Inside look at The Avett Brothers’ first musical, a tense shipwreck survival saga
The Avett Brothers never planned on making a musical, let alone a dark, twisty tale of the sea featuring more than a dozen of their songs.
But nearly a decade ago, a young theater producer from south Charlotte believed one of their albums could support such a venture.
Eventually, he connected with the Grammy-nominated folk-rock band. He got one of his buddies to join him as producer. Later, a Tony-winning actor, a big-time Broadway director and the Oscar-nominated writer of “Gladiator” also came on board.
They called their show “Swept Away.”
Inspired by true events, the story centers on an ill-fated 19th century New England whaling ship swamped by a strong storm. The few survivors, adrift at sea without food or water, confront a terrible choice on how to stay alive, then face the consequences of their desperate actions.
Through a series of coincidences, setbacks and plain old luck, the musical held its much-delayed world premiere last year in California. The show got another big boost on Wednesday, when a Washington, D.C., theater announced it would play there this fall.
In exclusive interviews with The Charlotte Observer, singer-songwriter Scott Avett, and producers Matthew Masten and Sean Hudock, provide an insider’s look at the creation of “Swept Away” and dish on what comes next.
The Avett Brothers on the road
In the early 2000s, brothers Scott and Seth Avett were starting to make a name for themselves with their eponymous band from Concord, just outside Charlotte.
Piled in a van and driving from gig to gig, there always was plenty of time to read, Scott Avett recalled. On one trip, he grabbed a book his dad had recommended — “The Custom of the Sea.” Jim Avett always liked a good tale about shipwrecks and survival.
The book detailed the harrowing true story of the Mignonette yacht. Bound from England to Australia, it sank in a storm in 1884. How the few survivors managed to escape death at sea would reverberate through the years.
The tale also resonated with Scott Avett. “If I was moved by something, I would quickly apply it to whatever I was creating,” he said.
“Survival stories ... that are not only filled with gruesome and scary things, but also filled with dignity and dedication, you just couldn’t deny it,” Avett said. “They just found their way in my psyche.”
The result: The Avett Brothers’ third studio album, “Mignonette,” released in 2004. Its first track was called “Swept Away.”
“I love dark and redemptive hope,” Avett said. “I love stories that have that because I think it’s truly reflective of life.”
Enter the producer
A decade after the record came out, Masten was reading a story about albums that could make interesting musicals when one in particular caught his eye.
“Mignonette.”
Something clicked. “I just thought that a musical can deal with dark, dark subject matter,” Masten said. “A musical doesn’t have to be, you know, tap dancing and fluffy.”
Broadway has seen plenty of jukebox musicals, biographies of bands or entertainers using songs throughout their careers to tell their story. Think of The Four Seasons’ “Jersey Boys” crooning under a Jersey lamppost. From the start, though, there never was a plan to do a bio on the Avetts.
Masten Googled the band, thinking it a nice coincidence they were from just up the road in Concord.
He grew up in South Charlotte and graduated from Myers Park High in 2005, then from Elon University, before moving to New York to try his hand in the theater world.
On The Avett Brothers’ Facebook page, he spotted the email address for the band’s manager, Dolph Ramseur. Masten dashed off a cold-call email that day in April 2014, basically saying: “Hey, I’m a theater producer in New York. Have you ever thought about turning ‘Mignonette’ into a stage show?”
Minutes later, he got a response.
The pitch
Ramseur loved the idea — if he hadn’t, the idea would’ve died right there — and suggested talking to the band about it.
Like many popular musicians, The Avett Brothers get lots of pitches. “(Masten) was knocking on our door forever. And it came from a genuine place,” Avett said.
In early 2015, Masten was hanging out at a Super Bowl party when he mentioned the project to his buddy, Hudock, an actor and producer in New York. By the time Masten took Hudock to his first Avett Brothers concert that year, the two were eager to partner on the musical.
Masten and Hudock formed a production company, Knightswood, named for the Charlotte street where Masten grew up.
There was lots to do.
“I was very depressed,” Hudock, 37, said. “For a long time, there were a lot of no’s. And we don’t come from money. We had to raise all the money ourselves and work day jobs on the side.”
Hudock temps at a financial firm, and Masten, 36, also helps out other producers.
Chatting in a New York City coffee shop in mid-2017, Masten and Hudock thought John Logan would make an ideal writer for the show. They were impressed by his Victorian-era Showtime horror series “Penny Dreadful,” where “he wasn’t afraid to go dark and has a deftness with historical fiction,” Masten said.
But Logan isn’t someone you reach out to on a whim.
His many writing credits include Oscar nominations for “Gladiator,” Martin Scorsese’s “The Aviator” and “Hugo.” The James Bond film “Skyfall” also sits atop his resume, as does a Tony win for his play “Red” and a Tony nomination for writing “Moulin Rouge!” the musical.
A few years before that coffee shop chat, Masten had read stage directions for a play of Logan’s in L.A., and still had his email address from an old contact sheet. “I never in a million years thought he’d respond,” Masten said. Nevertheless, they shot him a note around 7 that night. The next morning, they got their answer.
Despite having no clue who Masten was, and knowing his agent wouldn’t like him responding to an email out of the blue, Logan loved the idea. But he had one condition.
Putting it together
Logan wanted access to the band’s entire catalog, not just “Mignonette.” That way he could broaden the characters and flesh out the story.
He explained his thinking on ”The Road to Now” podcast in January 2022, co-hosted by Avett band member Bob Crawford. “I didn’t want to tell the historical story of the ‘Mignonette.’ I thought it was too constricting,” Logan said. “But I love the idea of four men in a lifeboat against impossible circumstances.”
He printed the lyrics to every Avett Brothers song, trying to puzzle out which ones could best help tell the story.
“My inspirations for the show were The Avett Brothers, Herman Melville and Joseph Conrad. It aspires to that emotionally,” Logan said. “As I narrowed the song list down, the spine of the plot sort of came together. And then I pitched my heart out to the Avett Brothers” by early 2018.
They said yes.
Changes along the way
To Scott Avett, the entire process felt like an easy collaboration, even as their songs were re-contextualized and repurposed.
“The whole thing is about not fooling ourselves into thinking we need to be in control of every little thing, that we always know best. It’s so silly,” Avett said. “It works very well when we create and share.”
Logan eventually settled on the songs he wanted to use. Seth Avett also wrote a new one for the show, “Lord, Lay Your Hand On My Shoulder,” a prayer sung during a mash-up of “Ain’t No Man.”
Shaping the show
The characters came into focus, too, including the four leads: the veteran sea captain, his first mate, a young adventure-seeker and his protective older brother.
Prolific Broadway director Michael Mayer, a 2007 Tony winner for “Spring Awakening,” came on board, as did actor John Gallagher Jr., for the role of ship’s mate. He, too, had won a Tony for “Spring Awakening,” as best supporting actor.
Masten and Hudock continued to seek out investors, and Charlotte’s Blumenthal Performing Arts was among the early ones. Billionaire Gigi Pritzker signed on as a co-lead producer through her Madison Wells Live company.
The creative team also worked on costumes, sets, orchestrations, publicity and all the elements it takes to birth a musical.
Avett was amazed at how many people now had a hand in the show.
“That’s one of the most emotional things for me, to see other people put care into something that was born out of where it was born from,” he said. “It’s revealing and very humbling, and just reminds me how big and how little I am.”
Finally, “Swept Away” was ready to hold its world premiere at the nonprofit Berkeley Repertory Theatre in northern California in the summer of 2020.
COVID strikes
Just as the cast prepped to go into rehearsal, COVID hit.
The show was postponed multiple times over the next year and a half. Hudock and Masten used the break to hone their strategy for introducing the musical to Avett Brothers and theater fans alike.
“From the very beginning, we always wanted to create something that people hadn’t seen before,” Masten said.
“The show has the potential to be a great word-of-mouth show, but it will always be a tricky sell,” he said.
Curtain up
Finally, the musical premiered at Berkeley Rep in January 2022.
Before the curtain rose, Hudock looked at Masten. The moment they had worked on for so long had arrived at last.
“There was this amazing electricity in the room,” Hudock said. “To hear the fans’ response. ... They were deeply connected to the music. Having spent so much of my life in theater, I have never experienced that kind of frenzy.”
Masten saw a couple sitting in front of them, obvious Avett fans, where the man would lean over to the woman and say the title of every song. As the show progressed, their attention focused less on the songs and more on the story.
Avett likened the musical’s debut to releasing a new album: “It’s just being excited about getting this out and letting the world hear it.”
Extensions and reactions
The show proved to be a popular draw, especially with fans of the band who regularly packed the theater.
Masten, Hudock and the cast stayed at a Residence Inn near Berkeley Rep. They saw so many people check in wearing Avett Brothers hats and T-shirts that it looked like a convention was in town.
This tweet was typical of the California vibe: “800 miles to see @SweptAwayFans tonight at Berkeley Rep! Lifelong @theavettbros fans. Can’t wait!”
People traveled to Berkeley Rep from 49 states for the show, Hudock said. “Swept Away” was extended three times before finally closing last March.
The producers were already plotting their next move.
A capital showing
Masten and Hudock were eager to bring the play to Washington’s Arena Stage, a well-known regional theater powerhouse. It helped launch 22 shows — including “Dear Evan Hansen” and “Next to Normal” — toward Broadway runs.
And it’s an easy drive for Avett Brothers fans from the Carolinas and other East Coast locales.
As Arena Stage considered adding the show to its lineup, Artistic Director Molly Smith caught an Avett Brothers show in Brooklyn, New York, with Hudock and Masten last fall. She left impressed.
“(Their music) has this wonderful combination of radical spiritualism. Because it’s all about who we are as human beings,” Smith said. “And the complexity about being a human being and screwing up and apologizing and forgiving oneself.”
Those themes resonate throughout “Swept Away,” how tragic mistakes can lead to forgiveness. And that’s what makes the Avetts’ music right for the show, she said.
“Swept Away” is set to run from Nov. 25 through Dec. 30 at Arena Stage.
What’s next for ‘Swept Away’?
Plays and musicals are hardly static creatures.
Songs are cut or added, dialogue is tweaked, lighting is readjusted. That tinkering by the creative team occurs right up until opening night. “Swept Away” is no different.
In fact, the Avetts are rewriting verses for one song and adding new lyrics for another.
“People always kind of joke about these jukebox musicals and how tacky they are and the songs don’t really fit,” Masten said. “We’re especially lucky to have these guys who are actively writing.”
So what’ll they do after D.C.?
Where they want to go next is no surprise: “We’re really trying to get to Broadway,” Hudock said, ideally in spring 2024.
For Broadway to beckon for any show, there needs to be a certain alchemy between the piece itself, the audience, the zeitgeist and the creative team, Smith said. And, she added, the kind of producers like Masten and Hudock who are capable of carrying a show on their backs to New York.
Even if they make it to Broadway, Masten and Hudock know full well that most shows there lose money.
But they maintain faith in “Swept Away” and The Avett Brothers, citing the enthusiastic response in Berkeley, with the extensions of its run and fans returning multiple times.
Whatever happens, Scott Avett remains proud of “Swept Away.”
“All you can do is make your best stuff and live your life,” Avett said, speaking in the months before the D.C. announcement. “There’s been a very natural evolution and growth of this piece of work from lots of people.”
Masten and Hudock agreed.
“Anyone involved in something like this, you know, you gotta be a little crazy,” Masten said. “And you’ve got to really believe in it.
“We’ve been working on this for so many years. And it’s worth it because we believe in it as much as we do.”
How to see ‘Swept Away’
“Swept Away” at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., runs from Nov. 25-Dec. 30. Season subscription tickets for Arena Stage are on sale now; single show tickets for “Swept Away” are expected to go on sale in June. More details: arenastage.org
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