A Conversation with Tom Wopat – HuffPost 2.18.13

Mike Ragogna: Tom, you have a new album, I’ve Got Your Number, your take on jazz and swing material. What went into choosing the songs?

Tom Wopat: Well, we kind of wanted to do a bit of an homage to the madmen period where they were doing the big band/orchestra hybrid thing, the kind of Bobby Darin and Frank Sinatra saloon feel to things. So we did things like “Call Me,” the old Chris Montez tune, and “I’ve Got Your Number” by Cy Coleman, “It’s A Good Life”… So it’s mostly that stuff and then there are some pop tunes that we’ve given somewhat of that same treatment and also a couple of original tunes.

MR: Yeah, “Summer Dress,” I wanted to get into that.

TW: [laughs] Help yourself!

MR: [laughs] Nicely played! “Summer Dress” seems to be one of the most personal reads on this album. And with some of the more modern material–for instance, James Taylor’s “Secret Of Life” or “Since You Asked,” the Judy Collins song, Bruce Springsteen’s “Meeting Across The River”–you gave yourself some pretty challenging material.

TW: Well, I think they lend themselves to that. Groove is not quite as important to them. With the bigger stuff or the stuff like “I’ve Got Your Number,” the lyric is more playful. It’s more of a groove song to me. Same thing with “Good Life.” That’s a pretty intense lyric. That’s ironic. So I try to invest in whatever I feel the song is talking to me about. Obviously, with “Secret Of Life” and “Since You Asked,” those are pretty intense ballads. I’d like to think that I copped a pretty good attitude on them. I’m really proud of this record. I think it’s one of the best-produced records I’ve ever made.

MR: Over your career, you’ve recorded in a few different styles. There’s your Broadway experience, you have musicals in you, you have pop in you, you have country in you, and on the last couple of projects, you’ve been going more towards jazz and swing. What motivates your desire to record these kind of albums?

TW: Well, for me, the live performance has really reinforced that. The reason we did it in the first place was because I was doing all the Irving Berlin songs in Annie, Get Your Gun. We did the cast album of that and the people at Angel who made the record asked me if I wanted to do a Sinatra-ish record. That first one, In The Still Of The Night, was a little more like In The Wee Small Hours, that Sinatra record, and as we’ve gone along what I do in the live shows is not so much a cabaret act as a saloon act. We try to swing, I enjoy that stuff and for whatever reason, I’ve absorbed enough of that over the years that it seems to suit my voice. So that’s pretty much why, it’s something that I’ve kind of grown into. The musical vocabulary, the American songbook, you can just go down the list and it’s just one amazing song after another. I think that’s primarily it, it gives you a really good, solid backbone of amazing material, and then you can kind of stretch the edges of it, like with the last record, we did a Joni Mitchell tune called “Two Grey Rooms.” So you’re looking at stuff where you’ve got a really solid core and then you can kind of dally a little bit on the edges.

MR: Yeah. And with “Two Grey Rooms”–one of the best songs, I think, Joni’s ever written–of course, you had to change the orientation of who you were looking at through those windows, but yeah.

TW: Right, right.

MR: Why did you cover such an iconic Springsteen track like “Meeting Across The River”? You know what the original topic is, and any interpretation would be very challenging. It’s just challenging.

TW: Well, to me, that’s a bit of a story song, too, which I’ve always felt has been one of my strong points. Having dabbled in acting from time to time, you’d think you’d be able to sell a song like that. I’m a big fan of Springsteen’s too.

MR: Did you hope that he would hear your version?

TW: [laughs] You know, it’s crossed my mind, but I would be really surprised. The one whose response I’m very interested to get is Paul Simon.

MR: Oh man, “The Afterlife,” another off-the-beaten path choice. Yeah, it’s clear that on this album, you took a lot of risks. What other risks are you taking?

TW: What we’re doing right now is a compilation for a double vinyl that we’re going to put out in a couple of months. It’s going to be primarily this record with some selections from the last one. When I was A/B-ing stuff, it was remarkable to me in my mind how much more sophisticated the production and vocals are on this one. It’s a process, it’s a learning process. I’ve not recorded all my life–I’ve recorded quite a bit–but when you’re talking about country music and then when you talk about this stuff, especially that I’ve gotten more interested and more involved in the production per se, I feel like we’re still progressing and that’s a good thing. I’d hate to think that we’d plateaued.

MR: You said you’re hoping for Paul Simon’s reaction on “The Afterlife.” What reaction are you hoping for, that he’d like it or maybe want to do a duet someday?

TW: That he doesn’t get pissed off! [laughs] We gave it such a different feel. The whole point was that I wanted to do something fairly contemporary, there was an Adele song I was thinking about doing too. When you do a Judy Collins or a James Taylor song, you think, “Yeah, that’s contemporary.” Not really. Those songs are like thirty or forty years old. They’re great songs but they’re not contemporary. This is one that I thought would fit in a horn arrangement. Henry Hey, I think, did a terrific job of making that happen.

MR: By the way, you appear in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained.

TW: Yes I do!

MR: What are your thoughts afterward?

TW: He was really nice! He was really nice to me. Whatever you feel about his style–and a lot of people feel really strongly about it–he is passionate about film. He is passionate about movies. If you ever get a chance to work with him or be around him, you’ll see that it’s not about him, it’s about the product. It’s about what he’s doing. It was one of the most fun days I ever had on a set. It really took me back to when we used to make The Dukes Of Hazzard–we had so much fun on that set. This was a day that compared with those days.

MR: The Dukes Of Hazzard! What are your thoughts about the The Dukes Of Hazzarddays?

TW: Oh, you know, at this point, it’s almost like talking about high school. It was really great, I learned a lot, I made some lifelong friendships. John and I are going to do a show together in Oklahoma next week, so we talk all the time. It’s one of those things that really shaped my life in a lot of ways, some of them good, some of them bad. But I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

MR: “A show together…” meaning you’re going to sing together?

TW: Yeah, we’re going to sing together at a casino in Oklahoma.

MR: Wow.

TW: Yeah, if you ever get a chance, it’s a trip.

MR: By the way, I caught your reunion with John on that Smallville episode. I was a huge fan of the show.

TW: Oh, that was fun. We had a blast. They were nice.

MR: Did you guys have the same kind of mischief going on during Smallville filming?

TW: Oh, yeah. I keep looking and waiting for someone to come up with some little vehicle where we could do another piece of work together. We have a chemistry that I’ve never had with anybody. John’s an amazing cat.

MR: Tom, what advice do you have for new artists?

TW: Oh boy. Be passionate. Don’t sell yourself short, be passionate and make sure that you’re passionate, otherwise, it doesn’t really work, I don’t think. I don’t know, maybe there are some technicians out there who don’t really care about it. But for me, if I didn’t love what I was doing, I couldn’t do it.

MR: Other than the reunion with John, what’s happening as far as touring and support of the record?

TW: Oh, you know, we’re doing a little here, a little there. We do four or five shows a month. There’s a movie on ABC with Jane Seymour that’s going to air sometime in Spring, and I’m working on the next one. I’m talking to my producer about maybe doing a Christmas record with Schneider. I think it would be a blast.

MR: Oh jeez, that would be a great concept!

TW: Yeah, I’m thinking so.

MR: Tom, thanks for the time, it was a pleasure.

TW: All right, well thanks a lot Mike.

Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne