agrees.’ Then Number 19 follows with an even stronger stream of urine. Says Woodard, “Or maybe she doesn’t!” erched high over a 20-foot ladder, wearing a torn white T-shirt and wellworn jeans, George Woodard is hanging spotlights atop the stage of the Stowe Town Hall Theatre for this weekend’s show, just one day away. As he secures a onesquare-foot spotlight, his longtime friend Rusty DeWees, known as “The Logger” to his fans throughout Vermont, confesses that he’s a bit nervous about George’s show, which he is producing. “We’ve only had a few days of advertising for George’s show,” says DeWees. “But George has a lot of fans around here and we’re hoping for a good turnout.” DeWees and Woodard have performed together over the years and like the seasoned performers they are, they have developed a kind of shorthand communication
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when it comes to working on stage together. Woodard walks onto the stage and starts strumming his six-string banjo. He tells Dewees, “After the intermission we could start with ‘Stop That Tickling Me.’ ” He begins plucking his well-worn banjo and DeWees slaps his right thigh to accompany Woodard as he sings: I wish I was in Alabama sittin’ on a rail. Sweet potato in my hand and possum by the tail. Woodard stops mid-verse and says to DeWees, “I got an idea. Before I begin you could come out—center stage—and say,
‘A lot of people have asked me, When are you and George Woodard goin’ to do somethin’ together?’ You keep talking. Then I come out and you keep talking like you don’t see me. Then I go back, all sheepish-like.” DeWees says, “I like it.” “Then I come out a second time and again you don’t acknowledge me because you’re still plugging your sponsors,” says Woodard. “The audience laughs. I go back offstage again.” Woodard continues, “I come out again. You ignore me. I look straight at the audience and say, ‘Looks like we ain’t goin’ to do nothin’ together tonight neither.’ Bigger laugh. Then I start into ‘Stop That Tickling Me.’ ” “That’s good,” says DeWees. “Let’s mark it.” Says Woodard: “After that I’ll go back, pick up my guitar and then go into ‘900 Miles’.” He crosses the stage, picks up his 1948 Gibson six-string guitar and begins singing: I’m walking down this track, I’ve got tears in my eyes, Trying to read a letter from my home. If this train runs me right I’ll be home tomorrow night. I’m nine hundred miles from my home. And I hate to hear that lonesome whistle blow.
For the next several hours Woodard and DeWees block out the entire show, running through cues, songs, and jokes. They spend almost half an hour rehearsing their a capella duet finale, “Ya Got Trouble” from Meredith Wilson’s 1957 Broadway musical “The Music Man.” t’s a few minutes after 7 p.m. on Saturday and George Woodard seems relaxed as he mingles with some of the more than 125 audience members who have paid $25 for the first night of his two-night “George Woodard’s One Man Comedy and Music Show.” But he’s nervous. Although he has performed in countless productions, from local plays and musicals to Hollywood movies, this is his first one-man show. For the last week he’s been arranging
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