it more together after Living Dead.

M: Well, you were looking for inspiration when you were writing it, and we watched a lot of movies that were public domain - that you could turn something into - I forget all the things we watched. We watched Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, we watched The Wasp Woman, we watched The Fly, all these great creature features, and I think once we watched Living Dead it was like well, this screams musical.

J: To me, it did.

M: It absolutely did!

Obviously, it does to other people - you're being produced left and right.

M: It's happening.

J: It's getting done. I think it's the seventh or eighth production now, which is really cool. But, for me, that movie really feels like a play on film.

M: Very much so.

J: It's these few couples in a house, and it's really like a zombie Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.

M: It's unbelievably serious. The movie is very serious and was taken very seriously. It feels serious. There was no camp aspect to it - maybe that's another reason why you gravitated toward it.

J: And the actors were theater people.

M: It definitely feels like a play.

J: But, yeah, we're big Halloween people, for sure.

So put me in the picture of what this - no spoilers - but what's this Halloween club act going to look like?

J: It's a lot of different stuff. It's going to have a few of my original songs, some things from Living Dead, and some other songs I've written - it's almost like a kind of Halloween chapter book, for it's done in four chapters about different Halloween-related focal points. There's a killer section, there's a section for witches, ghosts..

M: A creature section - everything gets kind of compartmentalized, so we can have a nice through-line of things.

J: Like a Halloween book - it has chapters that kind of unfold, which will be fun. There's some jazz songs, there's some rock stuff, there's plenty of musical theater stuff. It'll be really eclectic and fun. And it's all my original arrangements.

Like the Sweeney Todd arrangement you did last year.

M: Yes. That will make an appearance.

When you guys are reinventing these famous works of art with new arrangements, is there a lot of collaboration there?

M: From my point of view, it's very much like this: we will have an idea and I go,"Okay, I think this should happen," and you go, "Okay." And then he builds it and arranges it because he's the musical mastermind...

J: Especially for the Sweeney Todd thing.

M: But then I would come in, and I guess I'm more of the musical in-the-moment adapter. I'm good at harmonies, cause I did choir for years; I love to mess with the harmony or create a new melody. I feel like, once we have a skeleton of an arrangement, we can talk about a breakdown section but mostly, honestly, I just go, "Hey, I kind of want to do something like this mixed with this. What do you think?" And he goes, "Give me 20 minutes," He goes away, 20 minutes, Boom.

J: 20 minutes?

M: Well, maybe 30.

J: For this show, we made a bunch of lists of different songs.

M: Or ideas of mash-ups and medleys of some sort.

J: I sort of go away...

M: ...profess your brain, and then I'm like, "Let me see if this makes sense, musically, do we like this?" And you're like, "How high can this be?"

J: I know her voice so well, a lot of these arrangements, I kind of hear her voice in my head..

M: Poor thing.

J: I'm getting treatment for it.

...and I kind of write them out. Once we know what kind of songs we want to do, I kind of go away and say, "What way can I do this song that hasn't been heard before?" Doing covers of covers is a really popular thing. So I like to go, "What's not a cover of a cover?" What's my own spin on something or something that's unique to us, that fits our voices?. So that's been a lot of the fun of the show: finding different versions...

M: ...some songs are very famous and everyone will know and maybe want to sing along. But the thing is, the way that it's now been arranged, you recognize it, but it'll be something you'll be excited to listen to. I think people will be excited.

Do you find safety in the fact that they can't sing along while you're working?

M: No, I don't mind that.

J: There will be some sing along moments.

You're both very outgoing people. Do you like the energy exchange between you and the audience when you're working?

M: I definitely do.

Well, you do piano bar.

J: I do piano bar, also. Michelle is definitely more of a host, is definitely better at playing herself and hooking in with the crowd. I come more like an actor - I always feel more comfortable in a part or playing a character. S,o just in the last few years, I've been doing more work with Michelle. I've been doing more in cabaret, so I tend to, still, when I'm doing songs, do it from the point of view of a character, because that's sort of what I feel like I'm better at. I think I've become more used to doing it as myself than doing it more with that interaction with the crowd, which is very much its own skill, that Michelle is so great at. I'm getting there.

M: You're getting there. I feel like a lot of people when they go to musical theater school or acting school when they get to a place after they're out of school, and they're in their career, they're in their life, and they have to do a concert, you get asked to sing at someone's concert and it's a story song, or it's a cabaret song or it's like, "I want you to sing this pop song," but it's not from a character, it's from you... I don't know, maybe because I've been doing that for so long and creating my own show that was from my perspective... I've done enough of these. now. that I've been more accessible. in letting people go on a journey with Michelle. I love to delve into a character and lose myself in something but sometimes you can lose yourself just in your own thoughts. It's about consistency and being present. It's about doing that at the same time.

J: I think, when you're playing a character, you're always bringing some of yourself.

M: Oh yeah. For sure.

J: And cabaret is about...

M: ...bringing yourself.

J: What about my own life, my own personality, can change the way that can affect you, can make the song different from the way someone else would do it? What makes you unique, what makes your perspective change the song, I think that's sort of what cabaret is kind of about.

Do you find that as a couple, as a man who's a little bit more reserved and into playing a character and as a woman who can be completely abandoned, does that help your relationship? Does it help balance you out? Do you learn from each other? Are you able to lift one another up and hold one another down? How does that work as a couple who is a performing couple?

M: I think that there's many times where Jordan will ground me in a performance... because we're auditioning all the time, and it's very much all still self-tapes and submissions, and I think it might be that way for a while. Honestly, it saves the casting directors time - I feel like they're going to do this, this will be the new way to go. And when we do those types of things, we're there for each other, and we will be able to help each other through different moments. I will be able to help you get out of your own head about certain stuff, and you help me to not play the rafters. You pull me into a more realistic place and make it smaller, and then I think I do the opposite with you.

Does that resonate with you?

J: I think we have complementary skills and we learn from each other all the time.

M: I think so, too.

What will happen after Tricks and Treats? Will you guys go back to auditioning or will you begin coming together? I mean, a Halloween show is a one-off, what happens after this one-night-only performance?

M: I think we love Halloween so much that we just really wanted to do it... we could have done a holiday show, but this is more fun.

J: It's authentic to us.

M: Yes. Very much so.

J: This is what we really enjoy. And it might be something that we bring back every year, which would be really fun. There's a theater in New Jersey Mount Tabor that does a Living Dead every year, they're doing an annual production, which is really cool.

M: Isn't that fun?

J: And there might be something nice about us having a standing show,

M: Where it's like, every Halloween "We gotta go see the kids..."

J: We bring this back and we can bring in...

M: New guests. New Songs.

J: There's no way that this show is going to have all the songs that we want to do, and all the songs we came up with. It would be a fun thing to have this keep coming back and expanding and tweaking and changing.

M: So we'll see, maybe this will be the first annual...

J: It would be nice to have this kind of thing to come back to.

So our last question for this interview is a double-barreled question.

M: Okay.

J: Okay.

Answer it without thinking: Best Halloween movie.

J: (Sighs) So hard: you go first.

M: Oh god. I know you said...

J: She's thinking so hard right now.

M: Well, because I'm kind of stuck between a couple... I feel like it'd be very basic for me to say Halloween, but... I do think it's pretty unclockable.

J: I'll... okay. I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll say this. (Michelle is laughing really hard.) I think, I think that, for... I, I think part of me wants to say Lon Chaney's Phantom of the Opera because that really starts it all in some ways.

M: Right? Yeah.

J: It's the tree that everything grows from. And, just on a personal level, I really love Hush, which..

M: (Gasp) YEAH!

J: I kind of want to say that one so that other people can see it. That's my like "lesser known" one that is my recommendation for Halloween

M: Or Haunt.

J: Oh, well there's a million.

M: We could give you a whole list.

J: Those are my two that I think are a good book end to what horror is about to me.

To clarify, I said Best Halloween Movie because part two of the question is Best Horror Movie.

J: Oh, okay. Then, I'll say Best Halloween movie is Hush. Best horror movie, I'll say The Exorcist...

M: That's GOOOOOOOOD.

J: It's beautifully acted.

M: It is.

J: And there's a million zillion trillion exorcism movies.. And the Exorcist is the only great one.

M: Well....

J: This is my opinion.

M: You've seen a lot.

J: I've seen 90% of them.

M: Sure.

J: The Exorcist, 50 years later, is still the only great movie about exorcism.

M: Well, okay. So, Best Halloween movie, I think, is Halloween. Period. Best Horror, of all time, is so hard to pick.

J: What's the one thing that pops into your head? There's an image that pops into your head.

M: I mean maybe the original Vincent Price House On Haunted Hill.

J: Yeah. That's a good one.

M: Not the remake.

J: And there's a lot of remakes.

I will check those movies out this Halloween and I'm so happy we talked. Thanks for the chat.

M: Thank you so much.

J: Thank you.

I'm really excited about seeing Tricks and Treats!

J: It's going to be really fun.

M: We're going to have a blast.

Then we will all have a blast together.

Visit the Michelle Dowdy website HERE and the Jordan Wolfe website HERE and THIS is the Jordan and Michelle website.

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