What do you do after retiring as a senior partner with Edward Jones and co-founding a music publishing company in Nashville? If your name is Gary Reamey ’77, you produce a Broadway musical, of course.
In the small Bucks County Playhouse, 90 minutes south of New York, “Hard Road to Heaven” made its world premiere last month, marking just another step in the journey to New York City.
It’s a hard road to heaven, and as it turns out, a hard road to Broadway as well.
Way back in 1983, when Dolly and Kenny were islands in the stream and Reba couldn’t even get the blues, Carnegie Mellon-educated David Spangler and country music songwriter Jerry Taylor were working on a new musical — one that aimed to blend the stories and sounds of Broadway and Nashville.
Decades after funding for the show had dried up and original co-writer Jerry Taylor passed away, Spangler had assembled a new team, consisting of Nashville songwriter Marty Dodson and playwright Willy Holtzman.
By that time in 2014 — after taking early retirement from running Edward Jones’ Canadian operations — Reamey and his wife, Joanne, had just founded SNG Music on Nashville’s Music Row.
“They asked if Joanne and I would like to produce the show,” Reamey said. “We said yes.”
Though adept at running an international investment firm and producing music in Nashville, the theater world sang to a different tune.
“I started going to New York City regularly to attend classes to learn how to be a producer,” Reamey said. “At one point in time, I was sitting in a small group with Lin Manuel Miranda as he talked through the ups and downs of producing and things he learned doing ‘Hamilton.’”
“Hard Road to Heaven” tells the story of three generations of female singer-songwriters. The show’s leading lady Jenny, played by Jackie Burns, Broadway’s longest-running Elphaba, sets out from her small southern town to make it big in the male-dominated Nashville music scene, where her good morals come in conflict with the glitz and sleaze of life on the road. In the midst of the chaos, secrets come out, feelings are hurt and the family’s bond is tested.
“In the end she realizes that money and fame don’t make her happy,” Reamey said. “What makes her happy is being in control of her own destiny and being with the people she loves.”
As a husband, father of five and grandfather of four, keeping family at the heart of the story was key for Reamey.
“Jenny’s story is important because every woman has, or will deal with many of these same business and family issues,” he said. “Her story shows that happiness is possible for all of us”
The core of the show has remained unchanged for the last 40-some-odd years, but the words and songs within have been constantly edited and improved to tell the best possible story.
In December of 2023, Reamey and the “Hard Road” team assembled in the Big Apple to workshop the script. Crammed into a little studio space on 44th Street, Director Jackson Gay and a crew of actors and musicians — many of whom reprised their role this March — read lines, sang songs and discussed the message and trajectory of the musical. At the end of the week-long process, they held a showcase which the Reameys, as producers, used to promote the show to potential venues around the country.
Bucks County Playhouse answered the call. A barn-shaped diamond hidden in the sleepy town of New Hope, PA, “America’s Most Famous Summer Theater” added “Hard Road to Heaven” as its seventh world premiere since the playhouse reopened in 2012.
For three weeks in the month of March, more than 7,000 people poured into Bucks County to see the show, including a large cohort of Reamey’s Wabash family. President and First Lady Scott and Wendy Feller, Dean for College Advancement Michelle Janssen, Kip Chase ’03 and Dan Couch ’89 all made the 700-mile trip to support Gary and Joanne’s efforts.
The show the group saw in Bucks County, however, is not its final form.
“Even though we got standing ovations every night, the show is only about 85% ready for Broadway,” Reamey said. “The purpose of this out-of-town tryout was to get us closer to Broadway ready.”
With survey results collected during the show’s run, the creative team will keep making changes before the show goes back to New York for its Off-Broadway debut.
“Each step along the way gets more expensive,” Reamey said. “Out-of-town tryouts can run $600,000–$2,000,000, Off-Broadway productions can run $3–$5 million and a Broadway production for a musical of our type can run $12–$15 million, so it’s better to learn as much as you can before you get to Broadway.
“In general it takes about 10 years to get a show to Broadway,” he said. “We’re on track for that.”
After all the years of investment, it looks like a payday could be coming soon, but it was never about the money for the Reameys.
“To produce a show, you have to love theater,” he said. “Joanne and I started SNG Music with the mission to use country music to entertain the world. This musical is an extension of that mission.”
After an Off-Broadway production, the show hopes to head to the Great White Way, and if it’s successful there, a U.S. tour could be in its future. Before too long, “Hard Road to Heaven” might even be playing in a theater near you.