Garden Girl
A Rock Musical
Press Release Garden Girl is a 50 minute whimsical, comedic rock musical performed at the award winning San Diego Fringe Festival for 5 sold out performances starting June 23rd, 2016.
Story: Lily, an innocent farm girl, is oppressed by her mother whose intention is to protect her and keep her safe. Lily's only friends are her talking vegetables, until one day a weed pops up in the garden and convinces her to escape the farm. On her adventure she meets three people that will change her life forever.
Music: Original music & lyrics by Julianne Eggold. Music collaborators: Angelo Moore of Fishbone, Warren Fitzgerald of Oingo Boingo, Tenacious D, The Vandals.
About the Artist or Company
Writer/Director Julianne Eggold has several film, TV & theatre credits including writing, directing and songwriting for the Emmy nominated TV show, "The Aquabats Super Show!" (creators of Yo Gabba Gabba).
San Diego International Fringe Festival is a project of Contact Arts, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization founded in 2003 along with Actors Alliance of San Diego with the purpose building a network of creativity & communication. Contact Arts & AASD aim to connect ideas with social action through progressive performance & community engaged projects.
@GardenGirlRock #gardengirlrockopera #gardengirlmusica
BACKSTORY
Garden Girl was a baby I had in my brain for a long time. I wanted to mix my love & passion for the energy of live theatre with my love of songwriting, live music, creative writing, complicated dynamics of family & the spirit to overcome, and, of course, Jim Henson inspired puppetry. Mix that all together into a creative soup and you get Garden Girl. What I had no clue about was… how would it all come together? This was in my brain, then made it to the page, then the songs slowly made it to recordings, and this all happened with the help of friends (J. Roldan, R. Hendler, W. Fitzgerald ) over several years. One day I went to a psychic medium in San Diego. I gave my usual “wallowings”, which were the terrible words I’ve said a million times before, “I don’t know what to do next.” I rattled off my creative projects I’ve been wanting to do, “an album of songs”, “maybe some acting”, “do I write a tv show with so-and-so”, “or “do I birth this rock musical called Garden Girl, even though there’s no money in theatre and I have no clue how I’d pull it together? But I really love it and it makes me feel inspired”. The psychic said, “None of those ideas would be wrong, but doing Garden Girl would be important in the way of seeing your vision, from inception to completion, come to life. It will be an important life lesson for you”. She gave me the tiny shred of hope by saying, “It will all come together, whether you believe that or not”.
What that psychic said allowed the tiniest crack of sunlight into my often abusive, cynical brain. The wall of doubt that keeps me from growing as an artist. But with that little crack of light, I called up my friend Matt Thompson who was a writer/actor/director of theatre in San Diego. I mentioned my idea. He said, “You should enter your rock musical into the San Diego Fringe Festival. Why the hell not?” I told him all of the reasons why that would be impossible. “I’m working on a TV show full-time in LA!” “I don’t know any crew I could bring together in San Diego to help!” “I don’t know any actors in San Diego!” etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc. Matt: “Yeeeah, well. Just enter it into the Fringe Festival anyway. You can worry about the rest later.” So I did. It got accepted. And the panic began. But the funny thing is that panic can sometimes be a great motivator. It lights a fire. Being an artist, ‘aint nothin’ like a little panic and a deadline. A sense of, “Oh shit! I have to pull this together!.” The greatest lesson in this endeavor was… it always seems to come together… but not without the help of others. I’m used to doing a lot of artistic projects in solitude, in the disbelief than anyone else will ever care. What I found is that people are incredible, and if you start the ball rolling, often others are excited to roll that ball with you. I’m not sure anyone will ever read this so I mine as well make it a long and detailed account of how my epiphany from this Garden Girl experience will last a lifetime in that I now know I am NEVER alone in what I do.
My dear friend, Jesus Roldan, was the very first one that listened to all of my Garden Girl scratch songs (which are to the right here and are still scratch songs. He read my first draft of Garden Girl. He loved it (whether he really did or not) and gave me 1,000% encouragement to finish it. My mom, Joyce Carter, listened to some songs and read the script and said, “Go for it!” So did my sister, Joelle Kohn. I started dating Warren Fitzgerald and shelved Garden Girl. Years into our relationship I really felt a calling to look at this project again and pulled back out Garden Girl. I asked if he could help to make the songs cooler, as he was an actual paid musician (he was in Oingo Boing and writes all the Vandals songs for chrissakes!) and was kick ass at songwriting & Protools and all. He helped to make a few of the songs sound more beefed out and rich, adding sound effects and various instruments. Thanks Warren. Then I shelved the project due to life and me, and a few years later pulled Garden Girl back out. I asked my friend Bobby Gorofalo to lay vocals down a guitar track on “I Am Jack”. Ross Hendler mixed and mastered my song, “China Doll”. I called my friend, Angelo Moore (frontman of Fishbone) and he took my “Stomp Up Your Voice” song where the main young girl in the story, Lily, meets and old blind Eddie who teaches her to sing out loud and use her voice! Angelo took this song to a new level, recording vocals and multiple saxophone tracks. This song is one of my favorites. Now some of my songs had shape. The story was taking shape, too. So it got accepted into the festival and all of my doubts of how would I EVER get this thing off of the ground started to fall away as I was seeing that others would help get this off the ground with me. Thank you to the people who were there willingly saying YES!
I was working 12-14 hour days in LA on a TV show and driving down to San Diego on the weekends to rehearse with the cast and crew of Garden Girl. I was tired, but it’s amazing how the energy would come back working on Garden Girl. I was playing the role of director. Ross Hendler was my first savior as he came on as Producer. Unpaid, but supported the vision. Ross helped me to bring in Zak Najor, killer drummer of Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe (and formerly of the legendary San Diego band, Greyboy AllStars). Zak read for the part of Eddie, the old blind man that helps Lily on her journey. Zak ultimately couldn’t commit to the show, but brought on Kory Gillis. Kory sang like an angelic powerhouse and nailed the role of Eddie. Brought down the house each night with the song, “Stomp Up Your Voice”. He literally has a singing voice that is out of this universe and we all must buy his music because he is out there doing it today, working as a singer/performer in San Diego. So… hire him! He’s freaking incredible (San Diego reader wrote him up below). And he came with a smile and laughter every time we got together for rehearsals and shows. You just want to hug him constantly, he’s that kind of guy.
Ross asked his dear friend, Sara Bridgman, if she could lend her talents as our head costume designer and so thankful that she said yes. She was there on time at every rehearsal and performance with enthusiasm and ideas and she had some KILLER ideas. I loved her ability to see the characters and get a vibe off of the mood, then base her costuming ideas off of that. Color, lights, skin tone, vibe and personality. She had this uncanny ability to see all of that and bring the characters to life through her costuming magic. This is a skill that I do not possess and am amazed when others can… and she did and we thank her immensely for it!
We lost a dear member, Cindy Scala, who was our makeup/hair artist and shared in leading the choreography and was a dancer at the start. She was there at every rehearsal with a smiling face and great spirit and was so very helpful to the entire production. We were all sad to see her go, but were so grateful for her help and contributions to the show! She was missed.
Emmanuel, Amanda & I jumped into a tiny puppet box and all worked the additional singing vegetable puppets each performance night. How 6’4” Emmanuel and 6’1” me and 5’7” Amanda fit in a 4’x4’ box is still a miracle I have yet to “unpack”, but we did it.
My mom, Joyce Carter, helped me to design and make the puppet box, signs, and little seed bags for the audience to take home to plant in their gardens. Her help was something only a mom could do, infused with love. And she flew all the way out from Idaho to do this and see the show. Love you, mama! My sister, Joelle Kohn, helped immensely by calling and writing local new channels to promote the shows and she made endless press releases and flyers. My sister and mom were there every step of the way supporting Garden Girl and for that I am forever grateful. Ross Hendler made the Playbills. Joyce Hendler let some of the out-of-town actors stay at her house in San Diego. Barbara Whittman, a dear friend and an LA producer of over 100 plays, helped with guidance on press release contacts and reading the script and giving initial feedback. She has been instrumental in wanting to help take Garden Girl to the next level and get a full theatrical run. Bless you, Barbara! Lyle Workman, composer of most every Judd Apatow film, consulted me in how to go about writing the songs and helping to get arrangers. Thank you for you guidance, Lyle!
And then…drum roll…the show opened, and the actors were fabulous, and the people behind the scenes were fantastic. Garden Girl sold out each night of the 5 night run and we even had to, unfortunately, turn people away. Our friends and family came out and supported us. My family, Jim Eggold & Karen Benick drove out from Orange County. My Aunt, Mary Mills, and her sister Meredith supported us. My friends Catalina, Scott Baron (who read the script and contributed a lot of ideas for the Lake Blue scenes), Patrick Thompson, Luke Brookshire, drove up from LA to see the show. Chris Martin, Debbie Fawcett, Dana Chaffee, Brenda & Frank drove down from Seal Beach to support. My brother-in-law, David Kohn and his parents Mark & Teri came in support, along with my nieces and nephews, Toby, Elliot & Charlotte Kohn (Charlotte was the OG Garden Girl on all the flyers, btw). Barbara & Jim Cole, Brock Brown & family, Joyce Hendler, and SO many more people that came to support Garden Girl. We all thank you!
AND THIS is why I wanted to say, through this epic blog, that the original idea of Garden Girl may have come from my brain… but it took each and every one of these amazing and incredibly talented people to bring it to life. And NOBODY EVEN GOT PAID! Each and every one of these people did it for the love of art. For the joy of working together in a creation that we all brought to life, brought all of your incredible talents to, and completed together. And for this, that psychic medium was absolutely right. I would learn a life lesson if I decided to do Garden Girl as my next artistic project. And that lesson is that I can’t do it alone. Garden Girl was a success ONLY because because of each and every one of the above mentioned people, (and because of the people I likely forgot to mention), brought their heart and soul to Garden Garden.
We did this together and we made Garden Girl, and it was AWESOME!
Thank you to all that were a part of it.