Nathan Lane is being tested (and he loves it)

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They make it possible for our journalists to go or news is happening. And supporters get perks for Imperial podcasts, things like bonus episodes, archive access, and more. You can sign up at plus.npr.org. This is Fresh Air, I'm Terry Gross. Our guest today is three-time Tony Award winner Nathan Lane.

He was just nominated for a Tony for his starring role as Willie Loman in the new Broadway revival of Author Miller's Death of a Salesman. The role as a departure from the comedic larger than life performance as Lane is best known for, like in "The Burkage, Guys and Dolls and the Producers." Lane spoke with guest interviewer Sam Fragoso, host of the interview podcast, "Talk Easy."

Here's Sam. Since his Broadway debut at the tender age of 26 and no cowards present laughter, Tony

winner Nathan Lane has long been regarded as one of the great entertainers of the stage.

In the frission of Ethel Merman, Zero Maustell and Bill Silvers. But in the last decade, Lane couldn't help but think of Peggy Leasinging, "Stat all there is?" Which inspired Lane to pivot to more dramatic roles. Hickey in the Ice Man comment, Roy Cohn in Angels in America, and now Willie Loman

in Death of a Salesman. In the hit-new Broadway revival, Lane transforms as the prideful patriarch in traveling salesmen, oscillating back and forth between "Bervado" and "Despiration" and "Embalum" of the dissolution of the American family and their dreams. Arthur Miller's 1949 Pulitzer Prize-winning play has had several acclaimed productions led

by great actors like Lee J. Cobb, Dustin Hoffman, Wendell Pierce, and the late Brian Denny, who was a mentor to Lane. The Guardian has praised his portrayal as "the crown jewel in a life spent on stage," and quote.

The Tony's seemed to agree when the nominations were announced earlier this week.

Nathan Lane, welcome back to Frischer. "Thank you, thanks for having me." You were nominated this week for a Tony for your performance as Willie Loman and Beth of Salesman.

“This marks, I think, your seventh nomination is that right?”

That is correct. I've heard there are pre-show rituals that performers have before they go on stage. Are there rituals or traditions you have the morning of Tony nominations? I sleep. I try to get as much sleep as possible because this is a big mountain to climb so I don't have

any rituals in the hopes of Tony nominations. I just hope for the best. How do we hear a little bit of what that performance that you nominated for sounds like? The play alternates between the past and present, and so in this flashback Willie has just come home from a sales trip up along the East Coast where he's met by his two young

boys. "Where'd you go this time, Dad?" "Well, I got on the road, and I went north to Providence, met the mayor. The mayor of Providence." "He was sitting in the hotel lobby."

"What did he say?"

“"He said morning," and I said, "You got a fine city here, Mayor, and then he had coffee”

with me." "I went to Waterbury, Waterbury is a fine city, big clock city. The famous Waterbury clock, sold a nice bill there, and then Boston. Boston is the cradle of the revolution of fine city, and a couple of other towns and Massachusetts, and on to Portland and Bangor and straight home."

"I'd love to go with you sometime, Dad." "Son of Souverka!" "Promise!" "Oh, you and Happen Eye, and I'll show you all the towns. America is full of beautiful towns and fine upstanding people, and they know me, boys.

They know me, up and down New England. The finest people, then when I bring you fellas up, there'll be open sesame for all of us, because one thing, boys. I have friends. I can park my car in any street in New England, and the cops protected like their own.

This summer." "I'm sick." "We'll take our bathing suit." "We'll take our bags, Bob." "Oh, well, that'd be something, me coming into the positive stores with you, boys, carrying

my bags." "It's funny hearing that scene. Willy is out on the road selling, but when he comes back home, you can hear even there. He's selling a story or a dream, even to his sons. There seems to be like another."

"And do his wife." "And do his wife." "You've said before that when it comes to that of a salesman, it's meaning to you changes, depending on where you're at in your life when you're in it." "Oh, yeah."

"So, Tim, where has it landed with you in this stretch, where you're performing, what is it, six nights a week? Don't know how you're doing it. Where does it play land with you in this moment?" "I don't know how I'm doing it either, but we're a Lori Medkath and I are old school.

We do it." "I believe that's called massacism." "Yes." "Is it?" "I don't know.

I like to think of it as professionalism." "Look, there's a reason, it's a classic that it's called the Great American Play." And when people come back and talk about it, if they're not weeping, they're saying things like you were my father.

And I think so often with this production, so many people say I feel like I've never seen

it before. It felt so modern. And also the notion of Willy often is the case in the play. He's fighting for his life.

“I mean, I think that's what makes him an interesting character.”

He's a very flawed. He's a mass of contradictions and incredibly insecure. And he has this very misguided view of the American dream, which is, you know, it's about his self-worth and his idea of success is all based on the opinion of others, which as an actor, you certainly can relate to.

His whole philosophy is, it's about being well-liked.

It's not what you say, it's how you say it because personality always wins the day.

And if you are well-liked, you will never want. It's a very flawed view of how to succeed. But he totally believes in it and in his version of the American dream. And I guess for a while, in the old days, you know, it worked to a certain degree.

“But now, all of the people he used to go out and see who are friends on the road, they're”

either retired or dead, and being a traveling salesman is sort of fading away as well. So he's in a desperate way. But in that scene, you're getting a glimpse into his psyche and they're trying to pretend that it's all okay when it's not. The last time you played a salesman was over a decade ago in the Ice Man comment.

And you've said that production of Ice Man comment, quote, "Chains the way I approach everything." What was that change? Well, I had been doing a musical on Broadway called The Adams Family, which had been reviled by the critics and yet the public spoke, they wanted to see it.

So while I was in that run, Charles Isherwood, who was at the New York Times, then, wrote a very lovely and flattering piece about a assessment of my career. And he referred to me as the greatest stage entertainer of the last decade, which was

extremely complimentary, but I can always find the dark cloud in any silver lining.

I was flattered, but troubled by the word entertainer. But I appreciated, but he found me entertaining.

“But is this kind of like a Joe Pescian good fellows like, "Why do you?”

What's funny about him?" Oh, I'm funny to you. I'm funny to you. Well, there was no threat of violence. I just felt I was more than Justin and retainer.

I saw myself as an actor now having been doing this for 50 years. I may have been entertaining, but I was acting in all of those pieces, whether it was musical or a straight play. So it got me a thinking, and so I thought, "Gee, is that how people perceive me?" And I feel like I have more to offer as an actor.

And maybe I have to challenge myself and also see, challenge the audience and see if they're willing to go on that journey with me. I wonder if I can shift that perception. So I thought, "How can I do this?" And I have no power in film or television, but in the theater, I have a little bit.

So I happened to read an interview with Brian Denny, a very old friend of mine. The late-grade Brian Denny, and Robert Falls, his collaborator in theater, and they were discussing that collaboration, and at one point, they wondered whether they would revisit the Ice Man comeeth, and Denny had done it in 1990 with Bob, and very successfully, and he was thinking

did that. And I thought, "Aha, that would really shake things up." And so I contacted Bob Falls, and I said, "If you're really thinking about doing Ice Man, again, I would love to be considered for the role of Hikki and here's why." The audience feels the same way the guys in the bar feel about Hikki, about me, which

is he's here to show us a good time, he's the life of the party.

“And then we pulled the rug out from under them, and I think that's an interesting dynamic.”

So I went to Chicago, I had six weeks of rehearsal, and then you have, and because it's a regional theater, you only have nine performances, and you open. And so, because Dan and I were doing this, people showed up, like from New York, like Charles

Isherwood, who drove me to this in the first place.

So there was a lot of pressure on me. And then, so, unfortunately, it was very well received, it was sold out. The happy ending is it worked. Eventually, I did shift the perception just a little, just enough, so that by the time I got to Angels in America, and then salesmen, it wasn't such a shock to people.

“Oh, Nathan Lane is doing death of a salesman, oh, that's an onion headline.”

You have referred to your childhood as bad Eugene O'Neill. Is there a good Eugene O'Neill? Right, well, well, I was just making a joke, but because I come from an Irish background. It was a way to tell you the truth, it was a way of avoiding talking about the real facts of my childhood.

I just sort of covered it in a general way with a joke, which is typical of me. But the facts were that my father was an alcoholic, and my mother eventually, after his death and her own mother's death, my grandmother, she had a breakdown, and it took about

five years, and it was finally diagnosed as what was called manic depression then.

So, I had to grow up fast. My father, I didn't have much of a relationship with, because he was really not homalot, and when he was, he was drunk or recovering. That was worse. My memory is that, you know, he would come home, and he was holding onto the walls.

He couldn't walk. When my mother would get him to go to AA, she did a couple of times, and he had to come

“two periods of that I remember of sobriety, and my mother would say to me, when he was sober,”

she said you would always, I was only nine, ten, he died when I was eleven, and

she said I would stay next to him, I would stay close to him, and hold his hand. And one time, I remember we were in this apartment, and you know, it was very cold, and we were buying them, and now it becomes de Kenzie, and we were by a radiator, and he was talking to me, and he said, you know, you're going to have to learn how to take care of yourself, because your mother and I aren't going to be, you know, around all the time.

And I was, I guess nine, and I was like, why is he telling me this now, and I'm a lot to learn nine-year-old. A lot to lay on a nine-year-old, but it was true, but I remember another moment where I was walking to school, and this is in Jersey City, and it was, I was passing what was called the Stegman Street Tavern, and the back door was open, and it was very sunny day,

sunny morning, and as I was going by, I turned and looked, and I saw my father sweeping up. I would imagine probably for drinks, and he stopped realizing that someone was looking at him, and he looked up, and he looked at me, and we just stood there, and stared at one another, and he didn't say hello, he didn't say a word. There was so much that might have been said, could have been said, should have been said, and then he just turned away when back to sweeping,

and I went on to school. I wish I could go back and ask him some questions. He was a truck driver.

I have two older brothers, Bob and Dan, and my brother, Bob, was probably closer to him than

myself and my oldest brother, Dan, and eventually my mother moved away. She left him, and he stayed in this apartment we were in, and you know, got a couple of other drugs to move in with him to help pay the rent, and my brother went to see him, and to try to help him, and he said to my brother, Bob, I'm no good to anybody. I'm just going to drink myself to death, and then he did. You know, Nathan, when you're describing this man, just traveling truck driver. Of course,

“I think of Willie Lomem, but I also think you as a kid growing up in Jersey City in this”

Irish Catholic family, the youngest of three. Did you see the theater and performing as some off ramp to that as some escape? My sense of humor was an escape, but yes, from a very early age, I was a voracious reader. I think because of my brother, Dan, and also I had an uncle who gave me a lot of books, and then I joined what was called the fireside theater was a play of the month club. And you were the kind of kid who was reading death of a salesman, while other kids were watching

Gilligan's Island. Yes, that is correct. And then eventually, you know, as I started reading plays and seeing plays, because my brother, my brother, Dan, he obviously saw that in me, and encouraged it, and he took me to see plays. And then at one point, when he was in college, they were putting on a play, and they needed a child. So he suggested that he said, my head to the his friends, my kid brother could do that. And so he got me into this play.

So that was the first time I was ever on stage. Anyway, and then he took me to see theater in New York,

and that was all very exciting. And when, you know, as I would sit there in a theater with him, and, you know, the lights would go down, and the curtain would go up. And the whole thing, I just, you wanted, I wanted to be a part of it. I just thought, for some reason, I thought,

“I think I could do that, or I certainly would like to try. I want to know, and just make”

go back to your Catholic school days or your time at St. Peter's Prep. Do you remember the first time you got a laugh on stage? Yes, I was in grammar school, and we put on a production of around the world in 80 days. Very ambitious for a grammar school. We had no budget, and there was a scene where we were on a train, and it was being attacked by Indians, and people were running around, and I was trying, I was a small round child, and I was trying to hide, and I had a little suitcase,

and the suitcase was sort of right in front of me. And so I crouched down behind the suitcase as if I

might be hidden behind it, and I wasn't, and then the audience laughed, and it was, that's the first

“laugh I ever got. It was like blood to a vampire. And I mean, I certainly had gotten laughs at home.”

I used to have a little, it was like I would do a little club act, a lounge act for my family, I'd do bad impressions, and entertain them. You had a tight five? Yes, I definitely had a tight five. That was back when you were Joe Lane, not Nathan Lane. That is correct, sir. You've done your research. I have. Here's the, here's how one of your classmates describes you at St. Peter's prep. Yes, Lane lacked height and possessed girth. His words not mine, but there was nothing

insecure about him. Every day he held court in the cafeteria surrounded by adoring fans in the age of George Carlin, Joe Lane was the archetypical class clown, the entire faculty feared his might. Wow. Well, I guess that's one way of looking at it. High school. Well, that was, you know, like any any kid, it's high school is difficult, and I'm sure being funny was my way in. You know, I was, and certainly I would say by then, I knew I was different

than the other boys, and I was going to an all-boys prep school. So that was, that was an interesting

that. And, and that's, you know, and I, but I got involved in these, the social activity was being

involved in the drama club and to putting on plays. We're listening to guest interviewer Sam for Go So, speaking with Nathan Lane. Lane was just nominated for a Tony for a starring role as Willie Loman in the new hit Broadway revival of Death of Asalesman. We'll hear more of the interview after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is fresh air. When you told your mother, you were going to New York to act. You're, you were 21 years old. Yeah. Oh, God, I've told this story

so much, and my poor mother, I feel guilty now, but it's become a famous story. I'm fortunate.

“Is this Catholic Gill popping up here? They are totally. You know, you have to understand,”

she was, this was not a sophisticated woman. She had her prejudices. God knows. She made you, that's got to count for something. Well, sure. You know, but I think, I think, look, they, I think what happened is they went to a wedding. They got, she, my mother of all of the people in her family who were all drunks. She did not drink. But if she went out, she might, she would order one thing, a whiskey sour on the rocks, and she would sort of

nurse it through an evening. But in my think, maybe this one night at the wedding, she had two, and, and they, and they had sex, and, you know, the future hope of Broadway was born. Anyway, so, uh, what was the question? The question was, how did you tell your mother you were going to New York to act? Okay. So, um, we have been living in Rothford together in this tiny one-bedroom apartment, and uh, well, I slept on the, this is the most uncomfortable couch in history. And I

had done a production of guys and dolls, a non-equity production of guys and dolls that had a dinner theater in Meadowbrook, New Jersey, where I played Nathan Detroit, and, um, I had a crush on the guy playing Benny South Street, and, um, we, you know, something had developed and he lived in New York, and, um, and so I was going to move to New York. Uh, and, um, I, so I, I sat

down and, because we had been through a lot together, and I thought I, I had never lied to her, and I

have been telling her I've been seeing a girl, but I was seeing, I, I said to her, I know you think I've been seeing a girl, but I've been seeing a guy. And, you know, she, she turned white, and, and it looked very shocked, and she said, um, you mean you're a homosexual, she said, and I said, yeah, I guess so, and she said, oh, Joseph, I would rather you a dead, and I said, I knew you'd understand,

“and once I got her head out of the oven, everything was fine. And I, I remember at one point, I,”

I, I was, I was dating a modern dancer, and he was very handsome, and, and we were at a, uh, gathering its sardis, and he was, this dancer was there, and my mother was there, and I introduced them, and he went off to get her a, a drinks for her and myself, and she looked at me a way. He's very good. Nathan, that's what we call progress. That's right. You take the wins where you can find them. That's progress. That's, that's, that's her. That's right. That's going to a pride parade

is what you just heard. Exactly. Did your mother enjoy seeing you perform? Oh, my God. Yes. Yes. She was, you know, she lived to 84. She was said, all those openings, and, and, you know, more than anything that I did, she loved when I was in a musical.

You know, I'm sentimental about this. You always would say, after every show,

I'm not, she would say, I'm not saying this because I'm your mother. I'm saying it because it's true.

“You were the best one. So I'll always remember that. Nathan, one of your biggest”

and, and must-believe performances is Max Bialestock, the corrupt producer in the, the namesake, the producers, sent the jail for cooking the books while his business partner gets away with it. And I thought, why don't we listen to a little bit of the song betrayed.

then you stabbed me in the back, betrayed. Oh, boy, I'm so betrayed.

Like Samson and Delilah, you'll love began to fade. I'll cry it in the house, how you're in real. Be trained. Let's face it, I'm betrayed. Boy, have I been taken? Boy, I'm so forsaken. I should've seen what came to pass. I should've known no, no, watch my f***. I feel like a fellow, everything is lost. Leo is the angle. Max is double-crossed. I'm so dismayed. Did I mention I'm betrayed? No, I'm about to go to jail. There's no one who will pay my pay for mine.

“When you sing the word stabbed, how do you do that? I don't know. That's what came out of my mouth.”

That's what I felt. I'll give you a little as a story about that number. When we were discussing it and talking about it before we went into rehearsal,

I said, "I disappear in the second act." I said, "I need an 11 o'clock number."

He wrote a song called Farewell to Broadway, which was kind of a sentimental song. In the middle of it, there was a speech he had about how angry he was about being betrayed by Leo. I said to him, "The song isn't right, but the monologue you wrote in the middle of it is. It's got to be his version of Rose's turn." He went off and wrote betrayed. He Mel just knocked it out of the park. If you're joining us, my guest is actor Nathan Lane.

His latest turn is as Willie Loman and death of a salesman opposite Laurie Metcalf.

The show was recently nominated for Best Revival of a Play at the Tony's, more after a break. I'm San Francisco. This is fresh air. When you're in the throes of starring in the producers in the early 2000s, there was a producer who visited you backstage, who told the Guardian quote, "Seeing him after a performance, it's like he's gone 10 rounds with Joe Lewis."

This must have been an old producer if he said Joe Lewis. We don't want to age him here, but if playing the corrupt charismatic theater producer Max

“Bialstock took 10 rounds with Joe Lewis out of you, what has Willie Loman done to you?”

Well, musicals are young man's game. Musicals, it's like your quarterback for the New York Giants. It's an athletic event. I'll tell you what happened with the producers is I was so it became such a phenomenon. I felt the pressure of living up to the hype and I didn't protect myself, vocally. I was out there doing it, you know, my homage to zero and yelling and screaming and carrying on and then having singing song after song and you and after six

seven months, I had hurt myself. What I find is salesmen is difficult because of where you

“have to go. It's a play that tests you and it costs you and because you have to go there”

night after night after night and like iceman come with. But there's something about this play that it's taken me a long time and I'm proud of the work that I'm doing and I attribute a lot of it to the genius of Joel Mantello who guided me to in this role and it's been the most rewarding thing I've done. Toward the middle of that of the salesmen, I thought maybe we could play a little bit from it where Biff Hap greet their father at a restaurant, both of them both Biff and Willie

have had big days in very different ways. So here's how that conversation sounds. Facts pop,

all of it. Well you were. No dad I was a shipping clerk. Plus you were a brat. I don't know who said

“it first but I was never a salesman would bill all of it. What are you talking about? Let's hold on”

to the facts tonight pop because we're not going to get anywhere bullet around. I was a shipping clerk. All right. Now listen to what? What are you let me finish? I'm not interested in stories about the past. Are any crap of that kind? Because the woods are burning boys. You understand this a big blaze going on all around. I was fired today. How could you be as fired and I'm looking for a little good news to tell your mother because the woman is weighted and the woman has suffered

the gist of it is that I haven't got a story left in my head. So don't give me a lecture about

“facts and aspects. I am not interested. Now what have you got to say to me? I just want to repeat”

that line. The gist of it is I haven't got a story left in my head. Oh I know I know I love that line. I can't hear that line and not think of the dynamic between you and your father. I can't hear it and think like for you to do that line night after night because he passed away when you were so young and now for you at the highest possible stage to do what you have done to be awarded sort of ironically for a story about someone whose career didn't work out. I don't know like I hear that

line and it's just I wonder where it lands with you today and night tonight. You know it's funny you bring that line up because I find it such an important line. He's a salesman and so when he says I don't have a story left in my head. So don't give me a lecture about facts and aspects.

“I am not interested. That's what he's been doing. I mean you know it's never mentioned what he”

sells and when they ask Miller about that he says well he's selling himself and and he's sadly reached the point where they're not buying anymore. It's killing him. You know he used to sell his sons too. He sold them on this his version of the American dream and the idea of success but but as Biff says it's wrong. It's all wrong. He didn't know who he was

and he was probably never as successful as he imagined. You know he was probably some guy

in a hotel lobby. He's just talking to someone a little too loudly. In you thought oh god. You know it's it's it's such a tragedy. You know his Miller wrote the tragedy of the common man. I saw the play this past week and you know like like a traditional curtain call everyone comes out and you're the last one that that comes out and I was standing there. We were all applauding. Many of the people next to me were weeping and I saw you walk out on stage and you took a

bow and there was some look in your face that I had not seen in the play but saw very clearly in that moment. It was almost as if there was like an exhale there was so much emotion in that and I could not help but think oh that's the kid who performed in the cafeteria at St. Peter's that's that's everything there and I wanted every night and this was just this week but when you walk out there what is that moment to you? It's you know very very powerful there's the undeniable

power of the play and where it takes you. You know Arthur Miller really tapped into something in this play and it's the last bastion of of community. It's people gathering around the campfire. It's it's the where it's the human connection they're not on their phones until the curtain

call and then they hold them up instead of looking at you they're filming you. Never the last

you know we all we have all come together to tell a story and to hear a story and hopefully

that and more and it's just it's it's it is that dream that I had as a kid and you know my

“friend Sammy Watson a wonderful film historian and writer he always said to me you can never forget”

that when you walk out there up in way up in the balcony there's some kid who is just like you and and seeing you and thinking gee I'd like to do that someday and that's who you're doing it for all right you're going to make me cry at this age I'm a very easy cry as Terrence McNally used to say oh with this age I cry at food displays. Anyway it's that it's that thing that only happens in the

theater you know and it's why it's it's why it feels like home and why it's still so special.

Well if the theater is your home I want to say that I think we have all benefited from and very

“much enjoyed it being your guest so thank you for that and appreciate the time. Well put sir thank”

you so much Nathan Lane spoke with guest interviewer Sam Fragoso host of the interview podcast talk easy. Lane was just nominated for a Tony for a starring role as Willie Loman in the new Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's death of a salesman. Sam Fragoso is the host of the interview podcast talk easy. After we take a short break Ken Tucker will review new songs by L. L. Langley, Robin and Alison Russell. This is fresh air. Our rock critic Ken Tucker has been listening to

some recently released music and has come up with three new songs that approach unhappiness and heartache in distinctive ways. Country singer L. Langley, the Swedish dance music star Robin and the singer songwriter Alison Russell each have a take on sorrow and discontent that are offered vivid even inspiring music. Just when I thought I got in the fall in love with Tennessee

known better than a takin' back to Avaline but him right back in the her arms. I wasn't a match for that kind of sport. She's from Texas I can tell by all the way he's just stepping round the room. I'm judging by the smile that's written on his face

there's nothing I can do. It doesn't take a crystal ball to see. I can't boy always finds

a way to leave drinking jack all by myself. Just choosing Texas I can tell. A few weeks ago I reviewed the new Megan Moroni country album and mentioned that also surging in popularity is her colleague Ella Langley. Well now Langley's album called Dandelion is out and it's more varied and ambitious than I'd anticipated. It's common for someone early in her career to work variations on the songs that have made her successful and choose in Texas the song that

began this review is more than successful. It is in fact the longest running number one ever by a woman country artist on Billboard's Hot 100. But Dandelion demonstrates Langley's range in making pop ballads, bluegrass, rave ups and more. My favorite song on the album may be last call for us. A honky talk song that uses closing time at the honky talk as a metaphor for a romance that's about to end. It's last call for us. The light you're coming on. I don't want to leave but it's almost

“three and I think we both know that it's last call for us. It's a side-side tune that after these”

strings you'll let go of me and I'll let go of you. We ain't ever gonna make this work as close

It's last call. Hela Langley is at the start of her career. The singer Ravana is in the middle of

“hers and she's chosen to build an album around that idea. She calls the collection sexist”

and it's songs are about hard one middle-age wisdom and a weary impatience with partners less engaged or sincere than she. Performers ranging from Taylor Swift to Charlie XX have expressed their

admiration for Ravana's way with vocals that twist around a pulsing rhythm and songwriting that

injects emotional complexity into disco repetition. A prime example of this is it don't mean a thing.

“Ravana's jagged distorted vocal helps convey the lyrics disappointment and a love gone bad.”

Her bitterness bleeds into the beat.

We went through every single position and we talked about nothing new and he managed.

I took care of you and we went through that trip and all I wanted was for you to get sad if you put a new baby. You come on, plus I love you. I send you to the forever.

“I've reviewed both of Alice and Russell's albums, The Returner and Outside Child and it”

seems as though every time I hear something new by her, I want to immediately play it for everyone I know. That's certainly the case with her new single called "No Springtime." Russell sings this ballad with minimal instrumental accompaniment. The song builds on harmonies provided by fellow singer songwriters, joy a lot of Cune and Julie Williams. This near-occapella performance of "No Springtime" gets its power from the

completion of the title phrase. There's no springtime in the blues they sing and it is indeed Russell's deep connection to the blues that takes its sadness to another level. Russell knows as well as Ella Langley and Robin that sometimes fully felt unhappiness, free of self pity, or melodramatic exaggeration, can be as thrilling and uplifting as joy. Kentucky reviewed "No Music" by Ella Langley, Robin, and Ellison Russell.

Fresh air is executive producer. It's Sam Brigher, our technical director and engineer is Argy Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Sharach, Ann Rabel Denado, Lauren Crenzel, Theresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Susan Yacundee, Ann Abelman, and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler. Our digital media producer is Molly Sivine Esper. They are shown or directed today show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.