Meet Will Butler, the singer-songwriter who makes Broadway’s ‘Stereophonic’ rock
By MARK KENNEDY
AP Entertainment Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — The assignment was daunting: Write a song for an onstage moment of transcendence. Make it kind of funny and exciting and for a five-piece band. And, oh, it must plausibly be a rock hit in 1976. That was the job facing singer-songwriter Will Butler and the music arrangers for just one of the songs that stud the Tony Award-nominated play “Stereophonic,” a leading contender at the Tony Awards on Sunday. The music that accompanies the drama includes full-on rockers like “Masquerade” and “Drive” but also fragments and demos as the band reworks tunes.