Broadway Bound and Beyond: The Course

The Career Foundation Every Working Musician Needs (But Nobody Teaches)

The book is out now. Read it here.

This page is for the course that builds on it, opening to the public in January.

For the musician who can play and wants the calls, the callbacks, and the career that comes with them.

From 26 years on Broadway, including Memphis: The Musical, Ain’t Too Proud, and Cats: The Jellicle Ball.

Three pillars, every time:

Relationships. How trust actually gets built, and why it has nothing to do with networking.

Versatility. Why the musicians who work the most are the ones who can play anything.

Financial resilience. Treating your career like an asset instead of a series of gigs.

Twenty people. ABBA covers. Nobody there to be impressed.

That gig at a Ramada Inn in New Rochelle in 1993 is the reason I have a Broadway career. Not because it was glamorous. It wasn’t. It’s where I met a guitar player named Matt Beck, already deep into the Broadway world, who pulled me aside on a break one night and asked if I’d ever thought about playing musical theater. That conversation got me a bus and truck tour of Footloose. The tour led to my first off-Broadway show, Tick, Tick... Boom!, written by the same guy who wrote Rent. That show is how the drummer at Rent heard my name and called me to sub on Broadway for the first time. And subbing on Rent is how I built the reputation that eventually landed me my first Broadway chair, Memphis: The Musical, in 2009.

None of it started with an audition.

All of it started with a Friday night gig nobody was watching. It’s where I learned the three things nobody teaches you in music school: how relationships actually work in a small industry, why versatility is a career strategy and not a nice-to-have, and how to think about money like you’re running a business instead of chasing a gig.

You already know me from Broadway Drumming 101: the podcast, the interviews, the week to week of life in the pit.

This is different.

The book laid out the foundation.

The course is where I’m turning it into something you can actually work through, module by module, with the tactics the book didn’t have space to unpack.

Here’s exactly what’s inside:

Module 1: The Reality Check. Why talent is only the entry fee, the four questions everyone who actually hires you is asking, and the three pillars this whole course is built on. You rate yourself honestly on all three before you know which one is your biggest gap.

Module 2: The Trust Economy. How relationships actually get built in a small industry, the full story of the Ramada Inn gig that led to my entire Broadway career, and exactly what to say, and never say, when you reach out to someone you don’t know yet.

Module 3: Reputation. What people say about you when you’re not there to hear it, why being a good hang matters more than being the most talented player in the building, and how to recover professionally when something goes wrong, because it will.

Module 4: Versatility as a Career Strategy. A genre by genre breakdown of what Broadway actually demands, funk, jazz, rock, Afro-Cuban, and more, plus a concrete way to close whichever gap is costing you work right now.

Module 5: Financial Resilience. How to structure your business, build a six-month runway, and run every gig decision through the same rule of three I use myself: the money, the people, and the music.

Module 6: Putting It All Together. How the three pillars compound instead of working alone, and a specific 90-day action plan you build yourself: one relationship, one genre, one financial move, each one dated on your calendar.

Every module comes with its own worksheet: a self-assessment, a trust audit, a relationship plan, a versatility plan, a financial resilience plan. By the end, you’re not just informed. You walk out with an actual plan.

If you’ve read the book, this is the deeper layer. If you haven’t, start with the book first.

More coming soon, including a first look at the course before it opens. Glad to have you here.

Clayton

Still reading? Then you’re not subscribed yet.

The course opens to the public in January. If you’ve made it this far without hitting subscribe, this is the moment.

Free gets you every post in this section: the relationships, the versatility, the money conversations, all of it.

Paid gets you the Real-World Training posts, the full tactical breakdowns that go past the free version, plus the chance to enroll in the course before it opens to the public.

Either way, subscribing is the only way in. There’s no other list.

Subscribe now

Already read the book and want the next layer before the course opens? The Broadway Sub Playbook picks up where the book leaves off, at signaturebrandworks.com.

Subscribe now