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Greetings from Atlanta. Or, as the natives call it "Hotlanta." Or as I'm calling it this weekend "Coldlanta." And, quite frankly, after the enormous dinner I had at the Mall's Chinese restaurant, "Mylanta." That's right, I'm now a Borscht Belt comedian. Nu? Anyhoo (anyhu?) I'm here at the National Junior Theater Festival ( summer-stars.com/id15.html). One of the sponsors of the event is Music Theater International, who presented some of their new "junior" shows (hour-long versions of musicals for elementary and middle schools). Suwanee Performing Arts Inc. and Dekalb School of the Arts teamed up and did Fame Jr., and they tore it up.

Listen to Seth's Podcast: Back on Bass

I was so impressed that all the guys had crazily high extensions. PS, remember when one could write about someone's extension and it would be assumed it was their leg. Now, due to its new-found popularity, I feel that I have to clarify that I don't mean hair extensions. Damn you, Kristin Chenoweth.

The one thing during the weekend I was having a mini-breakdown about happened during the presentation: A few different people got introduced, and the host would bring them onstage not with "let's give it up for…" or "let's hear it for…" but instead, "let's give a standing ovation for…." Three times!!! I had just ingested six deep fried dumplings and an enormous ginger fish platter (with brown rice). I couldn't get out of my seat once let alone three times.

At my Sirius/XM Live On Broadway show I interviewed one of my old pit musician buddies from Grease. Conrad Korsch not only plays bass but sings and composes and now has his own CD and is doing his release party at Joe's Pub on Jan. 24. (Go to ConradKorsch.com for details.) We were telling pit bass players stories back and forth. I remembered something that happened when I sat in the pit for A Chorus Line. The show was about to begin and the bass player, who had been playing the show for years, realized he had forgotten his bow! He literally walked to the coat rack outside the pit in the Shubert Theatre, got a wire hanger, bent it into a straight line and used the hanger as a bow! (Insert unfunny Joan Crawford Mommy Dearest joke here).

	Caitlin Carter sits on Korsch's bass in Swing!
	photo by Joan Marcus

Conrad talked about being the onstage bass player during Swing!. There was a number where he came center stage, and sexy Caitlin Carter would sing and dance with him while he played the bass and she would actually sit on the bass. As the months went on, Conrad started to hear straining noises coming from the bass because it was not used to being handled that way. He told the crew that he was nervous about the bass cracking, but no one took him seriously. He and the other musicians started taking bets as to when it would break, and Conrad decided that for maximum awkwardness it would probably happen on a night when he had a sub playing for him. Cut to a few weeks later, Conrad took off the show for another gig and it ended early so he was able to come and watch Swing! from the audience for the first time. When the big number came, Caitlin sat on the bass (which was being played by a sub) and, as Conrad predicted, it literally imploded. The horrible part is, they still had to finish the number. The bass sub had pretended it was normal for a bass to be several pieces of wood and strings that he had to try to hold together, and Caitlin had to deal with the body image issues that come up when one is in front of Broadway audience, sits on something…and breaks it.

	Stephanie Umoh and Quentin Earl Darrington
	photo by Joan Marcus

I also chatted with Quentin Earl Darrington and Stephanie Umoh, who played Coalhouse and Sarah in the short-lived but fabulous Ragtime revival. Even though the run was short, there were still enough performances for mess-ups. Stephanie told me that she completely screwed up the lyrics to her first big number ("Your Daddy's Son"), but she wasn't horribly mortified about it…until she found out that in the audience that night was…the original Sarah, Audra McDonald! Hmm…maybe Audra thought they re-wrote the lyrics since the time she played the part. Then Quentin told us about the scene at the end of Act Two where he's barricaded himself in the Morgan Library and Booker T. Washington comes in to negotiate. Instead of the measured lines he was supposed to say when he calmly and succinctly tells Booker T. Washington that he will not leave, he forgot his lines and started improvising. Unfortunately, he didn't quite get the tone and style of the early 1900's. Quentin said he started sassing with, "You come in here…all telling me what to do and stuff…listen, I ain't leaving…." The devastating thing is that it happened right after Booker T. said his line, commenting on how they're both "educated men"…and even more devastating is the fact that it happened the same night Audra was in the audience!  Continued...