Last September, HOT DAMN! IT’S THE LOVELAND FROG returned after ten years to grace the Loveland Stage Company. The show was amazing (and you can read some other Roar members’ opinions of it in the editorials), but I found myself left with a few burning questions: Why Frogman? Why a taxidermy company? Why is the soundtrack not on Spotify?
So, resolved to find answers, I reached out to Mike Hall, one half of the duo that wrote HOT DAMN! (alongside Joshua Steele), and a Loveland High School graduate. Mr. Hall was incredibly nice, and the interview ended up being very long, so this article will only have a few questions. If you want to read the whole thing, you can find it on our website: lovelandroar.com.
Q: I read a couple conflicting articles [that said] you went to Loveland, and you knew about the Frogman [the entire] time, and another that said that you heard about it after you graduated. [Which is true?]
A: [I]t was long after I graduated that I even heard about the frog…that’s what's funny to me about the story, more than anything, is that I had to find out about it from a friend from Loveland, but years after the after graduating after even living in Loveland[.] [N]obody had talked about it. And the person who told me, his name was Kirk, he was an employee of mine…and he’s like, “Well you know about the Frogman.” I was like, “No, what are you talking about?” He was like, “You don't know about [Frogman?]”… and so, I stood there with my mouth open for like 15-20 minutes. He’s telling me this story, and it's like now I need to read about this…I need to find out, because there's no way that this story exists and I never heard about it.
Q: I wanted to ask…was [Joshua Steele]...confused by the whole thing?
A: He was the same way that I reacted to my friend telling me the story,...he was like, “…then what?” So I told him the whole thing, and he was like, “Yeah, no that’s what we’re doing [for our next musical]. That’s what we’re doing and nothing else. We have to write this.” And so we did. So, we started working[.] I was like “Well, what do you think[?] How do you [want to do this?]”… [H]e was like, “I think, bluegrass.” And that was, that was perfect for us, because…we didn't wanna tell the story making fun of the people who saw the frog. We didn't want to be blatant and say this person is, you know, crazy or [anything].
Q: So, I do actually have a question about that…were you aware that the police officer’s name, Roy Berkley, [was] one letter off from Ray Shockey, who…saw [Frogman]?
A: Yea, that was intentional. I kind of butted heads about that with Josh about that a little bit, because I was like “I…don't think we wanna you know, make fun of them.” [He] was like, “We’re not making fun of them, we’re not making fun of any of this. We are simply acknowledging there’s a silly story that is happening in this town.” [O]nce we decided on that, then it was like…what we can do is just make fun of how stories get bigger than they are, and…why people don’t believe or do believe.
Q: Did you expect [HOT DAMN!] to be so popular?
A: [W]hen we first did this show, it was for the Cincinnati-French festival in 2014, [and] it sold out, which was great! I think we marketed it correctly, and what we felt [was] attractive about the show was, it's an outlandish story and it's a bluegrass musical, which there aren’t too many [of]. Part of the reason why we decided to do a bluegrass musical was because we had done one together a couple of years prior[.] It was called “Cotton Patch Gospel,” [and] was basically a retelling of Jesus through the lens of folk songs and banjo playing. And it wasn’t the best, [but] audiences ate it up, ...and I think that was part of the reason we decided to go that route[.] [W]e were like, “This can be fun, the music can be fun and it’s accessible,” ‘specially for the Midwest.
Q: Have you thought about doing a run at LHS with the student theater?
A: I have not…I would not be opposed to it, honestly. I think that it would be fun.
Thank you to Mike Hall for agreeing to this interview! Again, this is a very shortened version. The complete version is full of details about the production of HOT DAMN!, changes between the two runs, anecdotes about Al Capone in Loveland, and so much more! You can find the full transcript at lovelandroar.com.
Cover photo courtesy of Unsplash
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