Jefferson McDonald Puts a Christmas Spin on a Classic Show at the Cortland Repertory Theater

John Harrison: [00:00:00] Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to X 1 0 1, always classic joining me on the line. Very special guest coming up here to the Cortland Repertory Theater this weekend for an amazing Christmas show. It’s Jefferson McDonald Jefferson. Thanks so much for joining me. Thanks for having me. Of course. Hey, you know, thanks for for taking the time.

I know we were kind of chatting before starting up the interview. Right now you’re, down in a, a nice sunny cruise ship, but you’re gonna be heading up to the beautiful Christmas wonderland that is Cortland. You know, thanks for making that trek.

Jefferson McDonald: Well, I can’t wait to make the trek. I hope it goes well.

I just have to fly from Cozumel to JFK, which should be a nightmare, but we’ll make it happen. I’m gonna get up there.

John Harrison: Yeah, we, you know, I just

Jefferson McDonald: gotta deliver some Christmas cheer to the good folks of Courtland. Yeah.

John Harrison: Yeah.

Jefferson McDonald: I’m looking forward to it.

John Harrison: Yeah. And hey, we’re, we’re looking forward to it too. I mean, you know, we’ve already got, of course, I said the Christmas wonderland, all, all set for you and, you know, we were, we were saying, how can you have Christmas music without a little bit of snow?

How can you have it without that ambiance, you know?

Jefferson McDonald: Yeah, I don’t think it would work. I think we would’ve had [00:01:00] to cancel if it wasn’t snowing and people weren’t struggling a little bit to make it to the theater. But, yeah, pull out the little brushes. Come on everybody. I’m from up there. I’m, I was born in Ithaca and grew up in R List.

This is just part of life.

John Harrison: Yeah. And you’ve, you’ve got quite a storied history too, you know, not just with the area, but specifically with the Cortland Repertory Theater. I mean, you started your, your, your, you know, career really with, with them interning, you know, as a, prof. Performance intern. You wanna talk a little bit about that and kind of how you got started with them and the connections you made?

Jefferson McDonald: Yeah. Well I did a production of Fiddler on the Roof there back in the day when I was thinking of dabbling my toes in theater like you do. And, the next year, I think I became a full performance intern. So he thought, you know what, if he’s so good on stage, let’s put him on a roof and have him reroof the theater.

You know, it’s a lot of work. Theater, you gotta do a lot of. Different aspects, but, yeah, I give a lot of credit to Kirby, Thompson for bringing beyond sort of getting me into the world of theater. I did a production of, that following year. People [00:02:00] may or may not remember, some do actually. I did a production of Best Little Whorehouse of Texas.

And, I remember wearing a jock strap and that, and my parents not being too thrilled. But, they’ve come around now, they’ve, they’ve given up really.

John Harrison: Yeah. It’s all part of theater.

Jefferson McDonald: It’s all part of the theater. It’s the arts. We’re getting a little culture here.

John Harrison: Yeah, exactly.

Jefferson McDonald: But I should be wearing more clothes for this show if anyone’s concerned.

John Harrison: Well, that’s good. Yeah. Hope, hopefully a little bit, red, white, and green in the outfit. So, so, you, you played, the Great Balls of Fire, that’s kinda your classic show that you’ll, you’ll do with the Cortland Repertory Theater. We’re adapting it to a, a Christmas theme, the Great Jingle Balls of Fire.

You want to talk about just kind of some of the, thought process behind it and, and, inspirations behind wanting to, to put this on and, maybe even some of the songs we can expect.

Jefferson McDonald: Sure. Well, this whole thing developed because I was doing a show called Million Dollar Quartet. I played Jerry Lee Lewis a bunch of times, and that’s how I met some of the guys who were in the show.

Armando Gutierrez, who works on the Aries, a New York City actor musician, and Colin Summers are bringing him up and he plays like Carl Perkins and that [00:03:00] style. So we sort of morphed it in from this crazy show that I developed. It was an interpretation of Jerry Lee Lewis live at the Star Club, which is according to Rolling Stones, the hardest hitting live album of all time.

Yeah. So I started doing that and I thought, what if I sort of. Opened up the set to do more Elvis and Johnny Cash and all this other stuff. And then I’m also doing standup on the side with my insanely talented girlfriend, Steph to, who has a special on Netflix. You should all say, filth Queen. It’s kind of dirty though.

If you don’t like dirty jokes. Do not say it. I didn’t say that. So I sort of wanted to combine all those elements. I was thinking how could I make just the craziest, most fun night of. Theater for people. So that’s what we’re trying to do. And this Christmas show is gonna be, it’s gonna be interesting.

We’ll see. I’m gonna do all those hits that people know. Run Ron Rudolph, Chuck Berry, or Elvis’s Santa Claus’ back in town. There’s some really good rock and roll ones, so we’ll try to do those, some of the slower ones, people can, sink a little bit of this. The slow stuff with us, and [00:04:00] then of course we’ll do some of the hits, some of the Johnny Cash stuff.

We, we, we gotta remember wh why we’re here, right? Yeah. You know,

John Harrison: up a little bit on, I’m definitely looking forward to it. I, I’ve, I’ve always been, so, I, I grew up loving rock and roll and especially the classics and, whenever Christmas time comes around, I’m, I’m always defaulting to wanting to listen to some of the more upbeat ones before.

You know, before the sun sets and you kind of get into the, the Frank Sinatra, the crooners and, and everything. But while the sun’s up and, while we got some, some snow, hey, might as well great jingle. Balls of fire, right.

Jefferson McDonald: I a great jingle. Balls of Fire. I just like the title. Yeah, that’s really why we’re doing the show.

I just came up with that and I laughed and people were like, yeah, we’ll do it. And I, I gulped and said, okay, I guess I gotta learn some Christmas songs now. I love that stuff. I love the Crooners and I love, we’re gonna do some of those, some of the Sinatra, Bing songs. They’re so good. I really, I think this show is kind of gonna be like.

See, my favorite Christmas movie, I don’t know about yours, is a Christmas story. Mm-hmm. I just love the ambiance, but I think this show’s [00:05:00] going to be like a mix of that and a little bit of a mix of, maybe WWE wrestling. It’s sort of, you know, it’s like Christmas story, but with some barking sweating and, you know, rolling stones.

John Harrison: Yeah. All right. So I’m kind of picturing like, you know, Macaulay Culkin, you know, home alone, but put into Christmas story, you know, what would he do if he had that Red Rider BB gun?

Jefferson McDonald: The same thing. I, I think I shot my eye out too when I had one, so, you know, we’ve all been there.

John Harrison: Yeah. You know, tongue, tongue sucked to the icicle.

It happens to everyone. Well, Jefferson, thanks so much for, for chatting with me today. You know, before we go, you know, you’re, you’re coming back up north to home, really special time. Any Christmas traditions you’re gonna be getting up to while you’re in town?

Jefferson McDonald: Oh, that’s a good question.

Any Christmas traditions we have to see, ’cause I think they’ve already put up the, the tree. But we used to do something fun. We had a 220 acre. Property with 30 acres of woods. It was a pretty large organic farm, and we would always go out and try to find a tree just from our property. [00:06:00] Wow. We didn’t really have any good options, so we always had the worst looking tree in the neighborhood and we thought that was so funny.

So we would put about 20 ornaments on each branch all the way to the base of the tree. But I think my mom already got an ice tree, so it’s hard to say. That’s hard to say. What the, this might be the new tradition, this just coming up there and doing the great jingle balls of fire. I hope so.

John Harrison: Yeah. I’m really hoping it becomes a, a yearly thing.

It’s great to have, you know, just something fun like this to look forward to at the Cortland Repertory Theater. We’ll, hey, Jefferson McDonald playing great Jingle Balls of Fire this weekend, Saturday, December 6th at 7:30 PM and Sunday the seventh at two o’clock. Back and ready to rock your holidays.

Jefferson, thanks so much for joining me today. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Of course. I’m looking forward to the show and, thanks so much for, for joining. For everyone listening at home, this has been John Harrison on X 1 0 1.