Before Rent, there was tick, tick… BOOM!. This autobiographical musical by Jonathan Larson, the Pulitzer Prize–and Tony Award–winning composer of Rent, is the story of an aspiring composer who questions his life choices on the eve of his thirtieth birthday. It was first performed as a solo rock monologue by Larson back in 1990. I was fortunate to be in the revamped version, updated by playwright David Auburn. My first musical in New York City premiered as a three-actor piece on June 13, 2001.

This show was my real introduction into NYC theater. What a way to get started. I did play a year on the road with Footloose, a bus and truck tour of the show that was on Broadway in the 90’s, but “Tick” was so much cooler, and infinitely better. It featured Raúl Esparza, Amy Spanger and Jerry Dixon.

A little bit of trivia:

One crazy bit of info about this show. Our cast album release date was 9/11/01 – ‘tick tick boom” – Not good.

It was a sad few months after that date. We could see and smell the smoke from the World Trace Center attacks from our theater. Sadly, we closed a few months after the terrorist attack.

This show was really well made and a lot of fun to play. I met a lot of great people as well. I just fund out that Lin Manuel-Miranda is making it into a movie. I’m curious who will play drums for the production.

I’m glad someone got a bootleg of this tune. It was one of my favorites:

Clayton Craddock is an independent thinker, father of two beautiful children in New York City. He is the drummer of the hit broadway musical Ain’t Too Proud. He earned a Bachelor of Business Administration from Howard University’s School of Business and is a 25 year veteran of the fast paced New York City music scene. He has played drums in a number of hit broadway and off-broadway musicals including “Tick, tick…BOOM!, Altar Boyz, Memphis The Musical and Lady Day At Emerson’s Bar and Grill. In addition, Clayton has worked on: Footloose, Motown, The Color Purple, Rent, Little Shop of Horrors, Evita, Cats, and Avenue Q.