I’m in the sprawling lobby of the New York City’s Signature Theater looking for singer-songwriter Shaina Taub. “Can we meet there?” Taub had suggested by email. “I have eight shows a week, but I’m free from 5 to 6:30 every evening.”
Taub’s not having a diva moment. She’s really that busy. The 27-year-old is currently performing alongside the renowned clowning duo Bill Irwin and David Shiner in a modern take on old vaudeville routines called Old Hats—a show she also composed. She’s also preparing for the release of an album of her own music called Visitors, which she’ll celebrate with a concert at Joe’s Pub in March. On top of that, Taub is busy composing music for an adaptation of Twelfth Night, which will be performed as part of a summer series produced by the Public Theater.
It’s clear that Taub’s free time—an hour and a half each evening—means a great deal to her.
Taub finally appears, moving in a purposeful but unhurried way toward me. Echoes of surrounding conversations bounce off the walls, blending with jazz music playing over the loudspeakers.
“This is the only time I have to eat,” she explains, cradling a slice of kale pizza as she settles in at the table beside me. She barely looks at her food, which will end up mostly ignored during our conversation. We lean in to hear one another over the din.
When asked about how she manages to move back and forth between theater and pop music, she smiles. There’s nothing mysterious about her creative process.
“A lot of people romanticize creativity,” she says. “I used to feel that way when I was younger. When I was in piano lessons learning Bach Inventions, the beauty of the intricacies and the math of it, I was still in a place where I wasn’t fathoming that music was made by people. To me it felt like music was made by gods.”
But for Taub, the process of songwriting feels anything but god-like.
“I really believe in creativity as a habit and a discipline and a practice,” she says. “There’s a book by Twyla Tharp called The Creative Habit that’s been a sort of central text for me since just after college. You have to sit down and write every day, or as close to every day as you can.”
Even putting in the hours doesn’t guarantee that you’re going to create something memorable. Taub says every song isn’t a homerun.
“It requires hard work and trial and error, and you fail a lot more than you succeed,” she says. “For every song I have on Visitors there are at least four songs that I’ve rejected. No one knocks it out of the park every time.”
But the songs that ended up on her upcoming album seem effortless, more like a casual conversation. In “O Luck Outrageous,” Taub sings, “There’s an old cathedral on Second Avenue… I walk by it and feel a heavy lightness rising in my shoes.”
“Heavy lightness” is an apt description of the interplay Taub creates between music and lyrics.
“I love the tension between light and dark,” she reveals. “When the very silly and the very serious are rubbing up against each other in close proximity, that’s when you really get to the truth, because the human experience is such a mixture of light and dark. Music and lyrics can portray that so effectively.”
She says it reminds her of Irwin and Shiner, her co-stars in Old Hats, and how their silliness often has something serious at the core.
“They’re masters of comedy,” she explains, “but they’re taking on the darkness and sadness of human experience—and it’s so funny because we all relate to it.”
Taub draws from many disparate elements to create an exciting and unique sound. Of course she mentioned Stephen Sondheim, whose musicals like Sweeney Todd and Into the Woods have become a touchstone for many people who write for the theater. But she also cites such varied influences as Stevie Wonder, Laura Nyro, Paul Simon, and Lauryn Hill.
“A good song is a good song,” she says. “The things I love most about Sondheim lyrics are not so different from what I love about Joni Mitchell lyrics. Telling stories through music transcends any genre. My favorite songwriters are very theatrical.”
But Taub isn’t just interested in artsy songs. She also looks back fondly at what she calls a “golden age of pop.”
“You had Backstreet Boys, Destiny’s Child, Boyz II Men,” she says. “The vocals were just so good. And those harmonies! When I first heard the Backstreet Boys, I remember asking my father, who are these women? I thought they sounded so beautiful.”
The time has flown by, and Taub has to get backstage for the evening performance. But she has more to add about her love of vocals and harmonizing—the reason, she says, that she enjoys writing for theater in the first place.
“I love the sound and the energy of a group of voices harmonizing,” she says. “There’s nothing like the raw joy of people singing together.
That’s one of music’s greatest powers, bringing people together.”
Old Hats opens at Signature Theater on February 18.
Photos: Lauren Kallen