by Jon Caramanica NY Times Sept. 14, 2015

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/15/theater/brandy-clark-and-shane-mcanally-on-moonshine-that-hee-haw-musical.html?_r=1&referrer

DALLAS — Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally sat across from each other at one end of a long conference table in a long conference room on a high-up floor at the Wyly Theater here. It was an early September morning, and they were tired.

The night before had been the first full dress rehearsal of “Moonshine: That Hee Haw Musical,” for which they had been writing songs since 2013 — an extension of the long working relationship that has made them two of the most in-demand and disruptive songwriters in country music.

For six weeks they had been at the Dallas Theater Center fine-tuning in advance of this Friday’s opening. Generally, though, their work takes place 650 miles to the northeast in Nashville, where “musical” is a four-letter word.

“I remember a big country star,” Mr. McAnally said — he turned toward Ms. Clark and whispered, “You know who I’m talking about, but I’m not going to throw him under the bus,” before continuing – “said that he hated ‘Mama’s Broken Heart’ and ‘Better Dig Two’ because they sounded like musicals.”

Ms. Clark giggled.

In 2013, "Mama's Broken Heart," about a woman losing her grip after losing her other half, was a big hit for Miranda Lambert, reaching No. 2 on Billboard's hot country songs chart. And the grim tale of toxic love "Better Dig Two" hit No. 1, putting the Band Perry on the map.

Nashvile cognoscenti rever Ms. Clark and Mr. McAnally for songs like these, with their pointillistic detail and emotional arcs that don't neatly resolve. And over the past few years, as a pair of convention-tweakers in a town in thrall to its conventions, they've had a meaningful influence, thanks especially to their work with the upstart Kacey Musgraves, and to Ms. Clark's burgeoning solo career. (She released her debut album, "12 Stories," in 2013.)

As country music progressives and sometime heretics, they were ideal candidates to take on musical theater. "We just naturally lean toward saying things that are so image-based that it lends itself to theater," Mr. McAnally said. (Both are gay, a Nashville rarity but a musical-theater shrug.)

Their brand of mild redneck revisionism is central to "Moonshine," a musical in the key of "Hee Haw," the television variety show that during its run from 1969 to 1992 painted a fun-house version of rural America, lowbrow but knowing. (Reruns are on the RFD network.)

"Moonshine" dates to 2011, when the Opry Entertainment Group wanted to extend the "Hee Haw" franchise. It hired Robert Horn to write the book for a musical based on the "Hee Haw" world, and began a search for songwriters to imbue it with genuine country authority. Ms. Clark and Mr. McAnally were hired in early 2013. (Amusingly enough, "Hee Haw" itself was developed not in Nashville but by Canadians."

The musical needed to be “tender and honest, while also acknowledging flaws and personal differences,” said Steve Buchanan, president of the Opry Entertainment Group, which owns “Hee Haw.” He added, “We say, ‘Laugh with, not at.’ ”

The story line focuses on doe-eyed Misty Mae (Rose Hemingway), who flees her home in tiny Kornfield Kounty — and her childhood love, Bucky Jr. (Ken Clark) — for life in the big city of Tampa. There, she falls under the spell of Gordy (Justin Guarini), a slickster with bad intentions. Together, they return to Kornfield Kounty, where true love and true faith prevail.

Like Ms. Clark and Mr. McAnally’s best songs, “Moonshine” tweaks rural pieties and stereotypes. Kornfield Kounty, the same rural anywhere that was the setting of “Hee Haw,” is home to a moonshine-selling vixen, a wisdom-spouting simpleton, a genial but wise elder and more, but they all play their roles with a wink. (“We’re all straight, and we’re all white,” the opening number goes.)

Some character names derive from “Hee Haw,” as do some signature gestures, like the one in which heads poke up out of a cornfield to tell a joke. (Both “Moonshine” and “Hee Haw” merchandise is for sale in the lobby.)

Gary Griffin, the director of “Moonshine,” called “Hee Haw” “a burlesque fable about small-town life,” adding: “Burlesque doesn’t have to be cheap. It can have logic and sophistication, but it allows us to laugh at things that are base level.” (He is one of several Broadway fixtures working on “Moonshine,” a list that includes the Tony-winning orchestrator Stephen Oremus.)

Dallas Theater Center, which has lately helped develop new musicals with an eye on New York, agreed last year to stage “Moonshine,” producing it with Opry Entertainment and Fox Theatricals. Kevin Moriarty, the theater’s artistic director, sees Ms. Clark and Mr. McAnally in the Tin Pan Alley tradition of bottom-up collaborators, not top-down dictators.

The music of “Moonshine” feels very much of the Clark-McAnally oeuvre. Country music hasn’t always been at home in musical theater — think Roger Miller’s “Big River” or Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5,” but not much else — though in the age of jukebox musicals and “Hamilton,” a show steered by pop-music natives may be the next logical step.

“If this project works at whatever level — if Brandy and Shane want to make more theater pieces; if musical-theater audiences don’t say, ‘This is not my music’; if people buy tickets,” Mr. Moriarty said, “it absolutely could be an important step forward for the art form.”

For six months, the two songwriters, who had never worked on a musical before, set aside Mondays to focus exclusively on “Moonshine,” a shift from the sort of for-hire songwriting that fills most of the rest of their work lives. Here, they were being asked to help invent the characters, adding shading with each new number. (Early versions of “Moonshine” included songs drawn from “Hee Haw,” like “Gloom, Despair and Agony on Me.” They are gone now.)

They were especially drawn to Lulu (Ryah Nixon), Misty Mae’s brassy moonshine-selling cousin, who drives some of the biggest twists in the show. Side characters are something of a Clark-McAnally specialty, especially since for years, before the two were in demand, they wrote songs for “this abstract artist,” Mr. McAnally said.

“We have a big stack of songs that no one would touch because this artist that we made up is this 40-year-old lesbian,” he said, as they both broke down laughing. “Thank God Brandy ended up making a record.”

Nashville songwriting is partly a numbers game, with an emphasis on high productivity and complete packages, the opposite of the endless revision required of a Broadway-aimed musical. But efficiency is a boon here, especially when late-game revisions require whole new songs on the fly. In fact, Ms. Clark and Mr. McAnally wrote the closing bit for the show’s narrators on the Saturday before the first preview, via text message.

Broadway veterans like Mr. Guarini have been impressed. “It will take some of the most wonderful songwriters a week” to write a song from scratch, he said. “With Brandy and Shane, it’s a half-hour.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 15, 2015, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘Hee Haw,’ the Musical. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe