Carrying the Tune Broadway is just the latest stop for Spokane’s musically talented O’Neill-Long family BY LISA WAANANEN
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randon O’Neill won’t be coming home for Christmas this year, but that’s the way it goes if you’re part of a Broadway show premiering in less than 10 weeks. O’Neill’s role as a sidekick in Aladdin, the Disney musical adapted from the animated movie, is one he originated at the 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle, and he’s at home on the stage after a series of critically acclaimed lead roles. But Broadway is in some ways very far from where he got his start here in Spokane, where he grew up singing in church and with his family, and later leading the band Rough Congress. “I always dreamed that my voice would pay the bills, but never imagined musical theater as a venue for that,” he wrote from his dressing room in Toronto, where the cast is in the middle of three months of “pre-Broadway” rehearsals. Music, in many forms, runs in the O’Neill blood. Brandon’s father grew up singing, as did his father. His aunt, Annie O’Neill, is a singer who’s performed at the House of Blues in Las Vegas. Another aunt, BethAnn Long, recorded three albums and still performs. Three of her sons, plus another cousin, are sharing a stage for a first time in years this weekend at the Bartlett. Christmas caroling with the O’Neill family is a “four-part harmony affair,” Brandon says, and he and his cousins share memories
of sing-alongs and gatherings where their different styles had a common start. “Simple opportunities to hear and be heard and encouragement to raise your voice were common in our family,” he says. “This is how singers are born.”
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he way the story goes, it all started with Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag.” Anne O’Neill bought the sheet music and taught herself to play piano, and her children grew up sitting beside her as she played ragtime piano in North Dakota during the Great Depression. One of her sons, J. Pat O’Neill, sang in barbershop quartets, and with his wife Theresa brought up seven children singing harmonies in Spokane. “Whenever we were in the car going on a trip, Dad was singing,” says his son Shane, Brandon’s father. “He’s a whistler and a crooner and he sings all the time. It plants seeds into your mind and your soul about music — and then it’s up to the individual to take it from there.” As kids, Shane and his twin brother Kevin sang on Starlit Stairway, the live talent show televised in Spokane every Saturday night for decades. They performed when the renowned barbershop ...continued on next page
Brandon O’Neill , far right, in his role for Aladdin.
DECEMBER 19, 2013 INLANDER 41