The Violent Femmes’ excellently snotty, acerbic songwriting doesn’t exactly scream “showtunes,” but that isn’t deterring Matt Williams and Gregory Victor, who are taking to Kickstarter to fund Hitting the Ground, a musical built around the band’s songs. Here’s what it’s about:
Hitting the Ground is about a group of strangers — a drug-addicted rocker, a beauty queen with a past, a comedian, a war-torn solder and a Rolling Stone reporter about to get the story of his life — who set out on a USO tour together. Instead, they share an unexpected adventure and more than a few truths. Their itinerary changes drastically when they are forced to jump from their airplane to avoid a crash-landing, only to land in the remote Appalachian mountains. When they encounter an isolated community of devout mountain Shakers, no one is prepared for what happens next; the two cultures collide and combust. As the search planes circle, unforeseen love is discovered, sides are taken, guns are drawn, moonshine flows and a flood of biblical proportions threatens to wash everything and everyone down the mountain.
Hokay. They’ve got $1,263 of their $6,000 funding goal raised so far. Pulling off the money isn’t the only obstacle, however: the Kickstarter only seeks to fund rehearsals for the musical’s first reading, which Femmes frontman Gordon Gano would attend, then give approval (or not) for the production to continue. Help fund it here.
