Interview: Robbie Rozelle of BRING ME GIANTS at Birdland Theater

Robbie Rozelle will return to the nightclub stage for his only 2023 performance next Thursday, June 29th at 8:30 in a new show titled BRING ME GIANTS.  For this new show, Rozelle has been working with his usual team, Yasuhiko Fukuoka and The Two Drink Minimum (Robbie's band) to create a club act built around anxiety - which is pretty much par for the course for Robbie Rozelle.  A cabaret performer who is never interested in taking the easy route, who is always interested in pulling back the lid and diving in head first, Robbie Rozelle has spent the last few years defining his place in the storytelling industry and rediscovering a type of nightclub performer that harkens back to the gay entertainers of the Sixties and Seventies that made us all laugh with their artistry while inspiring us with their unbridled determination to be in the light and be who they are.  Paul Lynde, Charles Nelson Reilly, Peter Allen... these are the men who lit the way for young gay teens, showing them that they might, one day, be themselves and be successful in the public eye.  Robbie Rozelle has been telling stories, telling jokes, telling the truth, and he has been doing it through an ever-growing career on the cabaret stage that has been a bit of  a surprise to him, for it had not, actually, been his path.

As Robbie, Yaz, the band, and guest artists Liz Callaway, Mauricio Martinez, Jordan Matthew Brown and Allison Wilkes have spent the last week or so rehearsing for BRING ME GIANTS' opening night, the accidental cabaret star stopped by this writer's Midtown Manhattan office for a mid-afternoon cup of tea and a chat about anxiety, voice teachers, and Patti LuPone's footstool.

This interview has been edited for space and content.

All photos by Stephen Mosher from previous Robbie Rozelle performances and photoshoots.

Robbie Rozelle!  Welcome to Broadway World!

What a pleasure to be back.

Is this our first time talking face-to-face? 

We did one during the pandemic - email questions.

We did a digital s&a 

Yes. 

But this is our time to sit down and gossip with a recorder running.

Yes, our first coffee clatch

How are you?

I'm well. 

You're busy. 

Very busy but better that than the alternative.

You like projects.

Yeah. I also say yes to a lot more than I probably should; you know, everybody has their faults and that's one of mine.  (Laughing.)

How many people are you directing right now?

Alexis Michelle, which is the two nights prior to my show. I just wrapped Robert Bannon and Paula Galloway. And there's something in the fall.

You don't even know.  (Laughing)

There's so many. It's a lot of projects.

Did you think that you were going to be a cabaret director? 

No, I didn't think I was gonna have anything to do in this industry at all.

Tell me how you ended up here.

Love to!  (Laughing heartily.)  When I moved here just over a decade ago, I was sort of at a crossroads; I was 35 and thinking, “What am I gonna do? What do I want to do?  If I don't move to New York, I never will.”  So I dropped everything, quit my job, found a place, moved here with no job and no safety net, and I just trusted that something would happen. I ended up at Playbill and was doing that for a while, and I had been freelancing with a now-defunct record label, so people knew me, which is how I fell into, literally, everything I've ever done - just fully ass-backward, with no plan. A net appears at all times, which is nice, but a little scary.

Laura Benanti knew me, so she hired me to design her record - that's how I ended up at Broadway Records. But at the same time, Elena Shaddow reached out to me and she was in the midst of Bridges of Madison County on Broadway and was thinking about putting together her first show, and would I help her with that? That's what started everything. Elena did a show called Always Better, which was like the new Golden Age of musical theater, and I consulted on that - her guests were Caitlin Kinnunen and Jessica Vosk. Jessica and I became working partners for about five years because of that, and that kickstarted everything. Everything I've done was born out of one Elena Shaddow concert, but it was never intentional.

Did you have a background? Did you understand the cabaret art form or was it on-the-job training?

No, I think it was to my benefit that I did not come from that world in that I think there are tropes that people can easily fall into because of how much they do it. I am not interested in the cabaret that is “I wanted to be an actress, so I moved to New York City and my boyfriend broke up with me, here's a song about my dog.” Those cabarets have never interested me in the least. I'm interested in taking the cabaret experience and flipping it on its head in some way, and the people that I've worked with are often interested in doing that as well, thankfully.  So it becomes a challenge. How can we tell the story of being Elphaba on the tour of Wicked, but not use any songs from the show, which, contractually, Jess was not allowed to do?  How can we do an evening of all self-tapes because somebody's been auditioning and auditioning and has learned all this material, but not make it seem like a desperate plea?  Those things are interesting to me. Or Kate Baldwin's show, Extraordinary Machine, was all pop music and she's a lyric soprano. How do we do that and keep it interesting and make it feel authentic?

You are also a sort of pop culture savant.

Yes, which is weird because I also don't know any songs that were written after 1964. (Laughing)  I soak in a lot of pop culture, like a sponge.

So, you love all those wonderful variety shows from the sixties… 

I love them all!

…and the seventies and the eighties. 

Mm-hmm. 

And so you can lean into that sort of formula for you and your clients 

You'll notice one theme that never runs through shows that either I've been in or have done:  I don't do songbook shows.   Nobody wants to hear my Gershwin show. (Laughing)  And I don't blame them.

I think I've attended almost every show you've done since I started this job, and your shows are a smorgasbord - it makes them more fun. 

I would say a veritable smorgasbord even.  (Laughing).  More than anything, I think of myself very much as a storyteller and comedian first, and a singer like a distant second, which I think is fair. And that's not to downplay anything. It's just what I know to be true and good.

All right. Here's a double-barrelled question.

Mm-hmm.

Number One: the storytelling. 

Yeah. 

That's probably something that you've done, socially, your entire life. 

Sure. 

Tell me about being a storyteller. 

I look at cabaret very much as you are the host of a party and you are around a piano and you are just telling some stories. And because of my weird show biz past, I've been working on cast albums and vocal singers (albums) for over 20 years, so I have a lot to draw on, in funny ways that are not demeaning to people because I also, very much, try to lead with kindness, at all times. Like - Patti LuPone used me as a footstool. You've heard me tell that story, it's a very funny story, but that's the kind of story you tell at a party, right? I designed her last album. She was about to have her hip replaced. I was asked to come to her War Paint dressing room, I was there, and she said, “My doctor says that I have to lie down, so I'm not sure how I'll do this. Oh, I can put my feet on you!” And she did. And I have not washed my hips since!  (Laughing)  But that's a funny story. And how many people has that happened to? Not many, right? So it's a way to hold court. This was never my intention. I was never intended to be a performer.  I was just working with other people and 54 Below, anytime I would do a show, somebody would say, “You should do your own show. You should do your own show. You should do your own show.” And I said, “Nobody would wanna see that.”  One day 54 Below said, “Hey, do you want to?”  So I put it on Facebook - hypothetically, if I did this, would somebody come? And then, an hour later, I had a date and a contract. So, then, I had to do a show, and I knew I didn't want to do these tropes, so my first show was Songs From Inside My Locker, which was all the songs that got me through a very abusive childhood in high school.

So we're gonna circle back around to you being an accidental performer, later...

Sure. 

Because I want to hit part two of the double-barrelled question.

Right.

The singing.

Yeah.

You have said many times, on stage and in person with me, that you're a storyteller, you are a comedian, and then a singer…

Mmm-hmm.

...but the singing is important to you.

Yeah.  I think that anybody who pays money should not be subjected to terrible singing. I grew up, literally, from first grade, in Chorus and then in show choir and high school musicals, things like that, and I was… fine… as a singer. I got leads in high school shows, but they were character parts, and learning that that's what I was, and embracing that that's who I was made me a better performer. That being said, at the end of the Pandemic (and I use heavy air quotes around that), two years ago, I decided that if I was going to do this and seriously pursue it - because my album had come out - then I needed proper training, a strengthening.  So I started working with a gentleman named Chris Sanders, who's a very good teacher who went to NYU for vocal pedagogy - I started studying with him. I called him and I said, “I'm interested in this. Here's what I want to work on.”  And what I wanted to work on was strengthening my voice, specifically breath control - I don't have great breath control, which sucks because I sing songs like “Meadowlark,” which is maybe stupid for somebody without breath control. However, I also said I do not want to change the way that I shape songs because I act a lyric before I am concerned about, “Is that a G dotted quarter note?” which is not as interesting to me as acting it. He stared at me blankly for a minute, and then he said, “I understand what you want.”   That was just to be for me. The very next day 54 Below reached out and said, “We're reopening in a month, will you be among the first people to open?”  Suddenly I wasn't studying for me anymore, I was studying to put together a brand new show to reopen the club, which was daunting. It's been really great. However, I still think of myself as a singer second. I think of myself as a Sondheim singer. Sondheim's original cast albums aren't pristine. If you listen to that Company cast album, there are not a lot of technically perfect singers on them. There are a lot of great voices on it.

I have sat in the room and watched you sing. 

Sure.

It gives you so much joy. 

Mm-hmm. 

You choose incredibly difficult material. 

Mm-hmm. 

Why does it give you so much pleasure? Where does that come from?

I love musical theater, and I love musical theater songs. I love connecting to musical theater songs, and being able to share that is my joy.  I also try to find joy in whatever I'm doing because, otherwise, what's the reason to live? Joy is a meal. Joy is a great cocktail. Joy is whatever you can find joy in. I personally find joy in songs by Jerry Herman and songs by Cy Coleman.  That's what it is. If I'm able to share that, especially when I have my band behind me, and we're sort of flying, it's very much like surfing and catching the wave. And sometimes the wave is going to pull me down and I'm gonna crash (Laughing) and have… and sometimes I'm gonna fly. It creates a lot of endorphins. There's also something about facing things that scare you. Singing publicly is very scary, especially when you're stripped of character and you just have to be you. I know that I can walk in a room and land a joke, but singing is not always going to be perfect. And that's scary, especially now, when everybody has a cell phone, where they can just lift it up and it's on the internet forever. You just gotta let it go. 

So you're an accidental cabaret star.

Star is a kind word.

You sold out 54 Below in how many hours?

26 minutes.

Star.  You played Crazy Coqs in London. 

That's correct. 

Star. You played Birdland.

Yes. 

Star. You are a local cabaret star. How does that feel, coming from somebody that had no intention of doing this?

Surreal. It's also very interesting because, sure, I'm vaguely known in 10 blocks in the West Forties but  I can't get other rooms to even return my call on the West Coast. I have an album that's streamed over a million times but I can't book San Francisco or Provincetown.  So, the word ‘star’...

Do you have Liz Callaway appearing with you in your new show?

Yes.

So you can't get a room on the West Coast to return your call, but you can get Liz Callaway to return your phone call.

Liz Callaway asked me.

Well, I love that.

(Robbie laughs.)

Tell me about your new show, Bring Me Giants.

When I'm putting together these shows, and I'm not interested in like Robbie Rozelle Sings Irving Berlin or whatever, it's sort of like, what's the big overarching theme? And I just thought about how scary everything is. You know?  All of New York turned orange last week. Everything is scary and anxiety-inducing all the time. And I kept gravitating towards this song that Frank Wildhorn and Leslie Bricusse wrote called “Bring Me Giants” from (an unproduced) Cyrano. And the whole quote behind it is “I don't wanna fight these small things. Bring me giants. Let me fight those.” So this is about things that are scary, songs that are scary, moving to New York was scary. Everything is scary.  And facing that head on.

Cheery topic for a cabaret show.  

I've already done the darkest show I'm ever going to do, so there's nowhere to go but up.

The show description on the Birdland website uses the word anxiety.

Anxiety inducing every minute. Yep. 

Do you have anxiety?

All the time, about everything.

Do you always just plow ahead? 

I think there are two ways to go about things. You can hide and stay inside all day and watch The Housewives, and that's perfectly acceptable. Or you can go about your day pushing through the anxiety and the trauma and demons, and I think it's better to plow ahead, Don Quixote style, tilting towards windmills.

Are you happy?

Sure.  Some days.  I think, in many parts of my life, I'm very happy in some sort of holistically big picture.

You recently appeared with Robert Bannon. 

Oh yeah.

You landed a really scary note.

Yeah!  That’s true.

I read it on your… Did you put it on Instagram?

Yes. 

What's the note you landed?

It was A-sharp, although people keep saying they call it a B-flat because that's the same note. But the key signature calls it A-sharp, I don’t read music, so I landed a B-flat. (Laughing)  We sang “I Know Him So Well” from Chess, but our version of it had a modulation and a very long, held B-flat. I almost gave that song away. I was battling an illness that day and did not think I could sing, so I nearly gave it to one of the backup singers but, again, I plowed through. 

You had a sweet redemption there. 

Yes. There was a critic who saw the show who has not always loved… I don't wanna say not always loved my work… my singing was not always his favorite part of my work.  He reviewed the show and liked it. He said there's been an evolution for me; he saw that and acknowledged it. 

That's a nice compliment to you and to your voice teacher. 

I agree, and I didn't even know if I was going to make the show, so that was even nicer. It was a very gratifying feeling. What's great about these shows is it's a great way to create, I think that's my favorite part of it. Whether it's myself or with other people, the ability to create something is key and keeps me spiritually fulfilled and very happy. That being said, to say that I'm better than I was - that's nice to hear. And I think that if you read reviews - if you believe the good ones, you also have to believe the bad ones. There are people who have reviewed me in the past that I wish were better with their words. 

Now…  we've discussed this personally, privately, recently  that you're not closing your show with your signature tune

This year, there is no “Jam Tomorrow.”

Tell me about “Jam Tomorrow.” 

Everyone loves it.

Why do you love it?

I love that (Alice in Wonderland) special. That special is crazy. It’s The Love Boat meets Alice in Wonderland with every B-list and C-list celebrity shoved into some of the craziest costumes imaginable. They spent so much money on that film and it's wonderful. Steve Allen's score for it, specifically, is what makes it wonderful. And Dame Carol Channing, goddess of everything, just appearing and breaking into that crazy dance that you know she choreographed herself is the reason. And I knew - in the back of your head, there are things that you sort of do, right? You always practice an Oscar speech that you'll probably never give or a Tony speech or you're like, “One day I will sing this song somewhere.” I knew, when I was putting together Songs From Inside My Locker, that my encore would be “Jam Tomorrow” because it was part of my childhood.  That show was all-encompassing of that era. It was Carol Channing, who's wildly important to me, and it was camp, and a fun, upbeat way to send the audience home. So that's why I did it and it's on my album. I'm the only version of it that's available to listen to - that's weird and stupid.  At least Carol’s should be out there. 

We're not going to give any spoilers, but you're ending this show with a fun encore. 

Yeah, this fun encore, also, leans into the theme of the show, the theme of the night. “Jam Tomorrow” will always be in my rep but it didn't give itself to the theme, and, as an actor first it was important that it all be part of the concept. Everything is in here for some reason, is part of that concept. 

I am glad that you came to talk to me today. 

I'm thrilled that anybody wants to talk to me, but I'm really thrilled that you wanted to talk. 

I'm looking forward to the show. 

I'm looking forward to doing it and not bombing. 

There’s that anxiety again.  You’re not going to bomb.

No, I don't think so. 

Robbie Rozelle BRING ME GIANTS will play Birdland Theater June 29th at 8:30 pm.  For information and reservations visit the Birdland website HERE.

HERE is the Robbie Rozelle website.

The website for Chris Sanders Voice Studio is HERE.

 

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