Pacifica Performance Showcase - Friday, June 5, 2026

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1. and female who are just doing remarkable work.
2. And this play is no exception.
3. It's really incredible.
4. And in the second half, I'll be running my prerecorded interview
5. with singer-songwriter John Ford Coley,
6. who, if you're as old as I am,
7. you will remember that wonderful duo,
8. England Dan and John Ford Coley,
9. who had so many hits,
10. Nights Are Forever Without You,
11. We'll never have to say goodbye again.
12. I'd really love to see you tonight.
13. Love is the answer.
14. Just many.
15. And he's still touring.
16. And so we'll be talking to him about his gig tomorrow at the Downey Theater.
17. And we do love to reach out to our visitors all up and down the coast with our KPFK signal.
18. And before I am joined by actor Petey McGee, who stars in Primary Trust, I'd like to announce that L.A. Theatre Works this Sunday at 10 p.m. is Hold These Truths by Jean Sakata.
19. And it, of course, always has an all-star cast, but it stars Ryun Yu as Gordon Hibayashi.
20. And it's a story of, of course, World War II. In Seattle, University of Washington student Gordon Hirabayashi fights the U.S. government's orders to forcibly remove and incarcerate all people of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast.
21. As he struggles to reconcile his country's betrayal with his passionate belief in the U.S. Constitution, he begins a 50-year journey toward a greater understanding of America's triumphs and a confrontation with its failures.
22. So needless to say, it's highly relevant to this day and age.
23. So tune in this Sunday, 10 p.m., L.A. Theatre Works, Hold These Truths by Gene Sakata.
24. And now I'm so pleased to welcome via Zoom actor Petey McGee, who stars as Kenneth in Primary Trust, which opened about a week ago at the Mark Taper Forum.
25. Welcome, Petey.
26. Hi, thank you.
27. I am so happy that you were able to join me.
28. You know, I first saw this play down at La Jolla Playhouse several years ago.
29. And I loved it so much, I kept the program, and I said, I'm going to keep an eye out for this play and where it's going to be.
30. So when I saw that the Mar Taper Forum was going to be performing it, I was very excited about that.
31. And I thought, gee, I wonder if it'll be as good as the La Jolla Playhouse one.
32. And believe me, it not only is, I think it probably even surpassed it a bit.
33. But congratulations. I was deeply, deeply moved by your work and by this piece.
34. So congratulations, first of all.
35. Thank you. Thank you so much.
36. Now, how did you come to perform in this piece?
37. Did they approach you? Did you audition? What was the process?
38. Yes. So I have a little bit of a past with the piece.
39. It started off in, this piece started in 2023, I want to say,
40. in New York at a roundabout So it was off Broadway first And for that off Broadway production I had auditioned back then And I got pretty close to being in it that time but they went
41. in the end, they went a different direction. But I had known the director before even auditioning.
42. I knew Canood. It was the same director who did it here, who did it at La Jolla. And they did it
43. then in New York. And so I auditioned then, kind of forgot about it. I saw that they were doing it
44. in La Jolla like a couple years ago. Didn't really think much of it. And then I just, I got a call
45. from my agents. I was in Philly actually filming a movie and I got a call from my agents telling me
46. about the callback for this. So I'm like in the middle of filming, trying to film a self-tape
47. to send in. I had to take time off of the shoot that I was on to go back to my hotel. It was
48. chaos. I had such a hard time doing it, but it was well worth it. I'm so glad that I did do it
49. and that I am here now.
50. Well, it's hard to explain to people what it's about,
51. but suffice it to say you play Kenneth,
52. who is the lead with a supporting cast of characters.
53. Well, in fact, not really supporting.
54. They're all integral, and some of them play multiple roles.
55. But what a talented group.
56. It's about, I would say, love, of course.
57. love, loss, friendship, mental illness, childhood trauma, understanding and trust.
58. It's really quite remarkable, Ebony Booth's facility for navigating the human condition in such a simple but profound way.
59. This dialogue just must be remarkable to perform.
60. It really is.
61. It really is.
62. It's so natural, so poignant.
63. Like, I mean, you kind of hit the nail on the head.
64. It's so, it's, you know, it's the simplest thing,
65. but she brilliantly takes this simple life, simple living,
66. what some would see as mundane or consider mundane,
67. and she puts it under a microscope
68. and really kind of tells about, like,
69. what we all feel at some point or another.
70. Like, I always say that if you watch this play,
71. there's some part that no matter who you are, there's some part that you can connect to. And
72. Ebony does such a beautiful job of taking that and highlighting just like a regular person who's
73. experienced, you know, trauma and experienced grief and experienced loss and experienced
74. loneliness and all those human feelings. And she highlights it so well. It's an honor to bring life
75. to those words. And it takes place in this small town. We get to know some of the people in this
76. town. And there's kind of another character in the play, I would say, a place called Wally's,
77. which Kenneth loves and hangs out at every single day and sort of saves his sanity when he needs it.
78. And I just love the sense of the town and the people in it. And I think you come out of this
79. play thinking, and it's really wonderful when a piece can do this, you know, maybe I need to
80. understand a little bit more what other people are going through. Maybe I need to show a little
81. more kindness when I don't know what somebody else is going through. And it's full of surprises.
82. We don want to give anything away but this ensemble is really integral how you all interact Talk a little bit about your fellow castmates Love them to death
83. They are my newfound family.
84. It was really interesting coming into this piece because I am the new guy on campus.
85. Everybody who's in the play now has done the play before.
86. um so i was stepping into that role as kind of the leader um leading the play and kind of setting the
87. tone for how the whole play goes so i was very intimidated by that um in the beginning wondering
88. how i'm gonna fit in because they i'm like they already know the play they know the story so well
89. i don't want to like mess up what they have going already um but then you know i learned um through
90. through our beautiful director and through the cast who are so supportive i learned that it was
91. my job to come in and kind of mess up what they had going and so just build it anew and we built
92. a new thing um and and the biggest the biggest word i can think of when it comes to my cast is
93. just the support um and that's that's in all ways that like even every day when i'm performing still
94. i feel the support so much from from luke who's a big part of the plague his music yeah the music
95. I didn't even mention that.
96. That's very integral.
97. Yes, absolutely.
98. And I feel that support from him and all during the rehearsal process.
99. I felt the support from my cast members, and they're all so talented.
100. I'm like, oh, my God, how did I luck up in such a group of talented folks?
101. Oh, my God.
102. Well, I have to say, you know, I had a couple remarkable experiences while watching this.
103. And again, going in, I already liked the play.
104. But there's a unique thing that I thought that you did.
105. And that first of all, the use of silence, the silence of Kenneth in this piece is so remarkable because it's such an active silence.
106. And you could hear a pin drop.
107. I mean, the audience wasn't rustling.
108. Nobody was coughing.
109. Nobody was it.
110. You could hear a pin drop.
111. and you know usually other than a pinter pause uh silence is deadly a pause can be deadly if you can
112. drive a truck through it but the use of silence uh by you i think is also a testament to your
113. ability to really engage the audience in kenneth's silence because so much is going on in his head
114. and we don't know all of it but we can sense it if that makes sense absolutely absolutely yeah
115. The pauses are, you know, a lot of the whole play is a view into the inner workings of Kenneth and what's going on in his mind and what's going on in his head.
116. And I think those pauses are a moment where he goes into his own head to the part that he's not letting everyone else see.
117. You know, not letting everyone else see.
118. And living in those, it was hard.
119. Honestly, those pauses were hard in the beginning because they're kind of it's built into the play that Kenneth has these moments.
120. And it was hard for me to take. I was taking the moments and it was it was shout out to Canoe, to the director who was like, no, take longer.
121. Wow. Yeah. Those pauses need to be longer. You need to live in them.
122. And as an actor, it's so hard. Like you said, it's so hard as an actor to pause for that long and not want to feel it.
123. Like fill it with something and be, you know, you want to be active and doing something.
124. So it was a challenge of making those pauses active and making that time that it takes.
125. And then it just it felt so natural after a while of you know traversing the terrain of of Kenneth brain and the things that I working through It becomes so active taking my time because I want the audience to understand because I like oh well all right maybe this is not normal
126. So let me explain myself.
127. And it takes the time it takes.
128. And it's hard to say some of those things.
129. So, you know, it's important to take the time because you want people to understand it.
130. Well, and certainly in film, you know, there's nothing more fascinating than watching a good actor just kind of do nothing, you know, just watch their face.
131. But in theater, it's a much bigger challenge because that really does have to be filled.
132. And it has to be big enough and small enough that your audience can grasp it.
133. The Taper's a perfect venue for this.
134. And I loved the director's use of space.
135. And specifically, there's a moment where your character goes for a walk around the town, and he goes the opposite direction from what he usually goes.
136. And you can see his world, which has been very small and protected.
137. He's branching out, literally.
138. So he's walking a different way.
139. And there's a space at the taper between the lower seats and the upper seats.
140. and so you take your walk along that space and it was a funny thing because I felt like it was so
141. real and you were so real that I could get get down and walk along with you you know as part of
142. like I knew you and I felt that at curtain call too and I think everybody else did because you
143. could hear the sniffles and all that kind of stuff and the audience stands up but I felt that
144. we knew each of those people in that town, that we knew them personally. And I even noticed a
145. hesitancy on the part of the audience to leave. There was a little bit of lingering. And I wonder
146. if you sense that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I can always, it's so, speaking of that support word,
147. again, I feel the support from the audience too. On every performance, I can tell that the audience
148. is right there with me. It's such a beautiful thing because, you know, I do a lot of direct
149. address in the play where I'm talking to the audience. So to feel that support, to feel like
150. they're talking back, even when I know no one's talking back, of course, actually talking back,
151. but to feel the communication between me and the audience, to know that they're so locked in that,
152. like you said, you can hear a pin drop in there because they're so locked in and I can feel that
153. they're rooting for Kenneth by the end of his story. Everyone's just kind of rooting for Kenneth
154. and it's such a hopeful story too
155. that by the end everyone
156. their hearts are still there
157. like on the stage with Kenneth
158. and when we leave the hearts are still
159. just a stage full of hearts
160. it feels like
161. it really is and it's also very funny
162. you know I think it looks at some serious
163. topics in a very
164. amusing way and
165. again helps us to perhaps
166. take a moment and to get
167. inside somebody else's skin
168. and be a little kinder maybe until we know what's going on with that person.
169. So congratulations again.
170. Now, how long are you running?
171. We run until June 28th is our last show.
172. Great.
173. Well, I urge everyone to get out and see it.
174. It's Primary Trust, Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Ebony Booth,
175. starring my guest, Petey McGee.
176. And congratulations.
177. I'm so glad you could take the time to chat with us today.
178. It's really one of my favorite plays that I've seen in...
179. quite a few years. So that's, that's something. Thank you so much. It has been such a pleasure
180. having a conversation with you. Of course. Thank you. And we're going to play a little bit of music
181. to lead into my next segment with John Ford Coley. And I'm sure you will recognize this hit. I'd
182. really love to see you tonight. And we'll be back with my pre-recorded interview.
183. much how about you I'm not sure why I called I guess I really just wanted to talk to you
184. and I was thinking maybe later on we could get together for a while
185. it's been such a long time and I really do miss your smile
186. I'm not talking about moving in
187. And I don't want to change your life
188. But there's a warm wind blowing the stars around
189. And I'd really love to see you tonight
190. I'm your host, Donna Walker, and it is such a pleasure to welcome to the show John Ford Coley, singer, songwriter, part of that iconic duo, England Dan and John Ford Coley.
191. You know so many hits.
192. Of course, the first one that comes to mind is I'd Really Love to See You Tonight.
193. But hey, you know, nights are forever without you.
194. We'll never have to say goodbye again.
195. One of my favorites, Love is the Answer.
196. That's a Todd Rundgren song, I believe.
197. I am so pleased to welcome via the Zoom, John Ford Coley.
198. Welcome.
199. Thank you very much.
200. You also forgot to mention Smoke on the Water, Sit Away to Heaven.
201. And I did have something to do with Thunderstruck.
202. Sure, sure. Yeah, and American Pie, too, I heard.
203. You're right. I neglect to mention that.
204. The 12-minute version. Actually, I did interview Don McLean several times. Yeah, it was great.
205. Don's a nice guy.
206. Oh, great documentary out about the, I think it was the 50th anniversary of American Pie. Really wonderful.
207. I come from a theater background, and it's an arts and culture show. I cover theater and film and music, but I love, I mean, music is so deep in my heart. And if it hadn't been theater, it probably would have been music. But I've been so blessed to interview, you know, Janice Ian and Judy Collins and Jimmy Webb and Leon Russell and so many others.
208. I particularly, oh, I mean, these are great. Your history with England Dan, also known as Dan Seals, you forget how many hits you guys had. I just wonder, now that you're touring and you're going to be at the Downey Theatre, I want to get this out there right away, 7 p.m. Downey Theatre, June 6th.
209. So those of our listeners down that way will want to be sure and partake of a wonderful live in concert experience with you, John. But let's talk about the beginnings and then get into what it was like doing your thing really at the height of tremendous popularity and what that was like.
210. Yeah I had such a great run on this thing And sometimes I pinch myself because I look back and think I mean you know if it hadn been for Dan I would probably still be working rodeo And if it hadn been for me Dan would still be painting apartments
211. So you realize that you've got something that you help one another with.
212. There's a foothold that you build on.
213. Well, and didn't you, you went to like high school together, didn't you?
214. Yes. Ironically enough, Dan and I never met in high school.
215. He was in the work program. And so he was gone by 10 o'clock in the morning. And he was a year ahead of me as well. So I never saw him. And ironically enough, when I got into the band, Dan was in a band. They lost their guitar player because his guitar player fell into the age old trap of having a very jealous girlfriend who didn't like him being, you know, meeting all these other girls. So he quits.
216. Well, everybody in the band now wants to have a keyboard player, except Dan.
217. Dan wanted to have another guitar player.
218. So I get the call.
219. I go and I audition.
220. I knew more about open heart surgery than I knew about that other kind of stuff.
221. And so Dan and I didn't get along.
222. We just clashed immediately.
223. And we did not pick up on things until we'd start to ride the gigs together.
224. And we discovered that we could sing together.
225. We'd sing Everly Brothers and Righteous Brothers and Peter and Gordon, the kinds of things.
226. So we developed a sound through that.
227. We discovered we could sing together.
228. And then at that point, Dan and I pretty much became closer than brothers.
229. I mean, to the point, literally, and I'm not being facetious, we could read one another's minds from great distances.
230. Yeah.
231. That's what I was thinking.
232. That kind of chemistry, that's Kitzman.
233. That really is.
234. And speaking of brothers, I wanted to mention that he was the younger brother of Jim Seals, of Seals and Crofts, which was another duo of an era that I just loved.
235. I just loved them.
236. So it was kind of a, I don't know, I think it was a little bit of a golden era for great duos.
237. You know, there were so many people at that time.
238. It was new.
239. It was young.
240. And people were experimenting.
241. They were trying things out.
242. And so there was no limits on it.
243. You just, you worked and they worked around one another.
244. When we were in Los Angeles, the people that you would run into on a continual basis, absolutely
245. staggering.
246. I told the story the other, the other night because I saw a thing on Joni Mitchell.
247. And when we came in, we had a producer that was part of the wrecking crew.
248. They brought us into Los Angeles.
249. They got an engineer's name was Henry Louie.
250. Henry was a German guy.
251. He was very big into transcendental meditation.
252. So he would set up the stuff and occasionally he and I would talk.
253. One day I came into the studio early.
254. I'm just sitting there waiting for everybody to get there.
255. He comes in.
256. He's fixing everything in preparation.
257. All of a sudden he turned to me and he said, John, who do you happen to really like?
258. And I said, oh, Henry, you know, I'm not big on the current stuff more or less.
259. I like this and I like that.
260. I said, there's this one girl knocks me out.
261. Her name's Joni Mitchell.
262. Have you ever heard of her?
263. And he looked at me like a cow at a new gate.
264. And he said, are you serious?
265. And I said, man, that girl is something.
266. It's like I've never heard before.
267. She so inspires me.
268. And he said, John, I'm her producer.
269. She's reporting in Studio C on Saturday.
270. Come over.
271. So I went over.
272. I missed James Taylor by a good 10 minutes.
273. He left and he had just put the guitar on a case of you on the Blue Album Well I sat there met her It only me in the studio in Henry And I watched her record on the Blue Album last time I saw Richard and All I Really Want
274. First time I'd ever seen her dulcimer.
275. Those kinds of occurrences happen to us on a continual basis.
276. I mean, just right spot, right time.
277. That's all I'm going to say.
278. It's like God reached down and just kind of kissed me on the head, said, kid, go have some fun.
279. And I did.
280. I just think it was a very special period of time.
281. And of course, we're all so familiar with the whole Laurel Canyon scene.
282. And there have been so many documentaries.
283. You know, I just interviewed this producer, Robert Marguliffe, whose electronica brilliance really pioneered Stevie Wonder's music when he left Motown initially.
284. The people that they would work with and run into.
285. And it was just such an incredible time.
286. And that was a little bit later.
287. There was Stevie Wonder and then also Devo and that whole thing.
288. But I love these stories because you really do get a bird's eye view of people just hanging out.
289. And out of that comes magical things.
290. So the number of people that went through there that we had no idea about.
291. I mean, there would be no any scope.
292. There was a thing I worked with a guy one time.
293. His name was Dunce Blackwell.
294. He was working with two sisters.
295. And he and I really kind of clashed a little bit.
296. And so I'm thinking this guy's a moron. He's just not capable of doing the stuff. So anyway, one night I'm watching a thing on Sam Cooke and he did all of those sessions on Sam Cooke. And I'm sitting there staring at the television going, John, you're a schmuck. You really are.
297. These guys pass by you all the time.
298. They played for the Beach Boys.
299. They're doing this.
300. They're playing, you know, on big songs.
301. And you think you're hot stuff.
302. And you don't even know who these guys are.
303. We had a guy one time, we were playing on a session.
304. And when I wrote the song, or Dan and I wrote the song together, I played keyboard on it.
305. I played piano.
306. Well, there was a song I didn't play on.
307. So they had a big session in there.
308. And there was a guy playing the piano, Buttercolor Hair.
309. And I just looked at it and I said, well, who is that?
310. And they said, Larry Nectal.
311. And I went, who's Larry Nectal?
312. Right.
313. And they said, he played on Bridge Over Troubled Water.
314. And I went, oh, OK.
315. But what else has he done?
316. Shut up, John.
317. And then I played with him in Bread for years, you know, when the guitar player in Bread.
318. So, yeah, the people that you didn't know that you should have known is staggering.
319. Wow.
320. A heady time.
321. And then next thing you know, just fast forward.
322. And I actually do want to get into the writing songs process and also deciding what songs you're going to do and not do.
323. But you find yourself right in the midst of a lot of notoriety and fame yourself.
324. I mean, that must be kind of a heady thing to have to deal with.
325. Ironically enough, you don't really pay that much attention to it.
326. You're just doing your stuff.
327. Yeah, for me, it's just doing something that I love. It's a job. I enjoy my job very, very much. But when I sit down and think about all these people that we've had interaction with, I just don't think about it.
328. And we should note that if people do want to find out more, you have written an autobiography, which I'm anxious to read myself.
329. How did that process come about?
330. You just wanted to kind of put this on the record or at least put some stuff on the record?
331. No, I'm a storyteller.
332. I like to make people laugh.
333. So this book is not about drug sex and rock and roll It just about all the ridiculous occurrences that would go on on a continual basis It like the way that that book truthfully got started was I had a lady
334. playing in Chico, California, playing with two sisters. And after it was over with, she came up,
335. had an LP, dressed in black, all black, lawyerly looking, corporate looking. And so she took me by
336. the hand. And she said, I want you to realize that Nights Are Forever Without You was my fiance and
337. my favorite song. We danced to the song. We loved to the song. He proposed to me to the song. We did
338. just about everything to that song. Not being remotely interested in what that lady's everything
339. could possibly include. I just politely said, well, thank you very much. Honest to goodness,
340. That woman's head turned into sake right in front of me.
341. And it was like, then in a voice I didn't recognize after she got right up in my face and squeezed my hand like she was going to break it.
342. She said, and then that blankety blank so was so weak, Minnie, that I've hated your song ever since.
343. Oh, no.
344. And it was like the only thing that I could do, I just looked at her and went, cool.
345. You know, that's all you can do.
346. And so I thought, God, you've got to start writing this stuff down.
347. And so just story after story began to pop.
348. I'm about to do another one because I continually run into situations that happen.
349. And I just like to laugh, and I like to make other people laugh.
350. So I tell everybody, just like I told you earlier.
351. And there's about five more minutes in that interview, which I'll try and squeeze in next week.
352. I had a really good time speaking with him.
353. Again, it's John Ford Coley.
354. And you'll get a chance to see him in person if you're down in the Downey area.
355. That is June 6th, which is tomorrow.
356. And that will be at 7 o'clock.
357. So Google that.
358. And if you're in the area, check it out.
359. And we're going to go out with a little more music from England Dan and John Ford Coley.
360. One of their hits, Love is the Answer.
361. And stay tuned for the Pocho Hour of Power.
362. Name your price
363. A ticket to paradise
364. I can't stay here anymore
365. And I've looked high and low
366. I've been from shore to shore to shore
367. If there's a shortcut, I'd have found it
368. But there is no easy way around it
369. Light of the world, shine on me
370. Love is the answer
371. And a horse and a ship has been
372. Hello, beautiful souls and cosmic travelers.
373. Support for KPFK comes in part from the band Definitely Dead,
374. a Grateful Dead tribute band performing Friday, June 12th at Del Mar Social,
375. located at 3444 Trip Court in San Diego, California,
376. and Saturday, June 13th at the El Rey Theater in Los Angeles.
377. Doors open at 7 p.m. and both shows begin at 8 p.m.
378. Further information and tickets are available at definitelydead.com, kpfk.org,
379. and definitely deadband on Facebook.