The Inspiration
It all started with a dream…
In the winter of 2011, my friend Bill invited me to a concert at the 6th and I synagogue in Washington, DC. As we boarded the metro, I still didn’t know the artist or the album. It turned out to be Anaïs Mitchell’s tour of the studio album of Hadestown (now a Tony award winning Broadway musical). The show changed my song writing life and we walked away from the show dreaming of creating a folk opera of our own. Throughout the rest of the night we traded ideas of stories worthy of such an effort. From the excitement of our late night conversations we now don’t remember who said it first but the story of The Exorcist came up - a book, screenplay, and movie of local significance to the Washington, DC area and, as it turned out, the neighborhood we live in. I started talking to local musicians and tried to get the project started but just as many grandiose ideas go the way of dreams, so did our project.
Fast forward 10 years….
In the spring of 2021, I was invited to be the fall artist in residence for the Brentwood Arts Exchange Listening Room series. The expectation was to perform new original work at the finale show. After pondering what I wanted to do with my time, I settled on a crazy idea: it was time to dig up an old dream and make it a reality.
The Project
Writing a large scale musical work takes time and the ability to be prolific, neither of which I had or am. The series started in September and the finale show was scheduled for December 17th. As a songwriter, I create painfully slowly and I knew that I wouldn’t finish enough on my own to make it understandable and worthwhile for the audience. Luckily, one of my loves (and I’ve been told superpowers) as a musician is collaboration and after some thought I decided to create a songwriter’s workshop around the deferred dream and to invite some of my local crushes of musicians. I reached out to a number of DMV songwriters, pitched the project, jumped for joy when they said “yes,” and put my head down to work.
The first part of the workshop was to create the characters. With the help of Will McKindley-Ward (the priest in our story) we narrowed down our cast to 8 archetypes of characters for our story: boy, demon, mother, aunt, priest, psychologist, reporter, and friend. I wrote 8 writing prompts, sent them to the writers, asked them to create “sketches” and send them back to me. I was floored by what they sent back.
Over the course of 3 months we wrote, edited, and rehearsed 10 original pieces of music and on December 17th we presented “The Haunted Boy - Chapter 1: The Characters” to a sold out crowd at the Brentwood Arts Exchange. It was a magical night. The hair on my arms and the back of my neck still stands up when I think about it. From the first to last note the excitement of the artists and audience was palpable and at the conclusion of the concert each person I talked to asked versions of the following question: when are you finishing the rest of the story and how do I get a ticket?
The Story
In the months following the December 17th performance, I worked with Will McKindley-Ward (the priest), Margaret Wasaff (the mother), and Steve Kolowich (the psychologist) to take our characters and to weave a narrative arc for our story. To be clear, The Haunted Boy is not a retelling through music of William Peter Blatty’s famous book and movie The Exorcist. Instead, our story goes back to the Cottage City, Maryland boy and family from which Blatty took his inspiration for his book and then screenplay. Our concept album follows the path of Roland - a boy gone “strange” whose mother, local priest, and psychologist decide to put through the formal Catholic rite of exorcism. The result in our story is somehow more human than horror.
From February to November of 2022, the Haunted Boy project wrote, edited, and rehearsed a full version of our tale. We debuted a semi-staged production of 23 provoctive songs in two haunting acts at Joe’s Movement Emporium in Mount Rainier, MD (a stone’s throw from the origin of our tale). The show was a surprise hit and we sold out nearly every show.
Since then we have taken our rock opera to the studio and have begun work on recording it in an effort to capture the spirit and energy of the live shows.
We hope you will consider being part of that process by donating to our valiant efforts (click on the “Album Fundraiser” button above.
-Tom Liddle