CCM alumnus releases memoir about Broadway in the Covid-19 Pandemic

Todd Almond is no stranger to the stage. A CCM alumnus with a BFA in Acting and BM in Vocal Performance, Almond got his start in local Cincinnati productions in the early 2000s. Since then, he’s gone on to a career as a performer in Broadway musicals, a writer of acclaimed plays and a singer/composer on multiple original albums. Now, Almond adds the title of “author” to his multi-hyphenate.

In a recent interview with CityBeat, Almond discusses his new book, Slow Train Coming: Bob Dylan’s Girl from the North Country and Broadway’s Rebirth, chronicling his experience as a Broadway actor during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Almond starred in the original Broadway cast of Girl from the North Country. Set in Bob Dylan’s hometown of Duluth, Minnesota, the musical features songs by the iconic singer-songwriter. Despite featuring many famous tunes, Girl from the North Country doesn’t play out like a regular jukebox musical. “It’s a piece of theater that has a lot of music in it,” Almond tells CityBeat. “Just for the sake of ease in conversation, I say I was in a musical called Girl from the North Country, but … it doesn’t quite line up with the rules of what is a musical.”

In 2020, the musical opened on Broadway after its 2017 West End premiere and 2018 Off-Broadway run. Almond played Elias Burke, a childlike man living in a boarding house. After a week of shows, Girl from the North Country, along with the rest of Broadway, was suddenly shuttered due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Almond’s memoir recounts the challenges and triumphs of producing a Broadway show as well as his personal experience of living in New York during the pandemic. The book chronicles the heady, exciting days of a Broadway opening, the sense of suspended time in 2020 and the transcendence of once again mounting live theater as Broadway came back to life.

After lengthy delays, Girl from the North Country reopened in late 2021. In a memorable scene, Almond sings Dylan’s “Dusquesne Whistle” as the ghost of Elias, a performance the Hollywood Reporter called “uplifting in every sense.”

Almond and his cast members thought of the show “almost as a church service,” he tells CityBeat. “There were readings, there were homilies, there’s humanity and then there’s hymns.”

Cincinnati audiences can catch Almond’s performance in Girl from the North Country from May 23-26 on CET, Cincinnati’s local PBS station as part of its Great Performances series.

Slow Train Coming: Bob Dylan’s Girl from the North Country and Broadway’s Rebirth is available from Barnes and Nobel, Amazon and other booksellers.

Featured image at top: Todd Almond works at a piano. Photo/Todd Almond