Wayland Pickard and Deborah Johnson Singing 'All Gems' at Group Rep Fundraiser

This week, a fundraiser for means a treat for the audience. Musical duo Wayland Pickard and Deborah Johnson are premiering their new show All Gems with proceeds going to The Group Rep. They have been members since 2004.

Pickard and Johnson are pianists and singers who have written and performed original musicals, as well as solo and joint concerts. All Gems is a greatest hits show, a selection of their most popular original songs and songs from their musicals. You can find more information on them at www.doublegrandepianos.com.

We caught up with the duo yesterday by phone while they were rehearsing for their show. Tickets for Wednesday night’s show are available at www.thegrouprep.com or by calling 818-763-5990.

Q: How did you connect with The Group Rep?

WP: Oh boy, we have a long history with The Group Rep. Deborah and I are songwriters and composers. In fact, that’s the nature of the event we’re doing this Wednesday, Dec. 14 is all our original hit songs. We’ve showcased and done a lot of world premieres of our original musicals at The Group Rep.

Q: Which of your productions have they done?

WP: We did a world premiere of eLove, a musical dot comedy which got picked up by Samuel French. We also did a world premiere of (the musical) Is This Any Way to Start a Marriage and also workshopped another Samuel French musical, Polyester: The Musical, kind of an irreverent spoof of the disco ‘70s.

Q: Do you live in North Hollywood or the Valley area?

DJ: Wayland lives in L.A. in Studio City. I am located out in Upland which is about 45 minutes east of L.A. and I drive in a lot. Wayland and I work pretty much all over the country. One of our favorite airports to fly out of is Ontario which is this area but the show that we’re doing at The Group Reperatory, the “All Gems” show, is all original and musical songs. We’ve both written a lot of songs for film, TV and everything else.

Q: What do you love about the audience at the Lonny Chapman Theatre?

WP: Oh boy, they are the most loyal and fun group I’ve run into in a long time, and I’ve played a lot of theaters around the country. Both Deb and I have. It’s just folks who really and truly love theater and musical theater, down to the molecular level. These are folks who appreciate theater and support theater. We’re very grateful to have the opportunity to do our all originals show here on Wednesday, and it’s for a good cause. It helps out the theater and it should be a lot of fun.

DJ: It is so much work putting musicals on, The Group Rep works so hard and they work so hard as a team. It’s really a pleasure having gotten to know so many of the folks there. It’s just a great group of people so I really enjoy them.

Q: How did you agree on a set list for this show?

WP: Well, we start off in a boxing ring, we put on our boxing gloves… No, no. It was a really easy choice. Between Deborah and myself, we’ve probably written several hundred songs. The standout songs, the audience actually picks that out. The audience has told us over the years which songs they like the best so these are really audience favorites.

DJ: We’ve taken songs from each of our musicals, so we’ve taken some of our top songs. I had a musical just premiere. It was a large musical so I did it at a theater in this area, but one of the top songs is “Undying Love” so we’re doing that. We’re doing medleys of each of our musicals so some of the standout songs.

Q: Do the songs from musicals play well on their own, without the whole context of the show?

WP: Yeah, we like to call those standalone songs that stand on their own two legs apart from the narrative of the storyline. We’ve had an opportunity in our shows, Deborah has a solo show and I have a solo show, and then of course we have a duet show called Double Grande Pianos. On occasion we’ve had a chance to perform these songs individually in front of live audiences, so we pretty much know what the audiences respond to the best.

Q: Do you have both pianos on stage for this show?

WP: We’ll have two keyboards on stage, yes.

Q: I was going to ask how you transport your pianos.

WP: Oh, I can answer that. With great difficulty, and my chiropractor can attest to that. No, we have some different keyboards for different shows. We’re going to be setting up on the main stage of the Lonny Chapman Theater.

Q: For the musical purists, do you harmonize together?

DJ: Actually we do. We hopefully do. [Laughs] Wayland and I are not only pianists and not only composers but we’re musicians. We harmonize. We decide when we’re going to do something in unison which is together or something in octaves. It’s kind of a natural thing that you feel and you hear. There’s a lot of that duet thing and when you work with another person for as long as we’ve been working now, it’s a very natural thing to do a lot of duets and harmony.

Q: How did you connect with each other in the beginning of this partnership?

WP: That’s an interesting story itself. Five years ago, both Deborah and I were attending an ASCAP songwriters’ conference at the Walt Disney Studios backlot. We decided to meet after the lecture to kind of compare notes over a cup of coffee.

DJ: What started out with a double latte turned into Double Grande.

WP: That’s how we got the name Double Grande. Over a latte.

Q: I know you still do solo work, but how did uniting change your careers?

WP: She is a great trained Soprano voice and a trained classical pianist, then I do a show that’s reminiscent of the late great Victor Borge that’s comedy and music. And so we have sort of mutually complementary skills that just seem like a natural fit.

Q: Did either of you go to school for musical training?

DJ: Yes, I went to school for it. It was always something I wanted to pursue. I think you get a lot of your musical training by experience but I did go to school. I’ve got credentials and a masters degree. I’ve taught college, a lot of teaching through the years as well as performing. So performing is my first love. I was at Cal State Northridge actually and then did my graduate work at Long Beach State University.

WP: I studied for years and years film scoring. In fact I had a chance to study with the late great Henry Mancini and had a chance to score some films over the years.

Q: What kind of music do you like to listen to?

DJ: Well, kind of all types actually. I love the pop rock. I’ve always loved that. I love the folk. We like the standards and we’ve got a big breadth of things. Of course I’m classically trained but real improvisational as well. So all types.

WP: Funny story. The late Ray Charles used to get that question asked a lot and he answered it by saying, “You know, there’s really only two kinds of music: good music and bad music. I prefer the first time.”

DJ: So it’s hard to nail us down to what kind of music we like. And actually we play all types of music, a lot of different styles.

Q: Where will we be able to see you next after the fundraiser?

WP: Well, we’re going out on a national concert tour. We’ve been headlining 2,000 and 3,000 seat performing art centers all over the United States. From here, we’ll head out to shows in the Midwest, everywhere from Ohio and Texas.

DJ: Texas and I think we’re in Minnesota.

WP: Florida, you name it. Just throw a dart at a map of the U.S. and that’s probably where we’re performing.

Q: And “All Gems” will be something you perform again in the future?

WP: Definitely, yeah.

DJ: Especially when we’re able to be at performing arts centers around the country, a lot of times they are linked in with a college or master classes. This is a perfect show to be able to bring them because a lot of students are very interested in hearing the actual songwriters of the musicals, what they were thinking when they were writing the music and how they envisioned the music being performed. It’s a very interesting show in that respect.