A month ago, Cats: The Jellicle Ball played its final show at the Broadhurst. Eight shows a week, gone. We recorded the cast album before closing during several sessions at Power Station at BerkleeNYC. There wasn’t even a countdown to something unfinished. Just a closing notice, a last show, and nothing on the calendar with my name on it.
I wrote about that moment a few weeks back, what actually happens the day a Broadway show closes, and it traveled further than I expected, including a mention in The Hollywood Reporter’s coverage of the closing itself. Apparently, a lot more people than I thought were interested in what happens when a show like Cats: The Jellicle Ball gets its closing notice, and what a musician does the day after the marquee comes down.
I remember exactly how it went after Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations closed in January of 2022. The contractor suggested we start making calls to our colleagues and get back into subbing. I was still furious about how that show had gone, the COVID protocols included, and I had zero interest in asking my colleagues to sub for me. I’d already started this platform by then and was looking forward to doing other things. I never went back to subbing on that show.
I decided to move differently in 2022 than I had the last few times a show closed. I kept the club dates going, and instead of waiting on the industry to remember me, I stayed inside the ecosystem by interviewing almost everyone who was on a Broadway show, or had ever been on one. I started building something different for myself instead of chasing the next chair.
That building started with books, getting everything out of my head and into my computer instead of just letting it sit there, and publishing what came out of that. Here’s where it’s landed:
The free roadmap, How to Land a Gig on Broadway, is up at broadwayboundbook.com/roadmap, the same four-step system built around the idea that Broadway isn’t a meritocracy, it’s a trust economy. The Broadway Sub Playbook, the deeper, tactical breakdown of what it actually takes to sub on Broadway, is still up at signaturebrandworks.com for $7.99.
The book, Broadway Bound and Beyond, is still selling on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble, and I’m proud of the numbers it’s been putting up. If you’ve picked up a copy, thank you, and if not, you can grab it directly at broadwayboundbook.com. And if you’ve purchased anything from the merchandise at signaturebrandworks.com, there’s a lot of new gear up there now. A few items are almost sold out.
None of that stopped because a show closed. It started because one did, back in 2022. And that same decision, build instead of chase, is what led to the newest thing I’ve built: Broadway Bound and Beyond: The Course.
Relationships, versatility, financial resilience aren’t theory. They’re the actual mechanics of staying working in an industry that hands out zero guarantees. I learned them the hard way, over three decades, mostly by getting them wrong first.
That’s the whole case for the course. Six modules built around exactly those three things, for musicians who’d rather not learn them the way I did.
It’s not open yet. If you’re already a subscriber, you’ll be the first to know the moment it is, before it’s announced anywhere else.
Free subscribers get this post, plus everything else on the free side: the podcast, all 110 episodes and counting, audio and video, the Resources page, and the Notes section, where I drop quick things as I think of them. There’s also the Chat, where I post job leads as they come in, a few community members have landed actual gigs just from responding to one, so that’s worth being in there for on its own.
Paid subscribers get all of that, plus:
Full access to Real-World Training, the section where pieces like “Why You’re Not Getting Sub Gigs (And How to Fix It Now),” “Beyond the Gigs: Why Musicians Must Face Real-Life Responsibilities,” “I Bombed My First Sub Gig—Now What?,” and “What If Your Dream Gig Isn’t on Broadway?” break down the actual how behind everything this post only points at.
A discount on the course, plus early access before it opens to the public.
All of it, for $10 a month.
Click HERE to see exactly what’s inside, module by module, and get in before it opens to everyone else.
Clayton