In 2023, I saw Sweeney Todd on Broadway in New York City. It featured a phenomenal cast of Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford, Gaten Matarazzo and Jordan Fisher, and other very talented actors and actresses who just wanted to tell ‘the tale’ as best as possible. One of these actors was Nathan Salstone, a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University. Over the years, Nathan has been busy refining his skills as an actor and musician. He has appeared on stage in productions like Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and in television shows like FBI: Most Wanted. Nathan has also performed originals and covers of songs for audiences both in person and online. Most recently, Nathan released “Laundry Day,” the first in a series of songs that will be presented on a project that is still in the works. While there is much more to figure out with the project as a whole, the song itself is simple yet moving, upholding Nathan’s ambitions as a storyteller. I had the opportunity to chat with Nathan about the release, where he further explained the creation of the song, his overall goals as a performer, and why music means the world to him.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and time.
So, what is your background? Did you major in music?
I majored in drama. I went to Carnegie Mellon University, so I studied acting and musical theater out there. But it’s funny, I grew up in a very musical household. We had a piano and guitar that was the center of our family essentially, always. And when it was time to go off and study something, I was like, I’ve already got a pretty cohesive musical background, so I wanted to branch out and do something that I wasn’t terribly comfortable with. So, studying acting with some musical training was kind of the perfect melding of what I’m doing now, which is being able to do my music and acting, with storytelling all at the forefront of that.
Are you leaning more towards theater and acting more than music, or are you dabbling in all three equally?
Yeah, I’ve got my foot in everything I possibly can, and I’m begging for one of the things to want me. So, until then, I’m just kind of exploring all of the realms.
Were you ever asked about a backup in case things didn’t work out?
I was really fortunate and unfortunate. The fortunate aspect is that a lot of people took a chance on me when I was young. Even going back, I came from a bit of a broken household. It was kind of all over the place, and I totally lashed out and acted out, and the only thing that I ever latched onto was theater and music. And from an early age, I guess I put all the passion that I had into that. I almost flunked out of high school and almost didn’t get accepted into colleges, but the people that did take a chance on me changed my life—whether that was my high school drama teachers or getting accepted into Carnegie Mellon—it was like, they sat me down and said, ‘We shouldn’t have accepted you based on your grades, but we had to ask the university to bypass this because you had tens across the board in your auditions.’ That was the biggest light switch moment for me to be like, ‘Oh, I need to get my shit together and work really stinking hard.’ Since then, I just have not stopped working and reading. It’s such a difference when you’re asked to do something for a grade versus for your love. So no, I never really had a backup, and luckily, I never was asked to.
But my answer, which I can say in hindsight now, which is still so much a part of my life, is psychology. So interested in psychology and maybe that’s because I’m an actor and a songwriter and a musician. I mean, so much of the place I write from is from catharsis or for therapy, and it’s been like that since I was a kid.
You released “Laundry Day” last month, and I was looking around on Spotify and saw you had an EP on there and some songs you were credited on. So, is this the first original that you’re putting out?
During the pandemic, I was in a relationship, and we started a band called The Two of Us. So, we’ve got our own EP out there called Three Rooms. It’s something that I’m so deeply, deeply proud of. It was one of the most rewarding, artistic experiences of my life—getting to write and create and make beautiful music with a partner, who I’m no longer with but I’m still friends with—and I’ll cherish that EP for as long as I live. That was about two or three years of just singing and writing with that one person, so when we split up, writing by myself was the scariest thing. I personally don’t think I’m a good enough songwriter to write songs for other people, so that was not in the cards for me—at least, not yet. If anybody reading this thinks otherwise, I’d be honored.
What I did was fall back into my roots of what I did as a child, which was accidentally, consciously or subconsciously, write from a place of catharsis. And all of that was about the breakup and…throughout this process, which was the breakup and moving out of where we lived together and all this stuff, my therapist at the time reminded me of the Shel Silverstein book The Missing Piece, which has since become one of my biggest inspirations. It’s about this little Pac-Man looking creature who’s rolling around and singing this song, ‘I’m lookin’ for my missin’ piece, Hi-dee-ho, here I go, Lookin’ for my missin’ piece;’ and I thought, that is a song. Also, it’s everybody’s story, and my inspiration from that was to write my own ‘Missing Piece’ in the form of songs, a song cycle, or a show or an album.
It’s all about connection in the end.
Exactly, it really is! It’s about feeling less alone. Feeling seen, feeling like your problems or whatever you’re going through is as serious as it needs to be for you, but that you’re not alone in it. I’m trying to put that out and just say, whatever you’re feeling—learning that your crappy relationship with your parents or your hardships from this breakup or just feeling alone or feeling lost or what have you—is normal and you’re not alone in it.
Do you have any other songs that you’re planning on releasing or was this kind of a standalone thing?
So, this song is a part of the grand scheme of, you know, Untitled, Inspired by ‘Missing Piece’ Project. I was just asked, actually, by a theater up in the Catskills that does a new works festival to come up and develop my album, which I’m gonna call a song cycle right now. We’ll have a week of development and then perform the 60 to 75 minutes of music by myself with my guitar for audiences.
I’ve done some Sofar shows, and with that, you get 20 to 25 minutes of a set. What I’ve been trying to do over the past few years is piece together what this album or show or song cycle could look like. This will probably be my buzz word of this interview, but storytelling is always at the forefront of that. I really like to piece together a beginning, middle, and end; even if that’s just three or four songs, I want to tell a story. A story about hardship, and a hump, and getting over it, and finding something at the end.
Do you have a timeline for the untitled project?
Well, there’s two things that are holding me back. One is that I don’t know how it ends. And there’s something quite beautiful in that. The other thing that’s stopping me from getting the rest of this thing made is that I really am looking for a producer who is as passionate about this as I am. And because it’s so important to me, I’m taking my time with it, and I don’t have a date just yet. But there’s a lot in development that I feel really grateful for this year, and that starts with being asked to come up and develop this show or album with this theater company.
One of my biggest inspirations, which is why I’m going through this theater company, is Benjamin Scheuer—a songwriter who wrote a piece called The Lion. The Lion was a one-man show that was performed Off-Broadway and made an album. It was just kind of what I want to do, which is just telling a story through song. So, because theater is so in my wheelhouse, I do really want to blend the two. And yeah, it could stand alone as a song or an album, but the place that I want it to come from is this arc, is this story that one can get through.
I remember watching the music video for “Laundry Day” on your Instagram, and I thought it really represents the song. It kind of leaves on a cliffhanger almost, so to elaborate on the storytelling aspect, are you going to continue the narrative visually with the videos for the rest of the songs?
That’s a good question; I haven’t envisioned entirely how the rest would look just yet. It’s funny because “Laundry Day” right now is one of the later songs in the story. It’s like, ‘Oh, crap. How did you end up there?’ And what I love is that it ends with opening the curtains and letting the light in.
So, this idea—again with the ‘I don’t know how it ends’—is, whether you’re sad and you can’t get out of bed or you’ve got depression or you’re drinking yourself to sleep, just the simple act of opening the curtains is like a freakin’ win. Throughout the music video that we shot, it’s waking up, having a tough time even looking at myself in the mirror, making coffee, smoking a joint because that’s the only way to get out of bed sometimes… I know it sounds so silly, but it’s kind of real sometimes. And then just doing the laundry, doing the thing that you’re afraid to do, making your bed… Sometimes when you’re in that place, that’s enough. I really can’t highlight that enough.
It’s about the little things sometimes.
Especially with social media, we focus on these ideal lifestyles and these ideal worlds; we want to look like we’re so busy, or we’re so important, or we’re so pretty, or whatever you want to say with social media culture… The reason I love sharing my music—and the reason I also don’t start a TikTok—is because I don’t do it for the views or the likes, but I like having everything that I can do in one place. And I like to do covers of songs and post those online, and it’s really just probably because I’m in a funk and this song speaks to me and I hope it speaks to somebody else, with my spin on it or my version of covering a song.
So, speaking about things that are important, are there certain things on your bucket list that you’re hoping to accomplish some day?
That’s such a good question. Yeah, I’ve always dreamed about touring as a musician. Even if it’s like, I’m your guitarist and I’m your backup singer—I would love to do that. I want to play the coolest, famous places. One day, I was at a Carnegie Hall concert with some friends—some very, very famous friends who like, are untouchable, famous human beings. We were immediately escorted at intermission at this Carnegie Hall concert to go up to a private bar. I’m the last to walk into this bar, and as I’m walking in, this guy stops me. He’s like, ‘Excuse me,’ and in my head, I’m not famous enough to get into this private area. He goes, ‘Are you Nathan Salstone?’ I’m like, what in what world… And similar to you, which I’m just so grateful for, he said, ‘I’ve been following you and your music on social media and I want to have a meeting with you because I’ve wanted to get you into our concert series with Carnegie Hall.’ They put this event together for me, and as they introduced me, he said, ‘Nathan, while you’re playing here in the building of Carnegie Hall, we refuse to allow this to be your Carnegie Hall debut because that will come.’ Ever since he said that, it’s just been a dream of mine. That venue, I mean, it’s just so beautiful and so historical and amazing.
Before I let you go, do you have any final thoughts?
I mean, if I haven’t made it clear, I just think music is so important. I really do. And that’s such a simple, silly thing to say. But as a kid, it was a mode of communication. I was unable to really express myself, and I still feel—when I’m in a situation—unable to express myself. There will be days where something will happen to me and I’ll go through this crazy two-day spiral, and then it’ll hit me two days later and a song comes out of it—I’m like, that’s what I was going through. If we could all give each other the grace of not needing the answer in the moment and immediately, I just hope everybody can have that process. Whether it’s journaling, writing things down, being able to efficiently… I mean, my goal would be to be able to efficiently communicate in the moment. But to have a song come out of it in the end to ideally help others, that’s my goal. I just think with so much disconnect and so much ugliness in this world and divide, I just want music to bring people together. That’s all, that’s my goal.
You can listen to “Laundry Day” here.
