Playing—and Creating—All the Right Notes

The beginning of Matt MacNelly’s and Armando Gutierrez’s 2024 return to SCR began in 2012—along with a bit of foreshadowing.

When MacNelly was in graduate school in New York, he’d often see members of PigPen Theatre Co., a group taking the New York Fringe Festival by storm with a reminiscent of the kind of story you tell around the campfire. They knew each other “in that head nod at a party kind of way.”

“When (Director) Kim (Martin-Cotten) came to me with this project and asked me, ‘Does this interest you?’, I asked myself, ‘Is this the same play?’ Indeed it is,” MacNelly said. “The thing that’s amazing about this is you can clearly see this was made by an ensemble. You see this is seven performers who just go teach others about this story and who behaved as a band. You see actors who had a musical ear. You could tell they were able to create intricate music.”

This project is Outside SCR’s production of The Old Man and The Old Moon by PigPen Theatre Co., running through Aug. 11 at Mission San Juan Capistrano. MacNelly and Gutierrez jumped into it with both feet; MacNelly as music director and Gutierrez as associate music director. The two are charged with setting the musical tone for the production and they both play numerous roles.

MacNelly was the music director for 2018’s Cambodian Rock Band and understudied the roles of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins for Outside SCR’s 2022 production of Million Dollar Quartet. There, he had a front-row seat to watch Gutierrez “shred any given night” as Perkins.

“They’re both experienced music directors who have worked together before and between the two of them, I think they play every instrument that ever was,” Martin-Cotten said. “They also know how to support a team of musicians.”

“He’s an incredible guitarist,” MacNelly said about Gutierrez. “Kim said if he’s as good a drummer as he is a guitarist, we’re blessed. I felt if I’m going to be in the show, I need someone who has a second set of ears, who is super musically talented. And the first name both Kim and I thought of was Armando.”

With Gutierrez happily on board and back in his native Orange County, MacNelly and Martin-Cotten agreed that priority one was establishing the music elements. To do that, MacNelly and Gutierrez had to create “a team of Avengers”—multi-talented musicians who could play a variety of instruments. MacNelly never forgot that “behave like a band and sound like a band” vibe was the key to making The Old Man and The Old Moon sound like your favorite band on tour.

“What we found in just two weeks was everyone was gung-ho and willing to try anything. They’d say, ‘I can do that,’ or ‘I’ll try that,’” MacNelly said.

In the early days of MacNelly and Gutierrez digesting the PigPen score, they made several discoveries that would lay out a blueprint for how they approached this musically.

“The second I opened up the sheet music, I realized there’s a lot going on here,” MacNelly said. “There are tight harmonies that are incredible. No one’s a clear bass, no one’s a clear tenor. Someone will sing high and pop low, someone will sing low and pop high.”

The beauty and complexity of The Old Man and The Old Moon goes beyond the cast. For MacNelly and Gutierrez, it goes beyond their acting roles and into establishing the production’s musical vibe with PigPen’s score, which comes with PigPen’s flexible instructions.

Gutierrez said some of the sheet music doesn’t have the exact notes written out. There’s a broad chord structure that gives him and MacNelly freedom to improvise. That improvisation includes instruments not seen or heard in previous productions. Audiences will hear a violin, one of four instruments played by the gifted Ana Marcu, a mandolin for MacNelly and Alex Lydon’s bass guitar.

A key piece of improvisation for MacNelly and Gutierrez comes from the underscoring throughout the piece. Think background music in a movie score.

“We’ve definitely taken moments where they left openings for us to be creative,” Gutierrez said. “Sometimes, we’ve taken elements from Bremen (PigPen’s debut album) or elements of songs from the score and put them in different rhythms or different keys that find its way to being an underscore here. Other moments, we just took what feels good in that moment.

“There’s a song that’s constantly stuck in the Old Woman’s head that’s six notes. Matt and I found different ways to compose that, using Jess Andrews’ humming, Ana’s violin or Matt’s mandolin. We found different moments to grow the show.”

It helps that both MacNelly and Gutierrez came of age musically in the early 2000s, when bands such as The Black Keys, The White Stripes and Orange County’s Delta Spirit laid down a guitar/bass-driven sound that combined blues, folk and indie rock. In turn, that sound meshes perfectly with the folk tale unfolding on stage. Along with PigPen’s score, that gave MacNelly and Gutierrez their desired reference point. They wanted a more contemporary sound.

The score’s inherent freedom gives them that. The desire not to, in MacNelly’s words, “create a carbon copy of PigPen’s show”—also delivers that flexibility. The joy they’re both having developing a production that epitomizes fun, in turn, brings out more of that electric energy that crackles on stage. You can hear it in both their voices as they talk about what awaits audiences.

“What we’re trying to do is learn what’s on the page and then, let’s riff off it and have some fun. Let’s not take anything too sacred,” MacNelly said.

“People should arrive at the Mission a little early, because we might be playing a little concert before the show starts,” Gutierrez slyly said, a teasing tone creeping into his voice. “We’re going to create a perfect environment of music for the audience as they walk in.”