Sometimes a few beautiful lines from a song’s chorus can be transformed into something newly beautiful. The trick is to see its potential.
Michael Cerveris saw that potential in just a few lines of the song “Pony Girl.” The actor, singer, musician and songwriter who currently stars in the Tony winning musical Fun Home, which earned him his second Tony Award, fell in love with just one chorus of the song that he sings in the show as a brief lullaby. Cerveris, who TV audiences also know from The Good Wife, plays family patriarch, Bruce Bechdel. From appearances, Bruce is impeccable. He runs a funeral home from the family’s grand Victorian mansion, which he has restored with utmost care and detail. He also teaches high school English. Yet, he keeps many secrets which have profound consequences on him and his family.
In one poignant moment Bruce brings his three kids from their rural Pennsylvania home to sleep over in New York City. He kisses his daughter goodnight before departing into the night. “It’s one of my favorite moments in the show that is sweet and sad at the same time,” says Cerveris. He was intrigued by the very short “Pony Girl” tune that he sings to his daughter during the scene. The only lyrics are:
“Pony girl ride, ride away
I knew you’d break my heart someday
Some folks get the call to go
Some folks are bound to stay
Oh ride, ride, ride away
Ride, ride away.”
Ever curious Cerveris would ask, where does the song come from? A serious musician who plays and records with his band Loose Cattle, Cerveris thought maybe the tune was an old folk song. “Even just the little chorus sounds like it must be some old lullaby,” he says. Ultimately he learned that Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron, Fun Home‘s composer and lyricist had written an entire song. However, before he was cast, they winnowed it down to this little piece. Just that chorus remained. “I said, ‘I’d love to hear the whole thing,'” explains Cerveris. “They replied, ‘well there’s not a lot to it, but here’s what we have.'”
When Cerveris heard the full version of “Pony Girl,” the song evoked Western prairie images. “That is completely our band,” he says. “I sat down with my guitar one night and worked up a version.” He brought the arrangement to Kimberly Kaye, Cerveris’ co-lead singer with Loose Cattle. Working with the band they turned it into a full-fledged waltzing cowboy lullaby. “It’s a really sincere song,” he shares. “There’s nothing ironic about our country folk stylings. It’s music that I grew up listening to.”
In addition to the digital version, Loose Cattle released “Pony Girl” on vinyl 45. The 45 cover sleeve features an original drawing by Fun Home graphic memoirist Alison Bechdel. The vinyl’s B side is a cover of the New Orleans traditional tune, St. James Infirmary. “It’s sung by Kimberly, who is fantastic singer,” says Cerveris. “She and I are the Johnny [Cash] and June [Carter Cash] of the band.”
Before one of his Fun Home performances, Cerveris talked to Parade and shared more.
Watch the “Pony Girl” video below.
Do you see “Pony Girl” differently now that it’s had this whole other life?
I do. We phrased it a little differently in our Loose Cattle version. It’s fleshed the whole song out for me. In the show you get the few lines. But spending more time with the full song and giving it a different setting has underscored the dual story that it’s telling. As parents you expect that your children will grow up, go away and move on in their lives. As children you understand on some level that your parents won’t always be there and will go away sometimes too.
It’s ultimately a pretty sad ditty. But it works the way a lot of nursery rhymes do. When you really sit down to look at them they are child-like settings of profound adult wisdom. Bruce is torn between the two lives that he’s struggling to live as one. At these moments they are in direct contradiction. That’s what the song is about. On the one hand, it’s about longing for that ideal, sweet togetherness of singing somebody to sleep and also knowing that it’s not permanent.
Fun Home is your 10th Broadway show. As an actor, you’re thriving. What does playing music give you?
I sometimes see my acting life as my day job. Because I’ve never looked to music to make a living, I’m able to do it with relatively few compromises. I grew up playing music and acting in equal measure. My father is a classical pianist and music educator. So I grew up with a very specific idea of what it took to call yourself a musician and that was study and training to a degree that I didn’t have. I still don’t really read music. I can kind of read relatively to learn to sing. I can read guitar charts. I guess my training is more practical than theoretical.
I can still be very intimidated by really trained singers that I work with in shows. Or when I’m in a music rehearsal and the talk gets very technical about what’s going on, I just have to say, ‘could you play it for me once, then I’ll hear it.’ As a result though, I’ve really trained my ear so I can pick things up very quickly. I have a real deep sense of styles. That’s how I’ve managed to use my skill set and applied it to different kinds of things.
Who were your music influences?
I’ve played so many different kinds of music over the years. I was Bob Mould‘s guitarist for a while on his tour 1998. The funny thing is that I grew up in West Virginia but really not wanting to listen to country music. Of course, I was growing up there so I wanted to listen to rock and roll. Then I discovered British bands like The Smiths and Joy Division and all the music of that post-punk era. I was really into that for a long time. Two of the bands I really loved growing up were Bob Mould’s band, Hüsker Dü and also The Replacements. I was a huge Replacements fan. [The band’s singer/songwriter] Paul Westerberg is still one of my favorite songwriters.
How did you come to love the kind of music you do?
I got this job in New Orleans working on a movie and decided to drive down [from the Northeast] to be able to take my dog because I was going to be there for a while. I made a couple stops along the way at various places. Then I stopped in Meridian, Mississippi, because I was tired of driving—only to discover that that was the hometown of Jimmie Rodgers, the guy even Dylan points to as the grandfather of folk music. That trip reminded me that my whole growing up was in the South and that I was much more a product of the South than I had thought. I started playing more country music and folk.
And don’t you also have a solo record that recently came out?
My second solo record, Piety, was released in February and is also on vinyl. It’s lushly string orchestrated so it’s not as strictly country as the Loose Cattle stuff. The songs are all originals and they range a bit stylistically. I tell people it’s sort of like if Nick Drake and Elliot Smith wrote a record together and then recorded it in the South, this is what it would be.
This past week, Loose Cattle released their “Pony Girl” video, which is directed by actor and writer Andrew Keenan-Bolger who currently stars in the Broadway musical Tuck Everlasting. The video also features Fun Home cast members Alessandra Baldacchino, Zell Steele Morrow, Gabrielle Pizzolo, Presley Ryan and Oscar Williams.
Watch the video below.
For more information, visit www.loosecattleband.com/pony-girl-45/.
