Ding-ding! Oh good, the rusty yet somehow still-charming elevator has arrived to take you up to your suite here at The Hitchcock Hotel. But, before you ascend to what haunting opulence awaits you, allow us to give you a peek behind the velvet curtain to see how this quaint auberge came to be. Please, don’t mind the dust bunnies! They only bite when you swat at them first.

Now, where was I? Oh yes – the Hotel. It wouldn’t be a Can Can pomp if we didn’t start with a song, would it? Let us introduce you to the minds behind the music: Chris Pink and Dave Pezzner. We sat down with the duo to talk about being sound soulmates, the eclectic sources of inspiration for the show, and how being a guest at The Hitchcock Hotel is an experience unlike any other.

Dying to know more? Read on to the full interview below.

THECANCAN.COM: So, let's start from the beginning. How did Can Can’s “Music Duo” come to be? May we have the abridged version of your origin story?

Chris Pink: Being a music maker, I was sort of caught between not loving using canned music and needing to be able to have original content. So I started hiring production partners to help with the process, including taking a creation that I had made and turning it into something that was viable for a show or taking popular music or things that may be canned and then making it uniquely ours. I was working on the Vince Mira project – he's a local singer-songwriter guy that I managed – and I think I met you [Dave] through Eric Padgett, didn't I?

Dave Pezzner: Yeah. Eric. Eric is a trumpetist. Trumpetist? Is that what you call them?

Chris Pink: A trumpeter? If that's not the word for it, it needs to be. [Laughs]

Dave Pezzner: He's a trumpeter who lives downstairs from me and reached out to see if I would be interested in helping them design an Ableton backing track for the Vince Mira show. I come from an electronic music background and have released my music on my own as "Pezzner." And at the time, I had been touring around playing my music using Ableton at, you know, various nightclubs and stuff and was very savvy with the program in a live context already. So, I helped them put together the show so that they can sort of curate and choose which sounds they want to hear on the stage and loop it at any point. It was a very dynamic backing track.

Chris Pink: So then, I met Dave through that. It was a match made in heaven. Dave had the chops to do the things that I was trying to do with some other folks that didn't quite work out. So Dave stepped into that role, and we've been working together ever since.

Dave Pezzner: It's been like, what, five years now?

Chris Pink: It's been a minute.

Dave Pezzner: And it's kind of cool how it's ramped up from the first show being mostly re-mixing stuff like Elvis tunes and the Beach Boys and just chopping everything up to just go right under the show, to the shows where everything is original.

Tori Gresham as Madame Maybell belting out tunes in The Hitchcock Hotel | Photo by Nate Watters

THECANCAN.COM: So, what’s the process of adding all that Can Can glitter to an original piece or classic tune and, ultimately, giving it a whole new life for a show?

Chris Pink: It usually starts with inspirations for a show, which are things that generally I've collected for, sometimes, up to two years. I start pulling [songs] from other playlists and all of the pieces just start to come together, whether it's the name of the show, a certain performer, or a certain song or occurrence in the world. All of the pieces start to come together naturally. I don't ever push the agenda – it just sort of flows in. Once I have the full concept, body of work, identity for the show all in one place, then Dave and I start talking about what we're going to do musically for the show.

Then, generally what will happen is we'll have this whole list of songs that we can play back and forth. [Dave] will have feedback and some thoughts, and then I usually come back and be like, “Okay, this is what I want to do with this song.” Dave's got his giant pile of notes, and then we usually spend the entire music process going back and forth. Every track is a piece of the show, whether it's the introduction or the main solo for the female vocal artist or the dance solo for the male and female performers. Over the years, we've had a formula. And so every time I do my music collections, I’m like, “Okay, that's for the solo, that's for this, that's for that…” I've got places for everything! And then I bail these ideas to David and he has a big top hat and a magic wand and a bunny! [Laughs] I wish it was that easy.

Dave Pezzner: There is a feedback loop that happens between [the choreographer] Fae and [Chris] and with the music, too. There's the conceptual process of the music that happens, and then Fae is working on the dances. And then there's something that Fae wants to see happen with the dance and the music responding to each other. That informs me on what can be done next with the music. And, you know, Chris will have some idea: "What if it does this?" And I'll give it a try.

Chris Pink: Lots of back and forth. The choreography elements are a huge part of that process, for sure. After we get out of the show structure bill, then it gets down to the nitty-gritty of actually putting dance steps to it, and there are like 9 million ideas that come along the way in that world.

Dave Pezzner: I love that about the shows. It's not like the music came first or the show came first - it’s simultaneously building itself as it moves forward. It's a very cool process to see that happen. And to be part of it.

The Cast of The Hitchcock Hotel | Photo by Nate Watters

THECANCAN.COM: Let's talk about The Hitchcock Hotel. What were some songs or sounds that stood out that really gave you that perfect blend between sexy and spooky?

Chris Pink: So oddly, a lot of those ideas stem from songs that aren't in the show. There's this Veils song that was a big influence on me. Dave, as well, likes the Veils. I think I referred to Unloved more than I refer to anything else in this process. They were this band that we started listening to, and I just loved their general aesthetic. It was more of that super sexy aesthetic that I liked, and I thought it would work well. The idea of sensual and sexy, the songs that were coming together felt like they were all going in that direction. But then I also had some show tunes that I was vibing on so like, “Chim Chim Cher-ee” from Mary Poppins. “Putting on the Ritz,” of course.

Dave Pezzner: There's “Be Our Guest.”

Chris Pink: Yes, “Be Our Guest,” which we've been sitting on for a while. When you deliver a song, the origins of it may be “Be our Guest” or “Chim Chim Cher-ee.” It can be unrecognizable and has a completely different melody, but it still has the essence [of the original song]. It becomes like a fun little back-and-forth with the team. I think the combination of sexy and comedy mixed with some sort of standard like The Rocky Horror Picture Show set the tone for the whole thing. Once we got that done, the story easily wrapped itself around it. What started off as one story became something else just because of the bodies of music that existed, which is what writes the song. So honestly, at the end of the day, they write themselves.

Dave Pezzner: It's really cool, too. Even the story writing is informed by all of these choices, it's all informed by each other. There are all of these pieces that connect in so many different ways.

Chris Pink: They all have their own voices. They all have their own input, whether it's abstract or human input or even a song has input in the story.

THECANCAN.COM: I perused through a handful of glimmering reviews for the show, and audiences just can’t seem to get enough. Here are some of the chosen words to describe your show: transportive, spooky, naughty, mysterious, seductively haunting. How would you two define the sound of The Hitchcock Hotel?

Chris Pink: They're more like visual references than sound references. Dave started vibing on not Danny Elfman exactly, but that sort of vibe. And once he found a few of those sounds and started jamming, then I immediately was like, “Okay, everything that we do has to fit into these sort of two categories.” One, which is this Unloved thing, which is raw, sexy, big, open equity baselines, which fit the sexier part of the aesthetic. Along with this idea of “quirk” - whatever that means. Like, The Addams Family and Tim Burton. Traditional monsters, you know? Not gory, but more of the comedic side. Once we started getting into some of these cool sounds, then we just dove headfirst. And again, it just started coming in organically out of these pieces of music that Dave and I went back and forth, like, “Hey, what do you think of this?” I was like, “Oh, fuck yeah. That's perfect. Exactly.”

Dave Pezzner: It's easy to pull from sounds that emerge when you're thinking of spooky, haunted – that sort of vibe. You can hear sounds like The Munsters, their theme song. You can hear the sounds of Tim Burton movies and Danny Elfman. I find the nods to a lot of that, and then figure out how I can use the sounds that I have over here to somehow insert into what we're doing over there. And of course, I'm coming from an electronic music background, so I'm always trying to slide in some bass, some electronic drums.

Chris Pink: Even if we're working with material that might be 50, 100 years old, whatever it is - we generally are a modern company and create modern art, for the most part. Dave's a huge influence on that, particularly with electronic music. Being able to sneak that in and have people feel some of those feelings without it being like a total house track. Some of the elements exist within it. You know, like if Cole Porter had an 808. Exactly.

Richard Peacock as Frankly Mydear in The Hitchcock Hotel | Photo by Nate Watters

THECANCAN.COM: Another common theme I noticed in audience members’ reactions to the show was how empowered they felt by the end. What do you hope Can Can guests feel when experiencing the auditory story you two have pieced together?

Chris Pink: Naturally, based on the artistic collaborators within our organization, is this idea – it sounds cheesy, and we only say it internally, we don't say it externally – “cabaret with the cause.” We've done a lot over the years, and sometimes it can feel monotonous in some ways. I've mentally got down to this idea that this company doesn't make anything. For us, really, this is a greater cause. What we do is always with the intent of somehow giving back to the world. Everything I do, if I really broke it down, it's like, “Okay, if I can donate this amount of money to the Pike Place Market Foundation, which is going to house those 10 people out on the street and feed these 100 people and give medical supplies to those people, then we've done our job in making the world a better place by creating weird fucking art, right?” But within the shows, there's also an opportunity to convey and to push forward and to deliver a message of love. We have it in every show.

In Hitchcock in particular, it’s the empowerment of women and also of being your true self and being who you are and not being afraid to show who that is. In this case, Richard's character is a more feminine character, and Tori’s “You Don't Own Me” number was an opportune moment for her to say some words in reference to what's going on with abortion rights. All the characters within the show have their own individual superpowers – what they bring to the world and how they bring it to the world – and they all come together with this little bookmark that we put on it which is like: “You know what? Be your fucking self and let other people be!”

Shadou Mintrone as Shadow and Jonathan Betchtel as Jon Kingsley in The Hitchcock Hotel | Photo by Nate Watters

THECANCAN.COM: Finally, for the folks who have yet to check in to The Hitchcock Hotel, which number should they be most excited for?

Dave Pezzner: My favorite song is the one with Vince on it.

Chris Pink: These chains?

Dave Pezzner: Yeah, that's my favorite. We actually did it a while ago. What was that originally for?

Chris Pink: The track was originally built for radio, and then we did a remix of it for El Dorado, I believe it was. Johnny had opened his head on the first night of the first show, he literally sliced open his head. And so - we didn't keep doing that number.

Dave Pezzner: Such a bummer. I just really love the overall production sound of [the song], I’m really proud of the way that one sounded. And so to have it come back in through [The Hitchcock Hotel] with all of the revampings that we did, it built itself through the discovery process. All those new sounds come in with the reproduction of the song for the show, I just love the way it sounds now. We're super happy with it.

Chris Pink: The original track was very broken down and mostly acoustic-ish from Vince's radio album. Dave really brought it to a new level when he just went berserk on the remix. So bringing it even to a whole other level for this show was great. I love that track, too. One of my favorite tracks that I feel is so fun is the intro track. It sets the tone for the show in such a great way. It allows the singers to set the tone of their characters. It has a really good building quality. I also felt like it was a breakthrough in how we produce music, where something has certain origins and comes completely full circle into a completely original work in such a great way.

Ready to settle into your suite, now? The Hitchcock Hotel is delighted to serve you as their guest. Book your stay at thecancan.com from now until November 27th.

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