What Song Booked Come
From Away’s Chad
Kimball His Broadway
Debut?
BY MICHAEL GIOIA
APR 02, 2017
The Tony-nominated star reveals
the songs that booked him
Broadway.
Tony Award nominee Chad Kimball (Memphis), returns to
Broadway in the rave-reviewed new musical Come From Away.
In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, 38 planes were
diverted to Gander, Newfoundland, Canada, and in Come From
Away Kimball’s character (well one of his onstage personas) was
one of them. A true ensemble piece, each actor plays multiple
roles in the intricately staged work by Broadway newcomers Irene
Sankoff and David Hein. But Kimball has been an actor in New
York City for over 17 years. He esetablished a vast repertoire at
Boston Conservatory, but one audition song consistently served
him well to book jobs, from his Broadway debut in 1999’s The
Civil War and beyond. Here, Kimball reveals his go-to song and
the rest of the pages in his audition repertoire.
What song did you sing to book Come From Away?
Chad Kimball Joseph Marzullo/WENN
Chad Kimball: I actually sang from the show, and I knew the
creative team going in, so that was a plus. They knew my voice. I
sang a couple of numbers from the show. I believe they were
“Welcome to the Rock” and “28 Hours,” so I learned those babies,
and tried to memorize them the best I could because one of them
flies by pretty quickly.
What are your go-to audition songs you sing? Take me
through your book.
Well, I prepared pretty extensively in college. My emphasis—or
minor, I guess you could call it—was Musical Theatre Repertoire,
so we went through decades of various genres of music and
pulled out little snippets of songs from each era, and really
focused on 16 bars, 32 bars…and then one or two full songs.
Honestly, since I’ve been in the city, which is 17 years, I’ve used
only three or four. It’s incredible. You keep gravitating back
towards the ones that really are successful. The one I used for a
long time was “Lost in the Wilderness” [from Children of Eden].
That was the one I booked my first Broadway musical with, which
was The Civil War, and I used it for a good 10 or 11 years. I finally
retired it, though. I had a ceremony—I took the page out of my
book, [filled] the plastic with other sheet music…
What were the other few songs you would go to?
I have a couple other go-tos. I love “The Only Home I Know” from
Shenandoah. It’s simple, the melody is absolutely gorgeous. It’s
always nice to see people’s reaction to it because, since it is so
simple and so beautiful, it’s almost like a pause in the action for
[the casting directors], too. And it’s short, so I’ve had some
success with that one. It is interesting, when you’ve had success
with a song, then it goes to the top of the list. I love Craig
Carnelia, and one of the songs that I love to use as well is “What
You’d Call a Dream” [from Diamonds]. I know that’s a very
popular song, but I also love baseball, and I’m a real [believer] of
picking something that means something to you and is grounded
in the realities of your life, so I love to sing “What You’d Call a
Dream.” I also sing a lot of Elton John. His stuff is really fantastic
to sing, so I’m constantly finding new Elton John [music]. “Mona
Lisas and Mad Hatters” is a fun one for me to sing. It’s a soaring
melody. I also sing a song that he had written about John Lennon
called “Empty Garden [(Hey Hey Johnny)],” which is a song that I
never knew existed. I didn’t knew that he wrote it, which is
interesting because I did the show Lennon, and when I found it, I
just gasped out loud. It’s a beautiful song.
You said you were studying rep in college, so what were you
looking for, in terms of great pieces to present at auditions?
How do the songs in your repertoire speak to you?
Back in college, I was running the gamut, making sure that I had
every corner of the audition sphere covered. Some of them I
didn’t need as much as others—some of the songs from the ’50s I
haven’t used at all, but there are also songs, like in the ’40s, that I
definitely have used. “I’ll Be Seeing You” I’ve used quite a bit. I
think it’s just finding that favorite song that really fits in your voice
and that people really respond to and just running with it and not
being ashamed of using it time after time.
Where do you look for inspiration when it comes to finding
new music?
If I hear something that just really speaks to me, that hits my
heart, that says, “I’ve got to sing that,” then I look it up, and I find
the music or I get it transcribed, and I put it in my book. That’s the
long and short of it.
You said that you were very versed in rep at college, so
where do you go in search of music in genres other than
musical theatre?
A lot of mine come from pop music, and what I like to do now [is
use] apps like Pandora or Spotify, where you can put in the song
and it will search “like songs.” Being able to have an algorithm
that searches a song and says, “Okay, if you like that song, then
you’re going to really like this song and this song and this song. It
has the same cadence, it has the same lyrical quality.” Using that
as a tool is really effective.
What helps you nail an audition?
My terrible audition stories come from times when I haven’t put as
much work as I should of into a song that I’m supposed to
prepare, and that’s a tough lesson to learn, but I’ve learned it, My
advice to anybody would be, “You’ve got to just know the stuff
going in.” When they say the person who knows it the best is
really the person who gets it, I think [that] is probably true. So I try
and really, really hunker down and learn my material as best as I
can before I go in.