Hit songwriters Clark, McAnally discuss their Broadway hit 'Shucked' coming to Nashville

Nashville is among 30 cities scheduled to view the critically acclaimed, Grammy-nominated and Tony Award-winning Broadway musical "Shucked."

It will play at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center from Nov. 5-10, 2024.

Drama Desk and Tony Award-winner Jack O'Brien directs a musical featuring Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally-penned music. The vaunted duo of Nashville songwriters have over two dozen Grammy nominations and 50 years of combined country music industry experience between them. They spoke at length to The Tennessean about the powerful symbolism attached to the broad appeal of a story about a small-town woman attempting to figure out why corn is no longer growing in her hometown of Cob County.

Tickets are expected to be available in the summer of 2024 at https://shuckedmusical.com/#tickets.

To The Tennessean, Jennifer Turner, TPAC President and CEO offered the following statement:

“Perhaps the only thing hotter than Nashville right now is the one thing Americans everywhere can’t get enough of: corn. We are thrilled for ‘Shucked’ to be opening its national tour during our 2024-25 Broadway at TPAC season, and we can’t wait to provide a Music City homecoming for Brandy, Shane, and everyone from this hilarious new musical next November."

She adds that "touring Broadway in Nashville has become one of the hottest tickets in town," as "Beetlejuice," "Funny Girl," "Frozen," "Girl From The North Country," "Hairspray" and biographical Tina Turner musical "Tina" have already been announced on the venue's 2024 schedule.

TPAC season ticket renewals will open in February 2024 with new season ticket packages available starting in March or early April 2024.

More information is available at https://www.tpac.org.

"Shucked" will open in a polarized region of a politically divided nation

The moment that "Shucked" arrives in Nashville will be polarizing.

2024 will feature an unprecedented number of pop-star country acts who, in many cases, are male and many perceive align with cultural and social norms dissimilar to those of Clark and McAnally. Many of the tandem's biggest hits have been written for female artists, including Kacey Musgraves (2013's "Follow Your Arrow"), plus both are openly queer and progressive-minded creatives.

"Shucked" also opens in Music City on 2024's United States presidential election night.

Tennessee is a state where a pair of 2023 bills were signed into law by Republican Gov. Bill Lee banning gender-affirming health care and "adult-oriented" entertainment, including "male and female impersonators," from public property. It is also one where the Tennessee House of Representatives expelled Democratic Reps. Justin Pearson, of Memphis and Justin Jones, of Nashville, for leading gun reform protests from the House after the mass shooting at The Covenant School.

Couple this with Donald Trump being the presumed Republican Party nominee for president -- and that recent Wall Street Journal polls show Trump leading Democratic nominee and sitting American president Joe Biden by four points (47% to 43%) -- and it is entirely possible that "Shucked"'s Nashville premiere could exist as a liberal-minded outpost amid the pinnacle of conservative America's resurgence.

When told by The Tennessean that "Shucked" is opening on Election Night 2024, McAnally is stunned into an unaware silence.

"[The Nashville premiere] will be a serendipitous moment that will highlight the awareness, patience and understanding of people wanting to make a statement larger than a musical can allow."

"We live in a time where we are scrambling to understand our next best steps as a society," McAnally continues.

"'Shucked' is a simple little fable that is a metaphor for how we can all best live with and learn from each other."

Clark (who is nominated for six 2024 Grammy Awards for her latest, self-titled artist album) feels that the musical's fictional locale of Cob Country bears a striking similarity to her hometown of Morton, Washington -- a logging town populated by less than 1000 people.

She summarizes McAnally's thoughts with a wise statement:

"Because people tend to pay more attention to funny things, 'Shucked''s pro-community messages about letting outsiders in will resonate with everyone in attendance who could be dealing with the effects of living in such a divisive climate."

"Shucked" arrives at an inclusion-driven moment in country music's history

A decade ago, "Hee Haw" brand owners Opry Entertainment Group initially wanted to adapt parts of the legendary show's concepts to pair with Horn, McAnally and Clark's work to create a touring musical.

2013 was also a year where, over half of the time, country music's pop-crossover success was very narrowly best exemplified by works almost solely from Luke Bryan and Florida Georgia Line. Though yes, 2013 is also the year that Clark and McAnally's Kacey Musgraves hit "Follow Your Arrow" was the Country Music Association's Song of the Year, the song is nowhere to be found at the top of Billboard's country music radio or sales charts.

Country music's constant cultural and genre-specific evolutions met "Shucked" in a unique place in 2023. An ironic musical highlighting rural stereotypes married with a broadening country music fanbase looking to connect with timeless, blue-collar and small-town values associated with the genre.

"["Shucked" is] broadly expanding country music as a culture and genre built on exclusivity to one that was [more radically] inclusive and dismissive of homophobia and systemic racism," continues McAnally.

"Shucked" exists both before and after 2016's United States presidential election, 2020's Black Lives Matter protests and events like 2023's Love Rising concert for LGBTQ+ rights in Nashville. Thus, lines like "Out in Cob County, we stand up for civil rights, but we don't stand up much, because we're all straight and we're all white," (about a city walled by corn stalks) have drastically evolved from a tongue-in-cheek joke to possibly being reflective of America's governing political majority.

The version of "Shucked" touring in 2024 is more readily aware of the idea that the line between the perception of reality and satire is rapidly blurring in American life.

"Shucked"'s audience is not local, it's national

For Clark, the three years between "Shucked"'s expected -- and ultimately COVID-19 delayed -- opening in 2020 and 2023 was an unexpected "gift" that allowed the space between "catchy, humorous songs" and "powerful reflections on middle American values" to synergize.

The singer-songwriter is still incredulous at the unprecedented national growth of country music. She's excited to see "Shucked" added to the genre's broader national growth.

Fascinatingly, an Oct. 2023 New York Times report on "Shucked"'s announced Jan. 14, 2023, closing on Broadway notes that though the musical was a Tony Award winner, its gross revenues have remained "consistently middling" and "modest" with only 85 percent of all possible seats filled at the 1,200-seat Nederlander Theater on the week of Oct 8, 2023.

Clark offers a point about attendance that remains hopeful and undeterred.

"People from every age, racial background, sexual orientation and walk of life have gravitated to the musical as a place that forms a metaphorical community for three hours."

Clark is excited and hopeful when asked what she believes will come for "Shucked" in the next calendar year.

"Touring the nation well and a Broadway revival because America's insiders and outsiders are afraid of each other and the nation needs something from its citizens [to determine best] its future."

"['Shucked'] has evolved from something I never thought I'd know how to accomplish to a musical that has made people emotionally invested to the point of laughter and tears," McAnally continues.

"It's more than pretty melodies and appealing lyrics. Allowing people to see their authentic selves onstage creates an undefinable impact."

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Hit songwriters Clark, McAnally discuss their Broadway hit 'Shucked' coming to Nashville