Katie Buenneke, Neon Tommy: Hi! I’m Katie.
Joe Iconis: Hello, nice to meet you, I’m Joe.
NT: Nice to meet you too! I guess we’ll just go ahead and get started.
Iconis: Cool!
NT: What made you want to become a composer?
Iconis: What did make me want to become a composer? I am from New York, originally from Long Island, and I saw the original production of “Little Shop of Horrors” when I was six years old, for my sixth birthday. It was kind of that, you know, it was the first musical that I ever saw, and I was very immediately hooked on musical theater from seeing that. And so yeah, it was kind of that, and I was so into it, and then it was the kind of thing where every holiday or birthday, what I would ask for as a present was going to see a show. And so from a young age, I just got really into theater, musical theater in particular. When I was like, little little, I’d be in shows cause that’s the way you can participate in theater when you’re that small, and I always was really terrified of being in the shows and I knew I wasn’t good, but I loved being a part of it, and then as soon as I was old enough to realize that there were people who wrote the shows, that was what I wanted to do, and I became totally obsessed with Andrew Lloyd Webber and Stephen Sondheim and just about their lives and their work and all that sort of stuff. And so yeah, that was just kind of it, as long as I ever had to answer the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” it was like, “I wanna write musicals!”
NT: That’s awesome! So now you’re living the dream.
Iconis: Yeah, sorta, sorta, yeah.
NT: So, besides the people you mentioned, who are some of your favorite musical theater composers, past & present?
Iconis: Oh my goodness. I love Stephen Sondheim, is probably the big one. I love him very much. I love Kander and Ebb, also, “Cabaret” is my favorite musical, I love it a lot. I love, who else? William Finn, who wrote “Falsettos,” and “Spelling Bee,” yeah. And sort of, as far as musical theater goes, my taste runs the gamut, I love classic musical theater, like Rodgers and Hammerstein, but I also love stuff like “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” Stephen Trask, and stuff like that, so yeah, it’s kind of all over the place.
NT: Who would you say has influenced you the most?
Iconis: Oh my goodness…
NT: Or was it outside of musical theater?
Iconis: Maybe it’s outside of musical theater. I think that, I love those writers that I said, but normally when I’ writing a musical, I sort of draw from influences that are not other musical theater writers, or not other musicals, so I’m a big movie fan, and Robert Altman is my favorite director, and Robert Altman is probably my favorite artist in general, if I had to pick one person, Altman or Sondheim, but this show, “Black Suits,” specifically, was very much influenced by Robert Altman, and he’s made a bunch of big ensemble movies, and so definitely that, it’s a show where I was really wanting to feel like every character had a place at the table and everyone was equal, but also his seeming nonchalance with the characters, where it feels like you’re spying on real people, and it feels kinda un-fussy and just sort of authentic, and for me, that was something I was trying to do in the writing, where it felt like it was surprising that they were singing, and trying to go for not having it feel like a musical theater piece, but still be a musical. That was a really ramble-y answer to say, Robert Altman was a big influence on this particular show.
NT: Yeah, I definitely felt that, when I was watching it, that we had good tabs on everyone, and no one was unmotivated, like we understood why everyone was doing everything, even if the guys in the band didn’t see why their friends were acting that way
Iconis: Cool, cool.
NT: I discovered your songs a few years ago through YouTube. How important do you think YouTube is to new musical theater composers?
Iconis: I think it’s become very important, just in that it’s the way that new musical theater writers reach people now. In the old days, people would do revues, and they’d do live shows in New York, and a very small group of people would see them, and then if they were successful, they’d get a chance to write a Broadway show, and then a large group of people would know them. But now it feels like everything is all kind of fuzzy, so YouTube feels like it’s emerged for the way for people to get their stuff out there. And for me, so many people know my stuff through YouTube, so it’s amazing, but also it’s a little weird, because for me personally, I want to write musicals, and I want them to be performed live, and I think there’s something about the live experience that is intrinsic to what I do, and that’s how I want my stuff to be received, so as much as I love people being exposed to my work through YouTube, there’s part of me that wishes that everyone could be exposed to it live first, cause that’s the way it’s meant to be seen and heard. But yeah, it’s funny, especially in New York, I think because YouTube is such a thing, that now, people have this pressure be “successful on YouTube,“ and get a certain number of views, or and have “the most popular YouTube channel,” and to me, it feels like it’s kind of defeating its own purpose, and I see it as a way to get my stuff out to a broader audience, but it’s not, in and of itself, something I’m necessarily interested in getting to the top of the YouTube mountain.
NT: Going off of that, as a composer, what is the difference between having your music performed in a cabaret setting versus a fully-staged musical?
Iconis: They’re just two different beasts to me, I love the cabaret stuff, but for me, it’s sort of become its own thing. When I write a song that’s a standalone song, I think about it in that setting, even all my songs are pretty theatrically-infused, or they’re all, I think most of them, if not all of them, they’re theater songs. It’s just a different way of writing for me. Sometimes songs that are from musicals end up in the concerts that I do, but even then, just taking them out of context turns them into a different thing. So for me, it’s just different, it’s like apples and oranges, kind of.
NT: I had no clue until I saw the show last night that Chris wasn’t her step-dad.
Iconis: Oh crazy!
NT: Cause I’d only ever seen “Blue Hair” in YouTube videos and clips, so I was just like “you’re not my dad,” oh, he must be this step-dad, and she’s trying to piss him off.
Iconis: That’s hilarious.
NT: And then I was like, oh, okay, this gives this whole new level to song when she’s already dating Chris, and John’s someone else, just like, oh, interesting!
Iconis: That’s amazing. Yeah, it’s so funny to me, because I forget how many people know songs from just being self-contained, and invariably, whenever people will come to see a show of mine where there’s songs in context, they’ll always have a reaction like that, that I don’t think of, cause like, the song is the song, so I forget that people have their own ideas about them. And it’s funny, too, because the songs that I have that are in concerts, a lot of them are intentionally written to have multiple interpretations, I love people making their own decisions about songs and characters, but in musical theater, I think it’s all about clarity, and it’s all about not leaving a ton of room for mystery or questions or anything, so yeah, it’s something I’m constantly trying to negotiate in and of myself, where it’s like, is it hurtful for people to come into a musical knowing a song or two, and having their own preconceived notions of it, does that get in the way, does that help the show? I don’t know.
NT: As a composer/lyricist/librettist, what comes first for you when you’re writing, the story or the music?
Iconis: I think the story always comes first, and then I tend to write very messily, and I’ll write a little bit at a piano, and then I’ll get up and go to Dunkin’ Donuts and write there, and then I’ll go to my apartment and pace around the room, and it all kind of happens at the same time, and it always starts with an idea, and whether that’s an idea of a character or a situation or just a phrase or something that grows into a bigger thing. But it always starts from that, and then usually a little bit of music comes, and that informs the words. I never know how a song or a play was written until I finish it and look back, and can sort of put the pieces together. It always feels like a bit of a mess when I’m in it, when I’m writing it.
NT: So what was the idea that inspired “The Black Suits”?
Iconis: It was… I musical directed a production of “The Wiz” at my brother’s high school, which was my old high school, and I was an undergrad at the time, at NYU, and their musical director at the time dropped out, and they needed to someone to come and do this, so I said I would do it. So I had been out of high school for four years at that point, and it was my first time around high school kinds in a while, in four years, and I wasn’t that much older than them, but I had some perspective on it. And then it was also my first time in a while being in any kind of band situation, cause I was in the pit band, so we would have rehearsals, and all the kids in the pit band were in garage bands—I was never in a garage band in school, cause I wasn’t cool enough to do things like that—but being around them, I really saw the connection between kids being in a garage band, where you know at the end of the summer, everyone’s gonna go away, and it’ll never quite be the same as it was, and working on a show, and working on a musical, which was my experience throughout high school, where you’re with people every single day, for the whole day, all working towards this common goal, and then once the show opens, you’ll still see each other, you’ll still be friends, maybe, but it’s never gonna be the same as when everyone was together, all the time, making this thing. To me, that was the same thing as the garage band, so I thought, that’s a cool way into writing about theater, and putting on musicals, to use the framework of a garage band trying to win the Battle of the Bands. So yeah, that was sort of where the idea was born.
NT: What made you want to bring in the aspects of like, the anxiety attacks that Chris has, and John’s ADD?
Iconis: For me, I think they’re things that real people struggle with, and I loved the idea of having a show that was about high school-aged kids, where all of the characters couldn’t be boiled down to one sentence, and I think that a lot of the stuff that’s written about teenagers, it always deals in archetypes, and it’s always like, “the stoner,” and “the fat one.”
NT: Like “The Breakfast Club.”
Iconis: Exactly. And sometimes that’s great, and there’s total worth to it, and I think, in musical theater especially, whenever there’s a show about high school-aged kids, except for maybe “Spring Awakening,” it’s like these cliched versions of who kids are, and it always feels like old white men writing about what they thing that the hip kids are doing today. So for me, I loved the idea of like, oh, you have the frontman of the band, who’s really focused, and wants the band to succeed, but he has this weird, panic attack anxiety thing that’s not quite explained, that he can’t quite explain, and even a character like Nato, who’s sort of the geeky, funny one, it’s really important to me that we also know that he’s also smart, and so it sort of came out of that. I wanted to have these three-dimensional characters that behaved in a way that people behave, which isn’t always neat and tidy, and can’t always be explained. And I think that people will contradict themselves all the time in their actions. And also, Mrs. Werring, too, is another character, I was trying really hard to not have her just be the kooky next-door neighbor, and there’s a scene in the second act where she does something that I think is kind of unexpected, but feels messy and mysterious to me in a way that I think is just how people act, sometimes people can’t even explain their own actions. It all came out of that, as far as how the characters were born.
NT: Over the past decade or so, there’s been a noticeable shift in what musical theater sounds like, bringing in elements of many genres. How do you think punk rock and musical theater work together?
Iconis: I think that if the story is right, they work together beautifully. So for me, it’s all about what the characters and the story call for, insofar as how a particular show should sound, so for this show, it makes perfect sense to me, it’s about young kids in a garage band, and so rock music, or punk music, feels like a perfect way for them to express themselves, and it feels like a natural musical…. the rhythm and passion of punk music and rock music, to me, feels like the rhythm and passion of the characters in the show, these particular young people in the show, so to me, it feels just like a natural expression of who these characters are. And I think as far as, in general, rock music, or whatever type of music finding its way into musical theater, I think when it’s done well, it’s done well, and when it feels like something that’s forced on something, then it’s quite obvious what it is. But it’s funny, I think people are still like, “oh, it’s a rock musical!” It can’t just be called a musical, even like, the theater [gestures down the street towards the Kirk Douglas], and I totally, get it, like, people have to make that distinction, well, there’s musicals, and there’s rock musicals, but I feel like using rock music in theater is so not a new thing, and “Hair” came out in the late 60s. So it’s so funny to me that’s it’s seen as like,
NT: This new, exotic thing!
Iconis: Yeah! This “thing,” that’s different from all other things. But to me, it’s no different than, if there’s a musical that’s a country/western musical, it’s probably going to country music in it, it’s whatever happens to make sense for the particular show. And as far as being current, what’s weird is that, I feel like rock music isn’t especially popular, insofar as what real people listen to any more, it’s like not necessarily the music of the day, in the way that it was when “Hair” came out.
Now it’s on the alternative radio station, instead of Top 40.
Exactly. I mean, and I don’t even know, if you were trying to do a Top 40 musical, I don’t even know what that would be. Music has just changed so much. I do think it’s funny that’s it’s such a typical beat to have rock music in a musical. But I think, to me, I love traditional musical theater, so I think of the music in the show as very traditional. I think, if you play the songs on piano, I think they’re very melodic, their structure is pretty sound, and I think that the construction of them is super traditional, it’s just packaged in a way that makes it feel edgier than it might actually be, or just louder than it might be. And for me, it’s about the spirit, and the passion of it. I think the show itself has a rock and roll spirit to it.
NT: What has your experience been like bringing “The Black Suits” to the stage?
Iconis: It’s been really long, it’s been a very long, long experience. You know, it’s funny, it’s the first full-length musical I ever wrote. I wrote the first draft of it as my thesis at NYU, and the show is totally different now, and I keep wanting to go and look at a script from the first draft, and I don’t even know how many lines are still the same, but I feel like it’s a handful of lines. But I feel like I really grew as a writer throughout the development of the show for all of these years, and there was years when the show changed into something that was totally not correct and just bad, and years where I didn’t really work on the show. So it’s been this thing that’s been with me, throughout my career, as I’ve found my voice as a writer. Now, it’s the kind of thing where there’s parts of the show, where, if I was starting writing “The Black Suits” now, I totally wouldn’t do, I would approach in a totally different way. But I think when I started writing it, I was a lot closer to being in high school than I am now, first of all, and I think that there was something correct about how I approached that material in relation to its subject matter. I think that the show wants to feel rag-tag, and it wants to feel young and not fully-formed, so for me, working on it now has been a lot about negotiating my current writer self with the voice that first started writing it, and I think that those two things do intersect, and I’m trying to keep some things precious in the show, that I feel are totally what the spirit is, and even if I wouldn’t have written them now, I still think that they belong in the show. So it’s been a really cool process, and totally unlike anything else I’ve ever done. But luckily the theater is so amazing, and they couldn’t be more supportive and wonderful.
NT: I noticed last night, watching it, it was still really relevant to what today’s youth are, but you obviously have been working on the show for so long, so how do you keep it updated?
Iconis: Well I think there is two parts of that. The biggest part is that I always thought that the show should feel current and timeless, I’ve always felt like it didn’t want to be set in a particular year, I felt like it should always feel like now, and should always feel like someone who is twenty years older than me could look at it and be like, “Oh, this kinda feels like when I was kid,” I feel like it doesn’t ever want to be specifically set in a time, so that was a very conscious thing. And the other part of that is just the references, and it’s frustrating, because they’re living in a real world, and people talk about things that are happening around them. It’s just so tricky with that stuff, because to me, there’s nothing grosser than seeing a play talking about iPads. When plays are trying to be too topical, because it’s one of those things where if you do it too much, in this effort to make it topical, it immediately feels dated, like there’s nothing grosser to me than people talking about something that’s happening right now in the news, or in the world
NT: Unless it’s like a fringe show, in which case it’s like it’s only going to exist for that weekend.
Iconis: Exactly! But for anything that wants to live on, for me, it’s sprinkling in little things that keeps it current, like, if I watch the show in ten years, I wouldn’t cringe at it. The only name drop that I hate in the show, that I put there, so I shouldn’t hate it, but Brandon mentions Miley Cyrus at one point, but I think that’s one moment where the lyric, because of how scans, it will always change to whoever happens to be the most annoying mainstream celebrity of the day, so that’s the only one that I cringe a little bit, but I think it belongs in there. The other people we mention, it’s purposefully kind of all over the map, like we mention Michael Buble, we mention Michael Bolton, who is like, who listened to Michael Bolton twenty years ago?
NT: He was in that Lonely Island skit!
Iconis: Is he? That’s true, that’s true. He’s current again. And I just changed, there was a whole thing about “The Little Mermaid” DVD for a long time in the show, and it never bothered me, but John said this thing about “The Little Mermaid,” and it never bothered me, like, “When it first came out, the evil squid witch scared the piss from me,” is this lyric in the show for like, seven years, but recently everyone was like, “When ‘The Little Mermaid’ came out, John would not have born yet,” which is something that just blows my mind, that people wouldn’t have born when “The Little Mermaid” came out? So I’ve been hanging on to it, but I just changed it to “Kung Fu Panda,” because the actor who is playing John, was literally talking about “Kung Fu Panda” to the actor who is playing Chris, as they were on the stage, waiting to do something. He was like, “Man, you ever seen ‘Kung Fu Panda’?” He was like, “No, I haven’t seen it,” “Oh, it’s really good, it’s very very funny, it’s a very good movie.” It could work. So yeah.
NT: I couldn’t help but notice the Lou Reed reference. I’m guessing you wrote that before he passed away?
Iconis: Yeah, totally. It’s so strange. Lou Reed has literally been in the show since the first ever draft of it, and the character of Mrs. Werring is based on this woman who’s the mother of a good friend of mine, and this woman’s name is Babs Wilkinson, she’s actually name-dropped in the show, and she was Lou Reed’s tour manager in the 70s, and she has this crazy life, and bounced all over the place, and then settled in East Haddam, Connecticut, which is where the Goodspeed Opera House is, became a Spanish teacher, and, as long as I’ve known her, has had this very suburban existence, but had this past that’s just totally insane. And she’s such an amazing personality and this huge woman, and so the inspiration came from that, and so I always had it in, that she worked with Lou Reed. And what’s crazy is that on the day before Lou Reed died, which was Sunday, right? The set designer said, “I want to put some albums around Mrs. Werring’s kitchen,” trying to filling out the set, so he was like, “Can you give me a list of things she’d have in her kitchen?” And I was like, “I think Lou Reed, ‘Transistor,’ would be the one in the forefront,” and so we have that album cover, with Lou Reed, there, watching over the whole kitchen. It was a very insane thing, when he died. And Annie Golden, knew him, cause they were in the same circle, so it was a very emotional, crazy day. And I was gonna change it, but then I just felt like it belongs in there, so yeah. So it’s just in there.
NT: What was it like, switching gears, working with the “Smash” team?
Iconis: It was cool, it was really cool. It was a very unexpected, wild thing that happened, and Josh Safran, who’s an awesome dude, he was just a fan of my work a lot, and he approached me about putting some songs in the show. And I didn’t do a lot for it, it was really weird. There was lots of conversations about it, but as far as actually, what ended up on TV, the thing that I did the most was just want to not have lyrics changed in the songs, because a couple of times they wanted to change lyrics, and I just didn’t want to change the lyrics for the show, and so that was my hugest participation, not re-writing stuff. Not participating was how I feel like I contributed the most to “Smash.” But yeah, it was just very surreal and wild, and it was very weird being on email chains that had Steven Spielberg on them, the whole thing was just so crazy and very cool and frightening and wild. And the weirdest thing about it was, I knew Jeremy Jordan before the show, and Krysta Rodriguez is one of my best friends, she’s been performing with me since I first started doing concerts, we’ve been performing together for so long, and she got cast on the show separately from me being involved in the show, and it was totally insane when she was then singing “The Goodbye Song,” which is the second song of mine that was on the show, cause she was one of the first people ever to sing that song, she was on the stage the first time I ever did that song, and then to see her on national television, singing that song, was just a complete mind-blowing, insane thing for me.
NT: That’s cool! One thing I noticed, speaking of the lyric changes, or lack thereof, is Krysta Rodriguez’s version of “Broadway, Here I Come” is a lot darker, like really dark, and then the version on the show was almost kind of neutered. Do you prefer the song to have a macabre tone?
Iconis: Yeah, I think the song is the song, and I think it’s definitely a dark song, and I believe that the higher-ups at NBC never really understood what the song was about, which seems crazy to say, and I never would have believed something like that, until I would have been part of this process. There is just so many people involved in these—my own experience is solely with “Smash,” but in “Smash”—just so many people involved at all times, that it makes sense that no one actually fully got that song was about someone killing themselves.
NT: Jumping onto Broadway.
Iconis: Yup. And so I think that, as far as how it is on the show, it totally takes on a different meaning, when the cut of the song that they had on the show is what is played, and for me, that’s totally fine, because for me, it’s like, on on the album, it’s the full version, and anyone who cares can listen to the song and can take what they want to take from it, and anyone who is happy to just receive that much of the song, it’s totally cool with me. Which is why I didn’t want to change the words, I didn’t want to make the song about something else, and it’s like, if you just want to take this one thing from it, awesome, but I think the song is the song. When I think of “Broadway Here I Come,” I think of the full version of it. But I also think that the song is intentionally written so that if you didn’t want to get that other meaning of it, you could receive the song, and think about it as someone who’s coming to make it on Broadway. Which is what half of it is about, just other half is about jumping off of a building.
NT: Casually. I really enjoyed reading “Be More Chill” in high school. Do you have any updates on that?
Iconis: Oh cool! Yeah, it’s almost done. We’re working on it, and we’re gonna do a workshop in January, and sort of see where it goes from there. It’s going really well, I’m really excited about it. Obviously with “[The] Black Suits,” it’s writing in a similar age bracket, but I think the vibe of the show is totally different, and myself and my collaborator, Joe Tracz, who’s writing the book, we’re really into playing up the sci-fi elements, and how the sci-fi interacts with normal high school kids, so yeah, I’m really excited about it. I think it sounds kind of different than the other stuff that I’ve done. Hopefully it will be on a stage soon. We’re doing it at Two River Theatre in New Jersey, which is a really awesome theater, it’s pretty close to New York. So that’s coming up next, probably.
NT: Nice! What is your advice for aspiring young musical theater composers?
Iconis: I think that aspiring composers should… my two pieces of advice, I’d say, are not to be afraid to put yourself out there. I think that getting out of your own way is a huge thing, and just being fearless about playing your stuff for people, and not being afraid of what people say about it. I think the more you do it, the easier it is to do, and it’s just so part of the job, you just have to be confident enough in yourself to just show your work to people. So I think that’s a huge thing, and then just to see as much as you can. And it sounds so obvious, but I think so many people don’t see enough, and there are so many people who are writing musical theater who don’t seem to love it very much, or who only want to do their own thing, and I just feel like even if you don’t dig most of musical theater, it’s really helpful to know how you fit in to the bigger picture.
NT: Okay, so this is surprisingly timely: My friend is actually dying her hair blue today. Do you have any tips for her?
Iconis: Oh my god. I’ve never dyed my hair blue myself, I should know more about it. I know that it’s easier to do if it involves a wig. That would be my tip, for easy cleanup.
NT: She lost a bet, so she has to go blue.
Iconis: I love that, you should send me a picture of the blue hair. I’m very attuned to blue hair in the world now.
NT: It’s like a thing now, too.
Iconis: It is a thing! It turned into a thing. I’m just gonna credit the song. Totally the song.
NT: Yeah, yeah, it was definitely the song.
Iconis: If people start jumping off buildings—
NT: Then you might not want to take credit for it.
Iconis: I’m going to have to go to a desert island, blame myself for being a wizard, something’s happened from my songs.
NT: And then you could just have “Wicked” be about you, and it’s come full circle.
Iconis: Perfect.
NT: Great, thank you so much!
Iconis: For sure, thank you, this was great.

Read our review of "The Black Suits" here.

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