Longtime podcast listeners will know that Craig Mazin hates Kickstarter and loves Broadway cast albums, so I’m fascinated to see how he’ll react to this.
Yank!, a 2010 off-Broadway hit that came so, so close to opening on the Great White Way, is running a Kickstarter campaign to record a proper cast album. I never got to see the show, but one of its lead actors (Bobby Steggert) stars as Will in Big Fish, so I’ve gotten to know the show through him.
Written by brothers Joe and David Zellnik, Yank! is the WW2-set story of Stu, a young recruit who falls in love with a fellow soldier. The show combines the spirit and exuberance of 1940s pop with modern themes of identity and prejudice.
The Craig-who-hates-Kickstarter would probably say that if people want a Yank! cast album they’ll buy it, no campaign needed. That’s called Capitalism and it’s How Things Work. An investor sees an opportunity, fronts the money and gets rewarded for his risk. And that’s really how it used to work: music labels covered the costs of cast recordings — sometimes even investing in the stage production — because cast albums made money.
But that money’s largely gone. Recording a cast album is expensive and profits are slim, so finding someone willing to front the money has gotten much harder.
The Craig-who-loves-musicals no doubts wants this album to exist, not only so he can own it but so that he can hear it on XM on Broadway while driving around in his Tesla. Craig’s not a snob about whether a show is “really” Broadway — I’ve heard him sing tracks from Falsettoland.
Yank! is trying to raise their last $7,000 by Thursday. I kicked in, and if enough readers and listeners do the same I bet they can do it.
In fact, I’ll make this promise: if they hit their goal I’ll gladly sing a song from Yank! at our live podcast on September 23rd. And I might rope Craig in to help, because the third thing I know about Mr. Mazin is that he loves a showtune.
So let’s do it. Let’s do this for Craig, whether he likes it or not.