Interview: Chase Graham of THE WHO'S TOMMY at Hollywood Pantages Theatre

The electrifying, riveting rock opera The Who's Tommy plays at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre through November 15th and I go behind the scenes to talk with rising star Chase Graham (ensemble).

How are you?

I'm doing great, I’ve got my dog (actually my grandmother’s dog), Tally, it’s a beautiful day out.  I’m at my grandma's house right now.  We live in Los Alamitos, California.  So I'm enjoying some family time while we're here in LA.

So tell me about how you got involved with this production of The Who's Tommy, what drew you to it in the beginning?

It almost feels like fate. I just kind of woke up one morning and saw an open call listing for it. I somewhat knew about the show, I mean, everybody knows “Pinball Wizard.”  And luckily, because I had just woken up at the right time, I was able to get a slot, and I was in this one group of the second to last group of the day, and then I was late because of the trains in New York. And luckily, they let me do the last group and I went through a few rounds. And you know, now we're here!

How did you prepare for the audition?

So initially, with the initial open call, it was the dance combination, and then they wanted a pop rock song. At the time I didn't have like a specific rock song. I did have a Sam Cooke song called “Nothing's Can Change This Love.”  Our casting director Spencer Galdoni was like, "I love Sam Cooke!” and I was like, “Great!” because a little worried that it wasn't the right genre. 

I love Sam Cooke too.  There aren't a lot of people coming into musicals with like a ton of rock songs on hand. So I am curious, how did you approach that?  Did you do anything vocally to train for doing more of the rock sound?

I don't really come from a specific musical theater background, so I think my vocal influences are singers like Sam Cooke, I listen to a lot of Led Zeppelin, I have a Led Zeppelin tattoo on me.  I really just try to sing from my own voice, I think my voice kind of falls into the style of the show.

It's a trippy, very unusual musical, right?

Absolutely, that's exactly how I would describe it. When you go online, you don't really see too many videos or anything about it.  I initially watched the movie, and if you have ever seen that movie, it is like an acid trip, like Tina Turner's in it, Elton John's got big shoes, it’s crazy, I was like, what's going on?

We do have a few different plot points than the direction the movie took.  I cover Captain Walker, and in the movie Captain Walker isn't really in the movie as much as it is in our production.  I went to the New York Public Library and I got an old bootleg of the original 1990s production.

I didn't know the music too well, except for “Pinball Wizard.”  I was watching the movie and I was like, this music is insanely good.  Some of my castmates and I watched a documentary on YouTube about Pete Townshend and The Who talking about the creation of the album.  Our director Des McAnuff is in it, he talks about the creation of the Broadway production.  It's incredible, finding out how Pete used his own circumstances in his life to as inspiration to create the sound that completely changed rock and roll for ever. 

Pete Townshend took some autobiographical elements for the show from the sexual abuse and phyical abuse he suffered as a child.  To you, what's the heart of the show?  What does it feel like it's about on a deeper level to you?

I think at its heart, it's about how families deal with trauma and traumatic events.  It's not always perfect.  It can be very messy, but at its core, it's about love and trying to do the right thing under harsh circumstances.

You mentioned that you you don’t come from a typical kind of musical theatre sound.  What has your musical and vocal training been? 

I don't have a typical musical theater background.  I did show choir at Los Alamitos High School, which is in Southern California, about 30 minutes away from the Pantages.  It was a great program, shout out to Mr. Moellencamp. We won nationals three years. 

Graduating high school, I was a little bit unsure of what to do next.  I was like, there's no such thing as professional show choir, so I guess I'll go to business school or something.  I spent a few years after high school kind of just trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.  Then a friend showed me a bootleg of Hamilton, and I was like, I could do that.  Actually, I saw the opening night of the first national tour of Hamilton at the Pantages, and that was the most insane experience I have ever seen in a theater.  The energy of that show was incredible. 

I didn't get a BFA. I did my own training and kept singing and dancing.  Eventually I booked the Mean Girls national tour and that taught me a lot about how this industry works and how to do an eight show week.

My influences have been the music that I've grown up with.  It's really been rock, R&B, soul, Stevie Wonder, everything. I really just try to sing from what comes from here, from my voice. Because if I try to sound like someone else, I'm going to sound silly. 

Since you didn't do a traditional conservatory training, were you working with individual teachers or coaches, how were you training your your voice?

I worked with a couple different voice teachers, Stephen Amanson, Sarah Barry, who was Belle on Broadway, Crystal Barron, who was a great teacher, and she actually teaches at USC I think. So they have taught me a lot of different  techniques. 

I grew up with a singing family background, my father was a singer.  So it was a lot of my own a la carte training.  I would go take dance classes at Millennium down the street.  Show choir was my foundation.  When you think of show choir, you think of Glee, but we had fully mounted shows.  We had a space set, we had an Edward Scissorhands set, we would do a full 20 minute production, backdrops and props and everything.  It wasn't really a lot of dialogue, but it was storytelling through music.

For the Mean Girls tour, what did you do to protect your voice as you're going on the road?  When we travel, we're exposed to all these bugs and the climate changing.

Totally, I'm dealing with it right now.  Mean Girls is an incredibly dance heavy, vocally high energy show.  And initially, when I joined, I'd never done an eight show week before, and my body was falling apart.  I felt like I was gonna die when I was going on stage.  People in the cast of that tour taught me how to properly warm up my body, my voice, how to cool down, taking care of myself, prioritizing sleep, diet, not going out too much.  That really prepared me for The Who’s Tommy because this is also a very high energy show. 

I really prioritize making sure my body is ok,  because we have a long run ahead of us, and I want to do this show as much as possible. I don't want to risk an injury, whether it be vocal or my hip or whatever it could be.  We have our PT and last night I steamed, I did a little neti pot. You have to do everything, because if not, with all the traveling and everything, you could go down so quick.

Other than Hamilton, do you have other favorite musicals that inspired you growing up, or inspire you now?

I think my number one inspiration — when it comes to what I like to do in musical theater and what musical theater does when it comes to storytelling and especially movement and music through storytelling — is West Side Story, the Jerome Robbins movie.  It's the perfect musical to me, my dream show to do.

Our choreographer Lauren Lataro is really great when it comes to our choreographhy with The Who's Tommy.  All the movement has its purpose and it drives the story forward and it's all motivated.

You mentioned Led Zeppelin. Who are some other rock artists that have informed your sound?

When it comes to vocal technique and just like amazing sound, Steve Perry from Journey.  When it comes to a gritty sound, one of my favorite vocalists is Chris Cornell from Soundgarden. R.I.P.  Obviously I love Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin.  

Rock is just such an insane and amazing genre, just because of the different sounds and the different qualities that you can get from a rock voice that have changed over time, like with The Who.

When the audience leaves the theater at the Pantages after seeing The Who’s Tommy, how do you want them to feel changed? 

 I definitely want them to feel electrified for sure.  The show is like a rocket.  We don't have an intermission, and especially for us backstage, we are bouncing around, it’s really crazy. 

When it comes to the moral of the story, just to be grateful for the things that you have every day, be grateful for the life that you have and the people around you.

photos by Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade