By Marilyn Lester***Two-time Tony Award® winner, Norbert Leo Butz, commanding the stage at Feinstein’s/54 Below, was downright mesmerizing. In Torch Songs for a Pandemic, Butz created an entertaining, fully-realized theatrical masterwork, even exceeding his last wonderment at the venue—the amazing Twohander (with Sherrie Renee Scott).
This time, the singer-musician actor also revealed himself as a modern day troubadour— a gifted storyteller, a singer-poet of intelligence and wit, capable of shifting perceptions and aiming to raise consciousness through musical transformation. Upon this theme Torch Songs for a Pandemic took flight and soared into the stratosphere.
Like many of us forced into lockdown by the terrifying COVID pandemic, Butz found himself at an existential crossroads. He’d been filming NBC’s “Debris” series in Vancouver, British Columbia, when the world stopped. Isolated and away from beloved wife and children, he discovered a piano at his disposal, and ultimately rediscovered his love of this instrument. And so Torch Songs for a Pandemic was born.
The setup for many songs to come, with Butz at the piano, was a prologue with “the story of me” theme. In other hands that sort of thing can be mighty dreary, but Butz is a first-rate writer, and he had method to his madness.
The narrative offered a lot to think about in his cradle-to-college tale of growing up in the Midwest among religious parents and ten siblings. Butz is also damn funny—and remarkably intense in a modest way, so what unfolded was compelling. At a relatively young age, he might have been playing Beethoven badly at piano lessons, but in his head he was singing “Head Above Water” (Daryl Hall, John Oates, Sara Allen). His piano teacher did him a favor by making him take vocal training instead, so while he was tasked with “Ich Ho rein Bachlein Rauschen” (Franz Shubert)—in excellent German, by the way—in his head he was singing “Brilliant Disguise” (Bruce Springsteen). In college Butz switched to guitar, and that’s how we’ve come to know him as a musician ever since.
Taking up the guitar for part two of the show, Canadian writer Rex Sexsmith’s “Gold in Them Hills” revealed that finding the piano again, after so many years, was a game-changer, a homecoming, which sparked the creation of Torch Songs for a Pandemic. In this revelation, Butz’s prologue of mental machinations came into focus.
Technically, a torch song is a sad song about love gone wrong. A la Butz these songs also became defined by anxiety and separation—more like the blues. In bringing to the stage soul singer Crystal Monee-Hall, the true transformation of the very well-chosen material (performed throughout the show in a folk-rock style) became apparent. Two well-known tunes especially, “9 to 5” (Dolly Parton) and “Go Your Own Way” (Lindsey Buckingham), reinvented by Butz, were startling eye-openers. In their transformed state the lyric popped and took on new layers of meaning.
Adam Deascentis on bass guitar and drummer Damon Grant provided superb rhythm backup, joined by Mairi Dorman Phaneuf, whose cello added extra texture to selected numbers. Butz’s orchestrations on his arrangements were well-thought out, maximizing the impact of each. Adding Monee-Hall to the mix was also a master stroke. Her beautiful vocals blended in perfect harmony to Butz’s own vocal tone and style.
Ending with “Solsbury Hill” by a fellow troubadour, Peter Gabriel, was a perfect summation. “When illusion spin her net, I’m never where I want to be. And liberty she pirouette, When I think that I am free…” goes the lyric. Ultimately, Butz’s careful consideration of his own internalizing and transformation, presented in song, spoke to hope and healing—a light on the path for us all.
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