“You don’t choose music,” Jonathan Clay says. “Music chooses you. We love making music, in any facet.”
Since 2010, Clay and Zach Chance have fronted the Americana duo Jamestown Revival. Now, they’re coming to grips with being first-time Grammy nominees — but not for their work under Jamestown Revival. Instead, Clay and Chance are nominated for their score to The Outsiders, the Broadway adaptation of S.E. Hinton’s novel about the class and racial divisions in 1960s Tulsa. The pair, along with musical director-turned-collaborator Justin Levine, were already nominated for a Tony Award this year for Best Original Score, one of 12 such nominations for the musical. The Outsiders ultimately won four Tonys, including Best Musical.
“At some point, you’re just like, ‘How lucky am I gonna get?’ It’s icing on the cake,” Clay tells Rolling Stone. “Zach and I have been writing songs since we were 15. A Grammy, to us, is the ultimate honor.”
Clay and Chance are Austin residents but grew up together in Magnolia, Texas. Theirs is a classic tale of lifelong friends who know each other as if they are family. They were offered the chance to compose the music to The Outsiders in the wake of Jamestown Revival’s 2014 debut album, Utah. At the time, however, with Jamestown just starting to take off, the two weren’t entertaining outside projects. Still, the idea of pushing their artistic limits appealed to Clay.
“I did not grow up going to theater,” he says. “It wasn’t part of my family tradition. Zach and I were in choir together in high school, but that was the closest we got.
“But our manager knew the producers, and he said they were looking for a sort of outside-the-box band to write music for The Outsiders,” he continues. “I remember Zach being hesitant, like, ‘I don’t know,’ and me going, ‘Zach, if you don’t want to do it, I’m gonna take a stab at it.’”
Clay barely got the words out before Chance jumped onboard. “You can’t tell me you’re going to do it without me,” Chance says. “That’s like a challenge!”
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Americana duo Jamestown Revival scored their first Grammy nomination for their work on the music of ‘The Outsiders.’ Photo: Grace Herr*
Nearly nine years passed from the time they wrote the first number for the musical — “Stay Gold,” which is performed as the play reaches its crescendo — before their songs made it to Broadway. The biggest learning curve for Clay and Chance was watching what they composed go through an editing process. They had to learn how to deal with everything from minor changes to the entire scrapping and rewriting of songs. Soon after they took on the project, Levine made a leap from musical director to co-writer and collaborator.
“One of the things that drew me to Jon and Zach as songwriters was their vulnerability, and the combination of both very real and literal struggles, kind of set against big aspirations,” Levine tells Rolling Stone. “I felt like that lended itself really well to the voice of these young people who have all these conflicting thoughts and dreams, and don’t always know exactly how to express them. Particularly, Jon and Zach’s first record, Utah, captures that sort of youthful, throwing-caution-to-the-wind feel that is also sort of tortured by the things that you see and know and feel within yourself.”
In other words, it struck right at the heart of what The Outsiders — the novel, the 1983 movie starring C. Thomas Howell, Patrick Swayze, and Matt Dillon, and now the musical — is all about.
Levine is quick to point out that Chance and Clay’s jump to musical theater was once commonplace, a callback to a time when popular music and theater went hand-in-hand. While Rodgers and Hammerstein, Cole Porter, and the Gershwins were Broadway successes in their respective eras, their songs also became cultural standards. Levine says there is no reason that Jamestown Revival cannot make the same impact today.
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“It was important that we acknowledge that this isn’t about abandoning the tools and the wheelhouse of Jamestown,” Levine says, “but to expand upon it and help write songs in the voice of these characters just by understanding the form of musical theater itself, rather than how to become a different type of songwriter.”
The Outsiders is part of a recent run of musicals featuring scores composed by artists in the folk, Americana, and country genres. Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally wrote the music for Shucked, which had a nine-month run on Broadway in 2023, earning a Tony nomination for Best Original Score. The Avett Brothers — with whom Jamestown Revival toured last fall — saw their music, mostly from their album Mignonette, featured in Swept Away, which closed this month on Broadway following a short run.
Clay says that Jamestown Revival’s success with The Outsiders echoes the surging popularity of roots music, namely Americana.
“Americana has reached a level of popularity that I don’t think anyone would have ever guessed. Zach Bryan had the biggest album of the year,” he says. “People want to hear that kind of music in other art forms, like Broadway.”
Another dynamic at play, Chance says, is what he and Clay learned when they first started work on the score. As much of an adjustment as musical theater is for singer-songwriters, there’s a tangible payoff when Jamestown Revival fans and Broadway fans can experience the same show.
“There’s a growing appreciation for the musical theater format,” Chance says. “There’s a curiosity there, and it can be a really cool, different outlet to write music for, and a different expression. I’m excited to see where people take it, and how it evolves.”
Beyond the Grammys, Chance and Clay have started work on another Jamestown Revival record, which would mark the group’s first since 2022’s Young Man. Despite putting out three full-length albums, a live record, and a pair of EPs since starting work on The Outsiders, they are looking forward to a consistent run with Jamestown in 2025 and beyond.
Neither is ruling out another musical, but the pair is more excited to apply what they learned while working with Levine on their own album.
“We’re two buddies from Magnolia, Texas, and if we’re writing songs and making a living, we’re beating the system,” Chance says. “We’re just excited to keep exploring where our collaboration takes us. The musical has taught us to say, ‘Yes’ to things and just dive in.”
Josh Crutchmer is a journalist and author whose third book, Red Dirt Unplugged, was released on December 13, 2024, via Back Lounge Publishing.