For some 15 years now, Alderville First Nation singer-songwriter Cale Crowe has performed on stages throughout the Kawarthas and Northumberland, and has made quite an impression via his talent, his stage presence, and his storytelling-infused lyrics.

Now he has put those skills to use on the theatrical stage by co-writing the original musical Rez Gas, which has its world premiere at the Capitol Theatre in Port Hope for 18 performances from August 22 to September 7.

Crowe’s involvement in the play has it roots in a performance he did at the Capitol back in 2021.

“It happened to be the first night that their then-new artistic director Rob Kempson was working,” recounts Crowe.

“Fast forward a little bit. I moved back to Alderville after living in Cobourg during most of the pandemic. I received a call from him. He was interested in having me as part of the Capitol Theatre Creators’ Unit, a series of workshops where creatives come together with their unique individual projects and get feedback and advice. At the end of a year, it culminates in a reading or presentation for a public audience.”

“I thought ‘That’s great … what does it have to do with me?’ He approached me and said ‘I want you to create an Indigenous musical for us.’ I thought ‘Wow, if that isn’t the stupidest idea that anyone has ever had.’ I wasn’t convinced that was something I was capable of doing.”

Now, with Rez Gas — co-written with Cobourg resident Genevieve Adam — set to premiere at the historic Queen Street venue in downtown Port Hope on Friday, August 22, Crowe has proved he was very capable indeed.

Billed as “a beautiful expression of Indigenous joy with a hip-hop infused, unforgettable score,” Rez Gas centres around the character of Destin who, after moving away from his home reservation to pursue a music career, finds himself back home as a result of unexpected car trouble.

There, at a diner called the Wide Wigwam, Destin reconnects with many of those he left behind — all of whom remind him of his history and his place in the community.

It was Kempson who partnered Crowe with Genevieve Adam to write the musical. A graduate of the George Brown Theatre School in Toronto who holds a master of fine arts from the East15 Acting School in the U.K., Adam is an award-winning playwright and actor who is also part of Capitol Theatre Creators’ Unit.

“We just kind of clicked the first time we met,” Crowe says. “I bounced some ideas off of her. I sort of had all the dreamy, lofty, floaty ideas about what the show could be. She was able to run around behind me with the butterfly net, catching them and making them into something concrete. I composed all of the music and she wrote a lot of the script, and we came up with characters and plot together.”

“Rob and a lot of the other people that had a bit of an advance on this thing tend to describe it as Come From Away meets Corner Gas in terms of its plot, its tone, and its overall flavour. In my mind, those are incredibly large comparisons to make. I hope our show lives up to that.”

If this experience has reaffirmed anything for Crowe, it’s that, as a performer, you never know who’s in the audience and where that exposure will lead.

“I play a lot of bars and country clubs — places where people might not necessarily be there for the music,” he says, adding “I’ve spent a lot of my career playing to the sides and backs of people’s heads.”

“You never know who you’re going to impress. I never thought that I would play that room (the Capitol Theatre), let alone that it would lead to something like this. It’s a huge lesson in the butterfly effect for me.”

During the creative process, Crowe admits to having some moments of self-doubt.

“As an artist and as a creative, if you don’t have moments of general apprehension about the thing you’re creating, you’re probably messing up in some way,” he reflects.

“When I agreed to do this project, I told Rob and I told Genevieve that I don’t want to come, in any way, from a place of what we describe as trauma porn. A lot of mainstream media surrounding Indigenous culture tends to have a lot to do with the residential school system, the ’60s Scoop, the Trail of Tears — these sorts of things.”

“Those things are incredibly important to talk about and make people aware of, but there is so much of it and for Indigenous people to have that be their sole representation on the world stage is exhausting. One of the things I prioritized was that this be a reflection of Indigenous joy and Indigenous humour.”

“It’s not just funny the entire way through. There are serious moments. There are undertones of things. But I didn’t that to be the in-your-face of the entire show. I wanted it to be reflective of reality from a modern perspective. We are people. We laugh, we cry, we get angry, we fall in love.”

Helping Crowe in that aim is own upbringing in Alderville, which he describes as “a place in between places.”

“I love and have hated that over the course of my life,” he says. “When I first started playing music, I was not local to any particular scene in any particular town. That made it really hard to find my place. Growing up, and now having a family and moving back home to do so, it’s really nice to have this pocket of the world we can call our own.”

“Having moved home for the explicit purpose of starting a family and turning over a new chapter in my life, and forcing this sort of transitional period upon myself, is reflected in our show where a lot of the circumstances are forced upon the characters. It a matter of what we’re going to with the wind in the sails that we have, and where that can take us moving forward.”

As a songwriter, Crowe says writing music for a stage production fell well outside his comfort zone.

“The process and the mental flow to writing music for a show like this was entirely foreign to me,” he says. “It was very surprising to me, when I finally got into it, how quickly a lot of my face-value skills, in terms of rhyming and rhythm structure, that I’ve accrued over the years … descended into the work in a good way.”

“I had never written for multiple perspectives at the same time. Having been the sole writer of a lot of music, a lot of times I felt like I was talking to myself. I had to shift perspectives and figure out what people were going to say to each other.”

One appreciated constant, says Crowe, has been the enthusiastic support of both Adam and Kempson, along with the cast members.

“Hopefully I did a decent job. I like to think so. When did our first read-through of the script, the actors fell in love with the music right away, which was a huge relief to me. Any time something funny happened in the room and people laughed, I was like ‘Thank God … that’s funny to someone other than myself.”

Now, with opening night looming, Crowe “can’t wait to get started.”

“Having someone like Rob and Genevieve, who have huge credits to their names in this realm, support me and say I’m capable and I belong, is like ‘OK, I’m not by myself up there with my pants falling down in front of an audience.’ That’s very validating.”

“What I would like for people coming out of the show is to see themselves in these characters, whether they are from rez or otherwise. That they see moments for themselves to be self-reflective and be self-affirmative.”

As for his career as a musician, Crowe’s most recent recording, titled Burn Blue, is available for listening at www.calecrowe.com, which is also home to tracks from his first two albums, Stars and Promises and Til I Let You Go, as well as performance videos.

Crowe is already making plans for what’s next in his career when Rez Gas completes its run.

“The priority is mapping out what next year looks like, mostly performing and showcasing songs from my latest record. I’ve toyed with the idea of touring. There will be a day, maybe a weekend, in September where I sit down and kind of map it all out.”

The cast of Rez Gas, directed by Herbie Barnes, features John Walmsley as Destin, Dillan Meighan-Chiblow as Leon, and Vinnie Alberto as Nolan as the trio of old friends at the centre of the action, along with Nicole Joy-Fraser as Lucy, Michelle Bardach as Aurora, Jonathan Fisher as Samuel/Penny/Wade, and Emma Rudy as Mackenzie.

VIDEO: “Rez Gas” promo

Orchestrations and music supervision is by Jeff Newberry, with a band comprised of Kia Rose, Emry Tupper, and David Schotzko led by music director Sarah Richarson. Other members of the creative team include Jung-Hye Kim as set designer, Yolonda Skelton as costume designer, and Jareth Li as lighting designer with Monica Dotter as choreographer. Stage manager Kat Chin is assisted by Ada Aguilar, with Haneul Yi serving as copyist.

Rez Gas opens at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, August 22 with a pay-what-you-can preview performance, with additional evening performances on August 23, 27 to 30, and September 3 to 6, and 2 p.m. matinee performances on August 24, 27, 30 and 31, and September 2 and 3 and 6 and 7.

Special performances include Indigenous Community Night on Friday, August 29 and a relaxed performance on Tuesday, September 2. There will be “Talk Back Thursdays” after the performances on August 28 and September 4, where you can participate in a question-and-answer session with the artists and find out more about the process of making live theatre.

Other than the preview performance, tickets are $48 ($40 for those 30 and under). Tickets are available at capitoltheatre.com or by calling the box office at 905-885-1071.