Music and fart jokes: ‘The Book of Mormon’ is so much more than that

At some performances of the national touring version of the musical “The Book of Mormon,” 90-year-old couples in the front row will jump up, eager to sing and dance along. So says Christopher John O’Neill, 32, who plays the leading role of Elder Arnold Cunningham. When word first spread that Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creative minds behind “South Park,” had teamed with composer/lyricist Robert Lopez from the adult comedy “Avenue Q,” audiences expected the filthiest, most scabrous show Broadway had ever seen. Turns out it’s a family show. Sort of.

“The cool thing about the show is it’s not just, like, two-and-a-half hours of fart jokes,” O’Neill says. “They actually wrote a musical, you know? It wouldn’t be so successful if it was just what some people might think it is. I think (the writers) want people going away saying, ‘Hey, I really liked that! I didn’t know they could write like that.’”

It’s not like the men haven’t written songs before. Throughout the 17 seasons of “South Park” and feature films like “Team America,” Parker and Stone have made their love of musicals crystal clear. “When you look back at what they’ve done,” O’Neill says, “you’re, like, ‘OK, that makes sense.’”

Behind the scenes, some wondered how the show would translate in different regions of the USA. Going to Dallas, O’Neill says, they worried about potential Bible Belt problems. But, “The places people warned us about — ‘Oh, they might not be into it,’ they’re the most into it. It’s weird. We were in Schenectady, N.Y., and everyone was, like, ‘Why the hell are you guys going to Schenectady?’ It’s like a huge small town, and it was the best crowds we’ve ever had. It’s bizarre. I’ve learned to just go with it, because I have no idea how it’s going to be. And it differs night to night, let alone city to city.”

The coolest part is feeling out each crowd, he says, knowing that the cast will be winning them over sooner or later. It’s just a question of how soon. For O’Neill, a veteran of the sketch comedy scene with partner Paul Valenti in “The Chris and Paul Show,” the tour has also been a wealth of potential future sketch material.

“It’s ridiculous, the amount of characters you run into out on the road — it’s cool, you just meet so many people. That’s the thing that’s keeping (me interested) — my brain is ADD, I’m constantly looking for new stuff to write. My comedy partner and I, we used to write a new hour show every month for three years. I like new things,” says the musical newbie whose role was originally played on Broadway by Josh Gad.

His castmates have been welcoming and kind, he says, if a little surprised by his background. “Oh, god, they think it’s hilarious. They were all really cool when I first started with the cast, but obviously, the singing — the people in the cast are so talented, their voices are ridiculous. It’s awesome, from where I started to where I am now, it’s been really cool. Being able to sing — everyone’s been so supportive. Singing every night, eight times a week, I feel like I’m a little theater person now.”

That being said, he acknowledges being an outcast of sorts. “I’m the only one in the cast who hasn’t seen every musical ever. People in the cast are, like, ‘Have you seen ‘Lion King’? And I’m, like, ‘No!’ I’m so far behind with musical trivia and all that stuff.”

He’s an important part of the marriage of comedy and music that makes “The Book of Mormon” stand out from other plays, including choreography by Casey Nicholaw, Tony-nominated for his work on “Monty Python’s Spamalot” and a Tony winner for directing the original “Mormon” with Parker. The show won eight other Tonys, including Best Musical. Lopez has also had subsequent success with songs he wrote with his wife for the hit movie “Frozen.”

“This is a cool show to see if you’re not that much into musical theater” but love comedy, O’Neill says. The “South Park” guys “were my idols growing up, so doing this show is a ball.”

‘The Book of Mormon’
May 28-June 8
Kentucky Center for the Arts
501 W. Main St.
kentuckycenter.org
$43+; various times

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c. 2014 LEO Weekly

Mood music vets open up the Watter works

A recently released documentary about Slint, the landmark band from Louisville, asked when their visionary composer/drummer Britt Walford, who has not played in a band making new music in almost 20 years, might ever return to active duty — and possibly change the face of music all over again? It’s a lot to ask of anyone, but the 44-year-old has joined forces with two other progressive musicians to form the new band Watter. The trio’s first full-length album, This World, was released yesterday.

What is now Watter began a couple of years ago when Tyler Trotter and Zak Riles met and decided to play together. Riles, who has played guitar in the Portland, Ore.-based instrumental band Grails since 1999, moved to Louisville so he and his wife could be closer to family. They started a business, the Bluegrass Green Co., which soon moved to the NuLu district on East Market Street. Trotter played guitar and synthesizers in the band Strike City and then traveled the world with the California Guitar Trio as a soundman. He had opened his first business, the Louisville Beer Store, a block away from Riles’ store.

It was inevitable that the two men, who shared much musical taste and overlapped in many ways — Trotter’s subsequent businesses, the Holy Grale bar and Gralehaus eatery, are even similar in name to Riles’ band, Grails — would find each other. Riles had built a studio, where the pair could play late at night, free from the obligations of the domestic world. And once conversations with Walford suggested further possibilities, a new band came to life.

With the members’ collective pedigrees, they have already received attention from influential ears outside Louisville. The A/V Club and Spin drooled over the idea of the band, and Jonathan Cohen, music booker for “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” and a supporter of many things that came out of the ’90s post-punk/post-rock scene, posted an exclusive Watter bonus song on the TV show’s Tumblr, promoting them as “an awesome new band” and the album as “nothing short of an instant instrumental rock masterpiece.”

This World also features contributions by some of Louisville’s other finest players — pianist Rachel Grimes, vocalist Dane Waters and bassist Todd Cook (who toured with Slint when they reunited in 2005). But it was a favor Trotter called in from his CGT adventures that got even more attention.

“Tony Levin? That was Tyler’s doing,” Riles says. “He suggested just calling Tony Levin. Britt and I both kind of laughed. We were, like, ‘Whoa! Funk fingers,’ you know?”

Known to fans of adventurous music for his work playing bass for the English band King Crimson, Tony Levin has also played on more than 500 sessions, in the bands of Peter Gabriel, Paul Simon, Pink Floyd and Yes, and as the inventor of the bass-playing technique mentioned by Riles. Levin recorded his part in his home studio and emailed it to Watter. Riles says, “He did one take and we were, like, ‘Yeah, that’s amazing.’”

The album begins with a piece called “Rustic Fog.” Dedicated LEO readers might notice that the title sounds similar to a nightclub in our region that sometimes features live music, among other things. Riles confirms the title was inspired by “a magical evening” the band spent there watching country outlaw David Allan Coe perform. “It’s a pretty weird scene over there. Amazing, for sure.”

While Coe’s sound didn’t influence theirs, the members’ shared love for ’70s and ’80s dark movie scores, psychedelia, Krautrock, modern classical and New Age-y soundscapes helps them stand out from most other new bands. While Riles focused on guitars, Trotter worked on the keyboard parts that further evoke different eras and vibrations. “When we were mixing it, we weren’t really sure what it sounded like,” says Riles.

The trio has only played in public a handful of times, and their next Louisville show is being planned for mid-October. It’s part of an East Coast tour that has to wait until Walford has concluded his current Slint obligations. Meanwhile, Riles and Trotter are building a new band space, where they hope to begin work on a second Watter album. “It’s smaller, tighter … It will probably create a totally different-sounding record.”

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c. 2014 LEO Weekly

Mothers of re-invention

Axel Cooper spent most of his 20s in Louisville, playing with Tyrone, Instant Camera, The Phantom Family Halo and Sapat. But after he rounded 30, he found his life changing rapidly: expecting his first child, out of the city and farming in small-town Ramsey, Ind.

He wrote the songs for the first New Mother Nature album in 2011 while anticipating the baby, expecting he would soon no longer have a spare second for music. He asked guys he had played with before to help out. The quartet of 30somethings — Cooper plus Neal Argabright, Kevin Molloy and Corey Smith — quickly jelled. “They were all no-brainers for people to help make the songs build into something recordable,” Cooper says.

A one-time recording session led to shows, and now a second record (called 2 to distinguish it from the first album). This time, the band worked on songs together, changing the energy if not the overall sound of the lo-fi/rural rock band.

“There is still the underlying theme of social and environmental despondence. But in this new version, all four members of the group have drawn on the yoke simultaneously,” Cooper wrote in a press release.

They had more time — months instead of a weekend. Cooper learned he could juggle music, family and work. (In Ramsey, he farms, and while he has focused on vegetables in recent years, his wife has been having success lately with flowers.)

“I feel less and less connected” to Louisville, Cooper says, though he’s here often for farmers markets. Songwriting lets him communicate feelings he wouldn’t otherwise be able to share. These days, his focus is more on the natural world. He’s “not letting go of the dream,” he says, just making music for himself first now. He elaborates, “The members of this group would more likely say they are engaging a part of their brains that, if left dormant, would fester and discolor their personal lives.”

New Mother Nature plays a record release show Friday at Zanzabar.

Photo by Tim Furnish

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c. 2014 LEO Weekly