Travis Cloer on the end of ‘Jersey Boys’: ‘I’m trying to look at this as a blessing in disguise’
It’s the Broadway musical many thought would run forever on the Strip, but, after eight years, the JERSEY BOYS story of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons comes to an end Sunday at Paris Las Vegas after nearly 3,300 performances. The Broadway show in New York ends Jan. 15.
I talked with singer-actor Travis Cloer, who has been with the Las Vegas run re-creating Frankie’s falsetto since its beginning at The Palazzo and nearly two years earlier in the Broadway cast. He’s the longest-running cast member starting at The Palazzo in 2008 and continuing when it moved to Paris in 2012.
The first question is an obvious one: Are there mixed emotions as eight years in Las Vegas comes to an end for you?
Yeah, a lot of mixed emotions. It’s actually eight years here in Las Vegas, but almost 10 years for me with my time in the Broadway company. It’s funny because I’m trying to look at this as a blessing in disguise. It’s that little push to go out and do other things and be more creative and spread my artistic wings. So, I’m excited about that, but also very sad to see this wonderful job, this wonderful show, come to an end.
As an actor, you’ve played a person in Frankie Valli who never retires. He’s still going strong, and you now have to put him behind you.
It’s weird. I’ll hopefully be able to take some of his mojo with me and continue doing my own thing and be inspired by him that way, but it is strange to say goodbye to the role. He’s been a part of me for so long, almost become my identity in a way in my artistic life. I’m excited, though, to see how I can use his inspiration to keep going myself.
How do you shed the identity of another person that you became for a decade?
That’s a good question and one that I’m still trying to figure out. I don’t think that I’m ever going to completely get rid of it, and, in a way, I don’t know if I do want to completely get rid of it because I’m still proud of what we’ve done with the show and what it has meant to people and what my performance has been to people. In a sense, there’s bragging rights to say that I did this.
One of the highlights of a nearly 10-year run in JERSEY BOYS has to be the meetings that you had with Frankie and the group’s songwriter, Bob Gaudio.
There have been so many surreal moments I’ll never forget. When we moved here and opened at The Palazzo, we went to lunch with Frankie. I’m next to Frankie, and he’s telling me about this new album, and he starts singing some of it to me at the lunch table. I thought, “This is so bizarre that I’m having lunch and being serenaded, a cappella, by Frankie Valli. That’s a keeper in my pocket for a long time.”
Then I also got to work in the studio with Bob Gaudio on the JERSEY BOYS Christmas record, and just being in that studio and singing with him, hearing him talk back to me in the cans, giving me direction and just watching the way he works in the studio seeing his producer skills come out, it was another very surreal moment, and I understood just why these guys are superstars.
I’ve seen the show several times, and publishing Go Magazine in the 1960s, I knew the behind-the-scenes story of Frankie’s feud with Tommy DeVito after he lost the group’s earnings to The Mob and IRS. Why didn’t Frankie say goodbye to Tommy? Why didn’t he get rid of him? Why didn’t he cut him completely off?
I think that, even with all the bad times that they went through, they were family. I look at my life and my relationships with—whether it be my brothers or my cousins or whoever in your family—you know, you get done wrong, but it’s still hard to completely sever ties and say goodbye to people who, despite how you feel about them, deep in your heart there’s an amount of love you can’t shake no matter how much wrong they’ve done to you. I think that had a big part in it.
It’s amazing pop music history. In a sense, I admired the loyalty, but I also thought Frankie was weak.
Yeah, that’s true, you know, but it just goes back to the way that these guys were brought up and how you always take care of your family no matter what has gone on in the past. That’s part of who they were, and it’s pretty amazing.
JERSEY BOYS is regarded as a 1 in a million show, a jukebox show that many would have hoped could last forever. You couldn’t be Frankie forever, but why do you think it’s come to an end when it’s still relevant?
I don’t think I’ll ever truly answer that accurately. You know the way the business is; I don’t want to say that they run their course because I don’t feel that this truly has. Like you said, it is timeless and still relevant. This music will always find a way to speak to people. I just think that the producers have looked at the box office numbers and costs and have made a tough call here and for Broadway.
Have you aged in the role, or has it kept you young?
Absolutely it has kept me young. The thing that has aged me is the stress and the pressure of having to stay vocally healthy to do this show. There’s been so much pressure to do that. People know what Frankie Valli sounds like. There’s absolutely no getting around that, and just the weight of that on my shoulders for the last 10 years has probably hunched me over a little bit.
It’s funny: Graham Fenton, who alternates the role with me, when we first got our notice that we’re closing, he and I both said, “Man, how much lighter do you feel knowing that you don’t have to stay healthy all the time in order to do this show any given night?”
Ever since they told us, we’ve both been singing like birds just because that burden had been lifted a little bit. That, I think, is what has aged me the most, just that pressure of standing up vocally strong to do the show.
There was a reluctance in the beginning about the show at the tryouts at La Jolla Playhouse. Difficulty getting actors and investors.
People didn’t want to get involved with another jukebox musical. So many of them come and go, and they just thought that this was another one. They didn’t see the real potential that it had. They just said, “We’re not going to risk our money in it.” Those people are kicking themselves in the butt right now.
What did it have that other jukebox musical shows didn’t have? What made it so successful?
It had a true story behind it. People knew the music, but what they didn’t know was what these guys went through, how they started and the trials and the tribulations that they went through. Back in the day, when these guys were doing their thing, if news of their shenanigans got out then, they wouldn’t have been the success that they were, I don’t think.
First and foremost is this great catalog of music that people love listening to, then you combine that with this 100-percent-true rags-to-riches story of the guys from the wrong side of the tracks earning superstardom, you have that perfect storm. There is genuine sadness when Frankie’s daughter dies from a drug overdose. You have that combination of everything going right, from the music to the story to the writing to the direction to the lighting, and it clicked on every level.
Will you miss telling that story nightly? Will you miss singing “Pretty Baby,” “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You,” “Dawn,” “Walk Like a Man,” “Sherry”?
Yes. Physically, it’s been a part of who I am for 10 years. Just not going to the theater every night and doing this incredibly fulfilling and joyful piece of art. It’s going to be a big change. I’ve never done anything in my professional career that’s been more fulfilling than singing this role. It just makes me happy every single night that I do it no matter how I feel when I start.
Your voice isn’t quite the same as Frankie’s voice. Pretty close, though?
Correct. It’s pretty close. I do my best to emulate what he does. I’ve listened to his records for a long time, and I’m a big fan of his, way before JERSEY BOYS came around. I’ve always been a fan of his falsetto style and stressing my falsetto to sound like him as much as I can. We’ve got different voices, but, like any actor, I do my best to make it sound as close to his as I can.
Doing a show like this for 10 years and singing the same songs for 10 years, does it speak to Bob Gaudio that it hasn’t become boring for you?
Yeah, absolutely. As a songwriter myself, I couldn’t think of any greater compliment than people not getting tired of singing my music. That’s a huge, huge compliment and a huge testimony to his songwriting ability, his honesty in his songs and just the musicality in them.
Sunday’s final curtain looms. Do you and the cast face it with trepidation? Sorrow? Will there be tears onstage?
It does loom, but we did get almost 3 1/2 months’ notice. It’s been peeling off a Band-Aid slowly. It gives us plenty of time to contemplate, “Ok, I’m not going to be doing this with these guys too much longer. I have to sing this song this many more times.”
There has already been tears onstage. If I let myself go there, there would be tears every night just because it means so much to me and the way that Las Vegas has embraced the show and the people in it. It’s just something that I’ll hold very dear to my heart for a very long time.
The Broadway show will still be going until January. They have another tour that just started back up a couple weeks ago and has dates for another year, so the legacy continues for a little while.
What does the future hold for you?
We’re sticking around Las Vegas. We love the city. Whether or not it’ll be the fly in, fly out point, hotspot for jobs, we’ll have to see. I’ve got another date at Grandview Lounge at South Point on Oct. 22, and we have a tentative date for my annual holiday show Dec. 10 at Mark Shunock’s new MONDAYS DARK space. We’ll keep plugging as we do in show business.
It’s going to seem a little strange, isn’t it, not driving to work at the theater every night? I dislike the word, but you’re unemployed after 10 years.
It is, it is. It’s going to be a good thing, though, because I’m looking forward to taking a little break. Letting my mind rest and letting my pipes rest. I’m excited to see what comes next. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I think that it’s time to stretch those creative wings and move on.
The final performances of JERSEY BOYS at Paris Las Vegas are at 7 p.m. today, Saturday and Sunday.
