Andrew Philip Herron, composer, lyricist, arranger, and writer, composed and co-wrote the musicals Bonnie and Clyde; the Two Person, Six Gun Musical and The Top, arranged the revue Babes in Hollywood, lyricized the show The Naked Family, underscored plays, and served as music director for the venerable Theatre Strike Force improv troupe.  His work has been produced and read at such theatres as The Culture Project at 45 Bleecker, Blue Heron Arts Center (off-Broadway), Village Theatre (Seattle), Jedlicka Performing Arts Center (Chicago), Hillbarn Theatre (San Francisco Bay), ART Station (Atlanta), Little Theatre of the Rockies (Colorado), Arundel Barn Playhouse (Maine), the Warner Theatre (Connecticut), Innovation Theatre Works (Oregon), Bell Tower Theatre (Iowa), Chestnut Fine Arts Center (Kansas), Middletown Lyric Theatre (Ohio), the Harwich Junior Theatre (Cape Cod), Northern Light Theatre (Edmonton), The Winter Park Playhouse and Constans Theatre (Florida), Center Stage (Mississippi), and the Big Stinkin’ International Improv & Sketch Comedy Festival (Austin).

In other words, he has never had a show on Broadway.

I grew up in a theater.  My then-single mother made ends meet by working nights at a local college choreographing musicals.  Consequently, I spent childhood nights romping around a cozy auditorium while undergrads with deep southern accents crooned Rodgers and Hammerstein.

Yet I survived.

Meanwhile, a kind grandmother decided that my talent for drawing lines on paper and scrawling notes the size of Miami qualified me as a composer.  She let me bang on her piano and proudly showed the results to whatever tolerant relatives would listen.

Yet they survived.

Predictably, by High School, I was an unusual kid.  One day my collaborator and I got the notion that we might cure this social dysfunction by writing musicals of our own and snookering our beloved High School speech coach into staging them.  It worked - twice - and we got written up glowingly in our local papers.  It was heaven.  We even let an imaginative classmate think we were gay, because it seemed to befit legit show-writers.  (If that doesn’t impress you, bear in mind, we lived in the Bible Belt.)

By the time we graduated from college, I had enough ambition to make Caesar cower.

So, with yet a third brave collaborator, we packed our ambitions in a Ryder and shipped them to New York.  There, I reasoned, we’d all write theatrical masterpieces like our field’s heroes:

Rodgers and Hammerstein – Pretty shows about dumb people,
Prince and Sondheim – Brilliant shows about neurotic people,
Bock and Harnick – Dear shows about the Jewish people,
Kander and Ebb – Sexy shows about evil people,
Jerry Herman – Cheerful shows about menopausal people,
Adler & Ross – Peppy shows made by George Abbott’s people,
 
And of course, after hitting New York, we acquired more heroes:
 
Jason Robert Brown – Groovy shows about talkative people,
David Yazbek – Catchy shows about crass people,
Michael John LaChuisa – Intelligent shows that frustrate people,
Yeston & Stone – Tuneful shows about sinking people,
Adam Guettel – Vocals that kill people,
Yorkey and Kitt – Rockin’ shows about psychotic people,
 
And our own niche, we reasoned:

Low-budget shows with just three or four people. 
 
(How could cheap producers resist?)
 
To make a long story short, cheap producers resisted.  Happily, though, plenty of others said yes.  The end result?  Collaborator Two now composes on the West Coast, and Collaborator One went on to a smashing solo career.
 
As a computer systems engineer.
 
What happened?  Well, a lot.  I worked jobs in everything from publishing to banking, developed a passion for humorous writing, and finally got my musicals up at multiple regional theatres.  I logged thousands of miles traveling to whatever brave troupes would mount my work.  I learned to accept my southernness, my goyishness, and my lack of Marxist political orientation (all demerits in the arts).  More importantly, I learned the following truths:
 
1. To accomplish anything interesting in life, we must first have the courage to suck.
2. The one thing you never reasonably can expect someone in the arts to understand is their own lack of taste.
3. Jazz musicians are both compassionate hit-men and grave diggers - first they kill your tune, then they kindly bury it.
4. Wretched people in drama often are wretched because of unfair circumstances; wretched people in life usually are wretched because they’re wretched.
5. There’s nothing really wrong with coveting your neighbor’s ass; just don’t try grabbing it.
6. It’s the rest of the world that’s nuts; I’m just eccentric.
7. Eccentricity is only sexy in the successful.
 
There are times, I must admit, when I've wondered if I might have been happier in a simpler career like railroad engineering (don’t ask), mini-golf-course entrepreneurship (really, don’t ask), or trust fund loafing (self explanatory).  That said, my current life in Florida (corporate marketing) has been deeply rewarding.  But of course, that’s just for now; in the future someday, this bio inevitably will read:

“Andrew Philip Herron is the Broadway composer, best-selling novelist, Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist, and billionaire investor who penned the number one country hit, ‘You Really Shouldn’t Grow That There.’  He has won the Tony, the Oscar, the Nobel Peace Prize, and the benediction of every Pope since success convinced him he was God's favorite.  He now resides again in the Florida of his youth, where the quality of his work has declined precipitously but where he happily devotes his days to his model railroad and his mini-golf course, which were probably his true callings before easy, subsidized access to the arts ruined him.”

Meanwhile, thanks always for visiting the site.