To celebrate the release of their new EP A Little Single, songwriters Lance Horne and Drew Brody are doing a special show at Feinstein’s/54 Below on May 11. The EP is a collection of witty, personal songs about romance, dating and friendship that sees them sing their own compositions. Each of the songs, a little universe in itself, they only make one crave to hear more of what these two can come up with together. They answered some questions we had about the songs and their relationship to musical theatre classics, collaborating together, and using technology to tell romantic stories.

“A Little Single” sounds like it’s in dialogue with Sondheim’s Company and “Marry Me a Little” specifically. From the list of names you mention, to the key word in the title of both songs. Can you elaborate on your relationship with this musical and how, if at all, it informed the “single” songs?

Lance: It’s fun looking back on the creative process as the paint dries and getting outside perspective.  I/we didn’t ever talk directly about Steve or Company, but the night before I woke up with “A Little Single” formed, I had gone through all my books— I’m doing the does-it-spark-joy home/life clearing— and gave away many things, but kept my first edition libretto of Company. Drew and I communicate in musical theater language, Sondheimian dialect in particular— if he asks to see each other Tuesday, I’d likely reply “…if it doesn’t rain.”

This song came most deeply from my love of the long-standing collective of artists whom I’ve seen be there for each other since I arrived in New York.  I love songs with names in them.  “Marry Me a Little” does that brilliantly, but “Walk on the Wild Side” is a closer inspiration for “A Little Single”.  My plant at home (long story) is named Jackie after Jackie Curtis; I’ve wanted to write a dance anthem called “Armistead” for a while, have been a huge fan of “Paul McCartney” from Scissor Sisters’ Ta-Dah, and I probably had the vibe of the song Alan Cumming and I wrote to his husband Grant, “Next to Me,” in the back of my head as well.  The actual moment of writing, however, started when I finished my friend Mike’s story, that I found so personal and self-less as the same time, I started to cry, and music and words started at the same time.  It was an early Monday morning, I was still on European time, and my roommates woke to find me in tears midway through the second verse.  I had to make three charts for a benefit that night, but I couldn’t stop until this was done.  Luckily, the charts were for long-time collaborator Eleanor Norton and we got to sound check with two minutes to spare!

The names in “A Little Single” make the song very “you”, as in others might sound weird singing about being friends with all these famous people. Is it important for you to write songs that are for you, as well as songs that are more universal?

Lance: “Said by you, though, George.” It’s just important to me to write songs, and specificity is the best way to get to the heart of them.  Sondheim has said if someone asked him to write a love song, he wouldn’t know where to begin, but if someone said they needed a song for a woman alone in a red dress at the end of a bar, he’d know exactly what to do.  In the case of this album, I placed myself alone at the end of the bar.  Some other songs I’ve released, “American,” “Last Day on Earth,” “Leap,” and “Don’t Tell Me”, in particular, are very personal, but others sing them, and often sing them better than I do from their own perspectives.  I love singing “Fire and Rain”, but I have never loved a Suzanne.  I can love singing “Diamonds and Rust” without having loved Bob Dylan.

“We’re all a little single”, so is making music with someone else like a romance? What were the pros and cons of collaborating?

Drew: Those lyrics are pulled from Lance’s song, the title track of the album, and they came from a conversation we were having about the fluid nature of friendships, collaborations, and romantic relationships as we experience them in NYC. I would not say making music with someone is like a romance but I would say it’s like a relationship. You need to be giving, you need to listen, you need to think about the effects your words might have on the other person before you say them, you need to compromise, you need to praise, and you need to express gratitude in order to make a creative collaboration work. The biggest pro of collaboration is that, working together, we are multiplying the experiences, palettes, and expertise that we can draw from, which usually results in a better product than we would have come up with on our own, and usually on a faster timeline. It’s actually very rare that I collaborate with someone who also writes both music and lyrics, so working with Lance on the song we co-wrote was a rare treat--the shorthand involved is thrilling, like getting to converse in a language that you love but rarely get to speak. The downside of collaborating is that I have to give up complete control, but that’s usually a positive disguised as a negative.

The EP is very much about the single life of gay men in NY, are you in a way reclaiming this feeling from something like Sex and the City for instance? Is the EP a result of the lack of music about this topic?

Drew: I don’t think there’s a need to reclaim anything from Sex and the City— queer folk have a pretty strong presence in the cultural representation of New York, and it’s OK for us all to share our versions of the city. Shows like The Outs and Broad City, among others, are telling the types of stories we’re telling on the EP. Lance and I weren't purposefully trying to fill a void; we’re just writing from our perspective and experiences and choosing to be specific instead of general, which I guess can still come across as a bit radical, though less and less so. There was a time when I felt compelled to keep pronouns and genders vague in my songwriting so that it could be “universal,” but frankly that’s boring and no one’s demanding that of queer songwriters except ourselves, and certainly no one’s demanding that of straight songwriters. So you get songs like “Wingman,” documenting the unique joy of queer friendships (or at least one type of friendship—far be it from me to generalize). Or, more sweetly, a song like “Do You Think We Can Dance Now?,” in which I attempted to capture the ecstasy of overcoming the fear of being open and honest, “where everyone can see."

There is something very subversive about “The Grindr Song” because people sometimes think of it as a seedy place to meet others. If you meet online, you “have” to come up with a different story to tell your grandkids. Why was it important for you to make a song about this?

Lance: I’ve found that once something is being discussed in the open, the collective self-inflicted stigma loses its power of shame.  My conservative family would say that New York itself is a seedy place to meet others.  I have had wonderful relationships with men I met online, in equal measure with those I’ve met in analog. “The Grindr Song” is really a reminder to be cyber-kind to each other. One night, within about 30 minutes, I had been called ugly, old, fat, and skinny, and just thought, “What would Noel Coward do in a situation like this?”. I wrote the song in a flash and sent it immediately to my own personal Gertie, Al Silber (we communicate mainly in Into the Woods and Merrily). I love sending fresh songs via text to my inner circle. If and when I have grandkids whether from my biological or as Armistead says, my “logical family,” I sure hope we’ll have moved past the concept of lying our way around love.

Is there a musical in the making tied to “The Grindr Song”? If not, can we have one?

Lance: Funny, as Drew and I listened to the album (happening thanks to Mike Croiter, my long-term collaborator, friend, producer, performer), we realized that between these songs of ours and the extra material we have that isn’t on the album, but that we are premiering at 54 Below May 11th with the album release, a theatrical expansion is completely possible for A Little Single, “The Grindr Song” in particular.  Here’s an official call for a creative producer with an idea of her or his own after listening to the album or coming to the show— Drew and I are game.

There are few things as romantic/interesting as smart phones, yet in “The Grindr Song” and “Wingman” you make use of phones as key elements. How did this happen?

Drew: How did this happen, indeed? It’s unremarkable to say that phones play a central role in the life of a single person in 2016 and if you think phones aren’t romantic, try asking a single gay guy if you can scroll through his pictures. However, I’m generally wary of placing technology at the center of any song or story because when you do you’re basically asking for it to feel dated and obsolete quicker than it otherwise would. When people are telepathically communicating through smart contact lenses they’ll laugh at lines like “I’m asking for the check and feeling a mess / When in comes the text: 'Send me your address!'” In the cases of both of these songs, though, they feel essential to the storytelling; “Wingman” is unapologetically capturing a contemporary moment. So let them laugh. I’ll be listening to Beyoncé sing “got me hopin' you’ll page me right now."

What can people expect from the show at 54 Below?

Drew: Well, we’re no longer allowed to use the elephants, so it’s just going to be me and Lance, sharing our songs. We’re going to go pretty deep into the stories behind the songs, though—both in terms of how they fit in the context of the shows they were written for, but also how the ideas were sparked, what the process was for writing them, and why different choices were made in the composition. He and I will be sort of interviewing each other—more conversational, though—to get at what will hopefully be some interesting insight for the audience or, at the very least, some break time between songs for folks to eat their Farm-Raised Amish Chicken. We are lucky enough to have Beth Malone from Fun Home join us to do a song of mine and a song of Lance’s, and he and I will be dueting a few as well. We’ve each promised to play a song that has never been performed live before. All in all, I think it will be a very special evening and if you’re someone who likes to hear a composer’s take on his own song, this show is for you.

For tickets to Lance Horne and Drew Brody with Beth Malone at Feinstein's/54 Below click here.
You can pre-order A Little Single here.