Like many of us, Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Lisa Loeb found herself trapped at home at the start of the pandemic—flush with energy, but nowhere to put it. Her upcoming shows were canceled; her tour for her latest album, A Simple Trick to Happiness, was indefinitely on pause. Then Loeb found inspiration and a creative outlet in the most unlikely of places: a Zoom college reunion.
Loeb, who graduated from Brown in 1990, ended up reconnecting with her old theater pals from Providence during the virtual event. Sharing stories about their collegiate past and their pandemic present inspired Loeb to ask her classmates to do what musical theater people are born to do: “Let’s put on a show.” Reunited yet isolated, they created Together Apart, 10 mini-musicals about life amid the pandemic. It’s streaming on Broadway On Demand beginning Friday, August 6th, with proceeds benefiting The Actors Fund.
Together Apart consists of vignettes inspired by the height of lockdown—Facetiming with grandma in Florida, the trials and tribulations of online school. Throughout the mini-musicals, some familiar faces pop up, including 13 Reasons Why’s Josh Hamilton, Schimgadoon’s Ann Harada, and Modern Family’s Julie Bowen as a Q-Anon Zoom mom. In a Zoom call with V.F., Loeb chatted about musical storytelling, her college band Liz and Lisa, and a certain memorable Geico commercial.
Vanity Fair: What happened during that Zoom reunion that led to you to come up with Together Apart?
Lisa Loeb: We connected through Facebook, through our friend Brian E. Herrera and also Carl Belfatti. Brian put together this Zoom meeting and asked everybody to go around and say where you are, what you’re up to lately. We all did musical theater together at Brown. To hear people talk about their memories of doing musical theater and what was going on in their lives—in my brain, I kept hearing everybody just breaking into song. I thought, Oh, my gosh, we should make a musical.
After trying to put together a show with one throughline, I think we all came to the realization that there were so many different people who had so many different kinds of stories to tell. The best way to make a musical would be more like the musical Working, which a lot of us had done in college, which told a lot of different stories. But [Working] was all united by the theme of connecting during a difficult time. We were able to tell a lot of different stories that ranged in seriousness—everything from a family game night to the murder of George Floyd and how that affected a Black family. We wanted to capture the full range, seriousness to humor—but mostly connection during this time when you felt sometimes that you couldn’t connect.
Who ended up participating?
It was very inclusive. People who wanted to be a part of it were a part of it. And so we ended up with a range of actors, maybe some people who hadn’t done any kind of acting or writing since college all the way through to, you know, people who are very professional, who you might recognize from film and TV. All of us cared so much about it.
Did you ever have aspirations of being a theater performer, or did you always know you wanted to be a singer-songwriter?
Well, I grew up doing a lot of musical theater as a kid growing up in Dallas. I chose Brown because I could study acting without being a theater major, and I could also play music. I had a group called Liz and Lisa, a band with my friend Elizabeth Mitchell. I played guitar, she sang, and we were roommates. We started singing the first week of school and we just clicked and we started making music. The very first show we played was at a club on campus called The Underground. It was packed. Brown was a great place to have a wonderful supportive audience.
By the time we graduated from college, we had already started going to New York City to play gigs at The Bitter End—it was just already happening when we were in college. Theater-wise, I think early on when I moved to New York City, I realized my music was really happening more than my acting career, and I enjoyed that a lot.
What drew you back to musical theater?
I started writing musical theater again when I did a [children’s] musical called Camp Kappawana at the Atlantic Theater Company. We want to get it on the road. It’s really great. I’m really proud of that musical.
I feel like I’ve always loved storytelling and as I’ve moved along in my career since my song “Stay” was on the radio in 1994, I’ve made a ton of albums, tons of children’s records, and I’ve realized through it all that I really enjoy storytelling. And that’s led me back to musical theater and collaborating with other people. If not musical theater, at least collaborating with other creative people to write songs with them to help people tell their stories as well.
Regarding your acting career, I see your Geico commercial on television all the time.
That’s really fun. You know, it’s fun to be able to make something that, you know—I collaborated with their writers as well to make something that I thought was very funny. I’ve always been a big fan of music and humor. I feel like you can be really, really serious, but also have fun with your music. So I was lucky to be a part of that.
Have your kids seen it a bunch?
We actually haven’t seen it a lot because we don’t have the TV running a lot, but we hear a lot about other people seeing it. I love that people have a strong, nostalgic connection with my song “Stay,” but they also have a current connection. You know, I hear people tell me all the time—I hear it through social media—people still feel very connected to me, which I appreciate. And I feel connected to people, especially when I get to play concerts and when people hear my newer music as well. But I’m also very proud of the song “Stay,” and if that’s their gateway song for me, that’s great.
Would you want to potentially star in a musical one day?
Oh, yeah, definitely. I would love to be in a musical.
What are some of your favorite shows?
I grew up a child of the ’70s, so we all loved Annie and Grease, and Bye Bye Birdie. But one of the shows that came up a lot was the show we did in college, Working. The music is so amazing. I love the book that it came from where it really highlights the jobs and lives of so many different people. And it values people no matter what they do in life. And I think that’s really important, especially in this cult of celebrity. It’s important for people to see their own lives, and their own role in life as important and as valuable. We did it in college, and I think working on this musical Together Apart reminded us of that.
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