Leslie Odom Jr. had just won a Tony Award for playing Aaron Burr in Hamilton, but he was already putting the mega-hit musical in his rearview mirror. On the phone from New York a few days before his July 9 farewell performance on Broadway and a few weeks before his upcoming Bay Area concert debut, he talked about his big plans for this in-between time: "A few days just sitting on the couch."
Odom's career as a performer has had enough rough patches, also known as unemployment, that leaving the profession was a notion that had occasionally surfaced. But any of its residual flicker was extinguished when he became part of theater history in 2015 as one of the original stars of Hamilton �" a Broadway musical with enough cultural impact that it kept the Treasury Department from replacing Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill.
"I haven't even had a moment to process how different my life is from a year ago," he said as his rendezvous with the couch approached. "I need a little time to just unpack the many blessings I've been afforded this past year." And then gears will be switched as Odom relaunches himself as a singer and recording artist. The Bay Area will get the first viewing when Odom performs on July 23 at the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek, an off-site presentation by Feinstein's at the Nikko.
"I hear the concert is selling really well, and I am so grateful to these people who are taking this journey with me," Odom said. "It's been 15 years that I've devoted to theater and television and stuff, and I can now see the fruits of my labor that Hamilton has offered in such a completely healing and wonderful way. Now I want to devote as much time and love and work into the music thing."
But don't head to the concert expecting to hear anything from Hamilton or in the hip hop stylings that Lin-Manuel Miranda applied to early American history. A better indicator of what to expect can he heard on his recently released self-titled album that mixes together both classic songs and unexpected choices that gently sway in new arrangements and in Odom's smooth jazz-flavored voice. A song from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory feels at home next to "Autumn Leaves," and songs from such miles-apart musicals as Spring Awakening and Bells Are Ringing also fit comfortably together.
"Hamilton was really the different thing for me musically," Odom said. "Hip hop is not the world I've inhabited before. The music on the album is much closer to the music I grew up listening to, the kind of music that I idolized."
Leslie Odom Jr. is actually a rebooted version of an album of the same name he recorded pre-Hamilton with money raised from a Kickstarter campaign. "We had nothing but ambition and some love that we put into the album," Odom said. It was so under-the-radar that the record label that approached him after Hamilton raised his profile didn't even know it existed. But after Steve Greenberg, founder of S-Curve Records, gave it a listen, he offered Odom the chance at a do-over with an enhanced budget.
Some songs were switched out, and what was carried over was remixed for a more sophisticated sound. "We looked at hundreds of songs to get to the 10 on the album," Odom said. "Somewhere along the way you find a feel, a key, a groove that suits you, and you just follow that thing and hope for magic."
The work has paid off, and the album has already reached No. 1 on Billboard's jazz charts. But before making its investment, the record label wanted assurances from Odom that he was committed to taking his career in a new direction. "They said, 'We think you have a talent, but you really have to put some weight behind this thing, put in the time on your music career.'"
Odom was ready to make the move, though the degree of his availability didn't come into focus until recent months. "We were in contract negotiations about my possibly extending in Hamilton, and we decided on both sides that it might be best if I didn't. That show is much bigger than all of us, so they certainly don't need me to sell tickets. But that's okay because it has been such a thrilling ride that I have no complaints."
After he has used up his post-Hamilton couch time, Odom has time on the calendar to fill. He does know he will be back in the Bay Area in November for two performances for Bay Area Cabaret at the Fairmont Hotel, and he's at ease with the uncertainties of his new career direction.
"I am very used to being out of work," he said. "I've been a professional artist for a really long time, and Hamilton is the very first job I had for a whole year in my entire life."
Before Hamilton, Odom's highest-profile work was in the TV series Smash, playing a gay cast member of a troubled Broadway-bound musical about Marilyn Monroe. In its second season, he got more screen time as his character became romantically involved with one of the musical's creators, played by Christian Borle.
"I didn't want it to be titillating because I know as a black man how tiresome it is when people think that somehow the love that my wife and I share is exotic or is different or is less valuable than any other kind of love," Odom said. "If you can believe this, what was most important to me about that portrayal was that it be boring."
Leslie Odom Jr. will perform at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek on July 23. Tickets are $45-$85. Call (925) 943-7469 or go to lesherartscenter.org.