Music

Grammy Preview: Jamestown Revival’s Outsiders Odyssey

Nominated for Best Musical Score, the Austin duo reflect on their work bringing S.E. Hinton’s classic book to Broadway and its enduring appeal to audiences of all ages

A portrait of two men standing in front of a truck

Photo: Grace Herr

Jonathan Clay (left) and Zach Chance of Jamestown Revival.

The members of Jamestown Revival are still having pinch-me moments. Though the Austin-based duo, longtime friends Jonathan Clay and Zach Chance, have released four studio albums of intimate Americana, they’ve also had a side gig: The pair wrote the score for the hit Broadway musical The Outsiders, based on author S.E. Hinton’s classic 1967 book that chronicles the class conflict between the Greasers and the Socs in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The score won a Tony Award in 2024, and this Sunday, they’re the betting favorites for Best Musical Score at the Grammy Awards. A win would put them halfway to the EGOT (garnering an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony; the pair say they’re open to scoring television or movies). “Never in a million years did I think we would come close to any letter of the EGOT,” Chance says. “It just blows my mind.”

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The two started working on the score nearly ten years ago after getting a call from the musical’s producers. They wrote two songs fairly quickly—including “Stay Gold,” the show’s emotional climax—but started in earnest during the pandemic. It’s been a smashing success: The musical has been extended for a multi-year run on Broadway, and a touring production will begin in September. Below, the pair reflect on a creative process that pushed their limits, the multigenerational appeal of the story, and where they’re headed next.  

I feel like every kid in America read The Outsiders in middle school.

Jonathan Clay: I read it in eighth grade. My dear English teacher, Miss Masterson, was adamant that we all read it, and it was probably the first fiction book I ever read. I was not a big reader. I’m still not, but I got through it, which was a feat for me. But there was fighting with knives. Who doesn’t like that? 

Zach Chance: I just remember it felt really dangerous, right? But I’m still surprised that throughout this process, we talked to many people who had read it when they were, you know, thirteen or fourteen, and now their kids are still reading it. 

JC: Many parents and kids are going together to see the show, and anytime you create a piece of art that can be cross-generational, that’s a really cool thing.

Was there musical theater in your background?

ZC: We were completely ignorant of what we would get into. We went to school for musicals in the ten years we wrote this. The Book of Mormon, Hamilton, Wicked, the big juggernauts. But then also, Come from Away and The Color Purple.

JC: My Fair Lady, Beetlejuice, Cabaret, Moulin Rouge. We saw at least a dozen in person. The musical director, Justin Levine, gave us plenty of homework.

Yet you’d started writing material before that immersion. 

JC: We wrote the first couple of songs because we had to prove to the producers that we were a viable option for writing this thing. The first year was writing songs, getting feedback, going up and meeting with them. But for the past eight years, it’s been a concerted effort.

I imagine the editing process is pretty rugged for a Broadway musical. 

JC: You have to be ruthless, not only in the editing process but also in the cutting process. We just absolutely loved a couple of songs, and they brought really cool moments to the show. But for one reason or another, the creative team decided that the songs had to go. It’s a bummer, but it’s not about your songs. Everybody is serving the show, from the choreographer to the writer to the songwriters. We had to be willing to cut lines, cut songs together, trim songs, and crack songs back open.

Zach, what did you learn from this whole process?

ZC: A song is never finished. The only song that didn’t change in the process was “Stay Gold.” We wrote it early on one of our first tries. We sent it in, and they loved it, so the song never changed. Other than that, every song was, as they say, “You never finish writing a musical; you just run out of time.” 

JC: By the time it ended, I was ready to run out of time [laughs].

How did it influence your songwriting for the band?

JC: It developed our ability to turn stories that were not our own into songs that became our own. During COVID, we took Louis L’Amour’s short stories and turned them into three-minute songs. And I really feel like all the work we did on the musical helped us in our ability to do that.

ZC: It’s fun to be able to step outside of yourself and your stories. We had a road map from the book. The book has such a legacy, so we got to stand on [Hinton’s] shoulders. It was fun to enter these characters and allow the expression to come from a different place.

It had to be a powerful moment when you were in the theater and it all came together.

ZC: We’ve all cried quite a bit [laughs]. There would be moments in workshops where we’d just read from the scripts, and people were performing from their seats, all sitting in a circle. And it would just hit hard enough that you could see the potential. So there were many little flashes where you’re like, “This feels like there’s something here.”

Did you read reviews? They say you should never read reviews.

JC: Zach and I don’t come from a world where critics matter. We put out an album, and it doesn’t really matter if it gets reviewed. It matters if our fans like it or not. In comparison, theater critics are a minimal number of people who can significantly affect the success or failure of your work. I would mull over and pore through the reviews. Zach and Justin said, “You have to stay off the internet. You’re not allowed to read the comments section. Don’t read any more reviews. F*** them all. We’ll be fine; stay the course.” So they talked me off quite a few ledges.

How far along are you on the next Jamestown record?

ZC: We’re ramping back up, so we’ll dive in with a lot of force this year. 

JC: We have five songs that we like, but we haven’t visited them in a while, so who knows, we might go back and say, “These all suck.” But we love writing music together. I think that’s when we’re at our best. There’s no other form of creation like it.


Matt Hendrickson has been a contributing editor for Garden & Gun since 2008. A former staff writer at Rolling Stone, he’s also written for Fast Company and the New York Times and currently moonlights as a content producer for Ohio University’s Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Service in Athens, Ohio.


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