Bonus Episode #8: Wow, I can’t believe it’s almost the end of the podcast! When I started this bad boy, it seemed like such a long road ahead of me, and now here it is, just weeks from the GRAND FINALE! OK, enough sentimental talk. I’ll save that for the actual last episode.

I’m here with another bonus/filler song (i.e. a song not in the songbook). It’s the song I wrote for my best friend, Tracy Katz, on the occasion of her wedding to Mark Paladini ten years ago.

Tracy and I met as teens at Stagedoor Manor, Performing Arts Training Center, a summer theatre camp where theatre geeks like me could thrive amongst fellow theatre-lovers all summer, while we mustered up the courage to return to the oppression of our local high schools. (For more about this, check out the excellent, new documentary, Stagedoor.)

Tracy went on to build a career around the role of Little Red Riding Hood in Into the Woods, which she still occasionally and convincingly/brilliantly plays today, although her main gig is raising my two gorgeous godkids in Virginia Beach.

In 1996, after 17 years of best-friendship, Tracy insisted I write a song specifically for her wedding, and I didn’t even bother putting up a fight. After all, I was her Man of Honor, and Men of Honor must often go above and beyond the call of duty. After multiple, failed attempts to come up with a funny song, I ultimately opted to write this song from the heart. “When It Comes to You” was recorded 6/11/06.

By the way, I don’t know what I was thinking when I said Mark had been a casting director in New York. Most of his casting career has happened in Los Angeles. And the name of the sci-fi series I couldn’t think of is Babylon 5!