Inside the Music with How to Dance in Ohio writing duo Jacob Yandura and Rebekah Greer Melocik

Jacob Yandura and Rebekah Green Melocik are the talented writing duo behind the musical How to Dance in Ohio, which has taken Broadway by storm this year. We were lucky enough to catch up Jacob and Rebekah to discuss how they got started in music, the inception of How to Dance in Ohio, their songwriting process, and more.

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Interview with Jacob Yandura and Rebekah Greer Melocik

Sheet Music Direct ("S"): First off, can you both tell us your first experiences with music as children?

Jacob ("J"): So, I started playing piano when I was six years old, and my mom signed me up for piano lessons. I was actually really against it at first. I was more into visual arts and theater at the time - I wanted to, you know, create theater in the basement. All I asked for for Christmas were for curtains and flashlights, and a fog machine, which I never got. But I always heard music in my head, and so once I took that first piano lesson, I was hooked. And once I started to learn how to notate, note values and the music theory things, I started writing my own music. And I had wonderful piano teachers in Ohio that really encouraged me to have that part of the lesson. And, you know, not just learning how to play, but how to write. And then wonderful, wonderful choir teachers in my middle school and high school years that encouraged me to submit my compositions for review and competitions. And that kind of led me down the path to where I am today. If it weren't for those teachers, I probably wouldn’t have had the connections built for me to get to where I am. So I'm so grateful for them.

S: That's fantastic. And yourself, Rebekah?

Rebekah ("R"): Jacob, you didn't answer your own question correctly, because the answer to when Jacob got into music, his mom tells a story about when she was pregnant. He was always kicking around when they were singing in church, and she was like, he's either going to be a musician or a priest.

S: She was right!

J: She was right. She was right.

R: So, I was introduced to music in the womb also. I come from a family of musicians. No one is a professional musician, but my dad plays like a million woodwind instruments, and my mom was a piano teacher when I was little. My sister plays piano, my brother plays drums. We all sang. So it was a very musical household, and we lived deep in the countryside. And so to get to the mall or a movie theater or church or an Italian restaurant, we had to be in the car a lot. And so we listened to musicals and the Beatles. There was music always on, or someone was always making up silly parody songs. It was great. It was a great way to grow up.

S: That's awesome. And can I ask who your musical inspirations were growing up?

R: I think, honestly, I named it already - The Beatles. My mom was such a huge Beatles fan. And it's one of those things where I can't remember half of what I learned in high school, but I know the lyrics to every Beatles song. And as I've gotten older and as I teach music lessons to other people, or even my partner who wanted to learn a little bit about how to play keyboard during lockdown, we just did Beatles songs. I was like, "This is how you learn!"

My grandparents took me to Toronto to see Phantom of the Opera at nine years old. And that's really what made me realize what I wanted to do for the rest of my life."

J: Yeah, I definitely piggyback on the Beatles. Growing up, I also came from not necessarily a family of musicians, but a family that loves music, particularly my grandfather. And he would introduce me to big band and jazz, and theater scores. He and my grandma took me to Toronto to see Phantom of the Opera at nine years old. And that's really also what made me realize what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. My mom was always big into Carly Simon and Carole King, and every Sunday we would make sauce and listen to the Tapestry album together. And then my dad was really into Pink Floyd and Bruce Springsteen and Southside Johnny, and all these different rock bands. So I got a huge wide range of music culture. When I got older and I met mentors, they're like, "If you want to write musical theater, don't just listen to musical theater. Keep one foot in musical theater, one foot out." And so I've always kind of held that close to heart.

S: Good advice. And can I ask how the How to Dance in Ohio project came about?

J: So, we're both from Ohio, and we were looking for a new project at the time. So I was home one night, and I was in the documentary section on HBO, and I saw the title How to Dance in Ohio, which intrigued me as someone from Ohio. And then I read the synopsis and the first sentence said "In Columbus…" which was my hometown. So I was intrigued even more. And then it said the synopsis, "A group of autistic young adults learn how to transition into adulthood by preparing for a spring formal dance." And around that time, less than a year earlier, my sister had been diagnosed as autistic. She was 19 at the time, very late in life which is very common for young women. And so I immediately went, "I have to watch this!" And in the first five minutes it sang to me because it was so apparent that it was all about human connection, and the how to's of life of, no matter if you're autistic or allistic, we're all learning how to connect. We're all learning how to become an adult. So I thought that was very universal, and, you know, universality sings. So I wrote to Rebekah and our agent, and we started the process. I said, "You guys have to watch this. I think there's something here." That's how it all kind of came about.

R: And I think there was a lot of good luck and goodwill with the project at all times. In musical theater especially, you get a lot of no's. And this show got a surprising amount of yes's, which I think just speaks to, like Jacob said, the personal connection that so many people had to the story, which really made it a joy to write.

In musical theater especially, you get a lot of no's. And this show got a surprising amount of yes's, which I think just speaks to...the personal connection that so many people had to the story."

S: That's fantastic. And is there a specific moment in the show that you're particularly proud of, or a musical moment you personally love?

R: I like both of Marideth's songs. I love "Unlikely Animals" and "Drift." I feel deeply, personally connected to "Unlikely Animals." Half my family lives in Australia, and so I go there all the time, and I like that both songs are sung by a shy character. I have a soft spot in my heart for shy people in general. And with "Drift" it was just such a fun love song to write because everything that character does is a little indirect. Even her crushing so hard on someone, it has to be like 90%, not about the crush and then just comes in a little. How about you, Jacob?

J: I have two favorites. One is "So Much in Common" That song was just fun to write from beginning to end because we could really utilize counterpoint. There's a line in the show and a saying in general that if you meet one autistic person, you've only met one autistic person. And so I wanted to illustrate that musically by having seven different themes for the seven different characters and their own individual theme. But the universal part of it is we're all going through life together. We're all going through the same thing, but we're all having different experiences. And so I thought counterpoint was such an interesting way to sort of illustrate that. So that was super fun. And also, the harmonies and hearing those harmonies sung by the seven for the first time was just thrilling. Then I think another favorite musical moment in the show is "Reincarnation" for me. That's a song that always meant so much to us and I think to the company. As things had to shift and change, it was always a moment that I think everyone wanted to make sure was right. It's such a beautiful message and it's actually one of my favorite lyrics that Rebekah has written.

S: Well, that leads nicely onto my next question which is about the songwriting process. How does it typically work? What's the flow?

R: So Jacob and I've been writing together for 14 years now, I think. So it's a long partnership and everything is very fluid for us. We're also like best friends and family and we live two blocks apart. So there's lots of like, middle of the night, "Hey, what do you think about this?" Or I wake up in the morning and there's a fully realized song. But I think the through line for us writing is that we love taking walks, and we love taking our work on the go. Again, I grew up learning music, and Jacob is great with story, so everything is very smooshed together and happening at the same time.

J: And I want to call it a skill or process that we developed during the pandemic because we couldn't be together, but we still found a way. I think our songwriting process is very tag team, very back and forth. When we first started out, Rebekah would have full lyrics and send that to me. And still sometimes there are full lyrics. But we really talk about the conflict first. What's happening in the scene, all the sort of Aristotle poetics - what does the character want? What's standing in its way? What are the stakes? And then we find out what makes this scene sing or this character sing. And then sometimes Rebekah will come up with a verse or a chorus and then she'll send that to me, and then I'll go to the piano and start figuring out a soundscape for it. And then based on that Rebekah will change and add to it, and it's very boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, which I love. But then sometimes there's like a new opening number that we were writing that Rebekah fleshed out in full for the project, and I set that. WHat I do love is, whenever it’s lyric first, I always have her make a recording of her speaking the lyric so I can hear where she wants certain emphasis and and just the structure of that. So that's important.

R: I love that Jacob loves to do that. And we like to think that there is very little ego between the two of us. You know, if I send Jacob something and he and his mind goes in a different direction and he's like, "Hey, I think I need two more lines here. And also the second line really isn't pulling its weight." It's like, okay, cool. You know, we do something else. But we really like to do song structure together. I think we both kind of geek out over song structure. So yeah, there's a lot of fluidity.

S: Yeah, that's great.

J: I really get excited and energized by infusing song structure with playwriting and drama. And I think that's why I'm so attached to theater - because it encompasses everything that I love. You know, I love the book writing elements of shows. I love it all. So even though I'm considered the composer, I still want to have my hands in the other elements because I don't know, it's what infuses the music, basically.

I really get excited and energized by infusing song structure with playwriting and drama. And I think that's why I'm so attached to theater - because it encompasses everything that I love."

S: Cool. And you've talked about how this show came about, but do you guys have a dream project where you take another film and adapt it for the stage?

R: I mean, we are not alone in this. So many of us want to take Miss Congeniality to stage, but it's not happening at this moment.

J: It's so funny, as you meet with different studios and share your thoughts about adaptations, you see a little smirk in their face because they're like, "Oh, yeah, that's never going to be available. Never going to happen." And then you're like, “Oh, you've been asked this question before, haven't you?!"

R: But you know we keep looking, you know. We send each other trailers and we're like, "Oh, watch this one." And it's so funny. You know, I really am drawn to a lot of documentaries because I like slice of life stories. So sometimes I'm like, "Rebekah, you guys just adapted a documentary!" But like, real people's stories are so fascinating. So maybe there's a doc out there.

J: And I think what's cool about the documentary form is that it truly lends itself to adaptation. Because documentary and fiction are completely different things, right? Different mediums. Musicals are a different medium. So you can't put the documentary on stage, you know, because documentaries are more about observing versus dramatic structure. So I think we like documentaries because we love the idea, and then we can take the idea and run with something, right? But we're definitely in that process of starting new projects.

S: I can imagine it's an exciting period where you're at that ideation stage and thinking what could work?

R: It's looking back at the blank page, I was kind of surprised. I was thinking is it going to be existentially daunting? But we've been loving it - reading and consuming new stories.

J: Yeah, for the past year we've been in execution land of - how do you make this clear? Really just connecting the puzzle. But right now we're in experimenting mode, and I think that's just been so fun for us being like let's just throw spaghetti at the wall and see what we love, because we did that with How to Dance in Ohio, and that had traction.

S: That's great. And is there any music by other artists or composers that you're enjoying at the moment, either listening to or playing?

J: Oh, I'm obsessed with Jacob Collier. Obsessed with him and his work.

R: I've been listening to The Last Dinner Party this summer; they're this very theatrical girl group.

J: Um, but I will also own it, I've been obsessed with Sabrina Carpenter. It's been the songs of the summer.

S: And do you ever sit down at the piano and play this stuff, kind of almost as a hobby?

J: Oh, yeah. I mean, I definitely have to separate my let's just have fun versus my research mode. I’ve also been listening to a lot of Philip Glass, a lot of different classical composers. John Adams too, as research and inspiration for a new project. I mean, just based on this year, I haven't had time just to play for fun, you know? But now we're getting back to that.

R: It is funny when it's the thing you're doing for work, to take the time out to force yourself to practice other people's songs. Because my favorite thing to do is like change the key just to make my brain be like, "Okay, what is it in C? What is it in F?" I only do the easy keys, haha. But it's fun to see somebody else's chord progression and give yourself a little music brain puzzle and then go back to work.

S: Yeah, absolutely. Is there anything that you're playing at the moment, Rebekah?

R: I tell an embarrassing story that I have a 13 year old piano student who I taught to read chords, and I asked her what pop song she likes. And this is just so like when she's at summer camp, if her friends are like, "I want to sing Sabrina Carpenter," and one of the songs she picked was "Espresso." And then the next week she was really proud of herself, and she was like, "I learned the whole song, can I play it for you?" And I've heard the song, but I hadn't really listened to the lyrics and so as my 13-year-old student is playing and I'm listening, I'm thinking, "Oh, these are very suggestive!" So that was one I learned recently!

J: Another band that I've been obsessed with is a new band called the Scarlet Opera. They're an American band. They've only put out two EPs, or maybe they have three EPs out now, but I want them to put out an album because I think they're so fantastic. They're a bit Queen, a bit Meat Loaf. They're wonderful, super fun to listen to. Oh, and I've been listening to a lot of horror film scores too, recently.

R: What's your favorite, Jacob?

J: Suspiria. I don't know if you've seen that film. It's from the 70s. But the band that did the score is called Goblin. It's pretty cool.

S: Maybe a musical version of that in the future??

J: Right, could you imagine?!

S: Okay, I have one final question, which is do you have any advice for aspiring songwriters or musicians out there?

R: Mine's really easy. Just tenacity. Like, the longer that we do this, the more I think you just have to kind of outlive everyone. Not like, through your mortal life, but just as an artist. Like people will give up because it's hard, or they'll get other interests. So just don't give up. Just keep doing it.

J: I think for me it's learn as much as you can. There are a lot of songwriters out there that don't know how to notate. Learn as much about music theory as you can. Learn as much about music production as you can learn. You know, even if it's just basic knowledge of logic or GarageBand. You know, you don't have to hire somebody to take your lead sheet or a recording of your song and then notate it for you. I have a lot of students that I've been working with who get so frustrated that they can't do it, you know. So I think just always be a student, and I apply this to myself too. With our cast album, if I didn't teach myself Logic over the pandemic, I would have been lost in those studio sessions.

S: Well that's great advice from both of you, thank you. And thanks so much for your time today!

J: Thanks so much!

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