In 1995, country music artist Clint Black released a Christmas album titled Looking for Christmas. Now, fast forward 22 years to the present, the Long Branch, New Jersey, native is planning a new project with the same name. This time, Black will be releasing a Christmas musical, but an expected premiere date has not been set in stone. However, the industry reading of the musical will take place on December 4th. So which Clint Black songs will make the cut? Having sold more than 20 million copies of his songs and claiming over 50 chart singles, the 55-year-old has plenty of songs in his repertoire. In fact, he even released a second Christmas record in 2004, Christmas With You.
Clint Black is still putting the final touches on the musical, but so far he has the main plot line written. A soldier suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, is attempting to find his way back into his wife and daughter’s hectic life. When asked about the musical in a recent press release, Black said, “I had toyed with the idea of writing a musical as I’m always looking for new challenges. When I met James Sasser, he asked if I’d ever considered Broadway. I said, ‘Not as a performer, the work week is too long!’ We decided we’d explore ideas together as writers and I introduced the idea of a Christmas story built around my original Christmas music Looking for Christmas and Christmas With You.”
Black went on to say, “We developed the story to fit the music and quickly had a very clear sense of the kind of story we wanted to tell. Many of our soldiers come home from war to a new war in their minds. The holidays are always a time of heightened emotions and we knew we would have some very inspiring themes to explore, while telling a contemporary tale that would be relateable to many Americans young and old. One of the new songs is about shopping and the stress of getting ‘just the right gift’. It’s a fun look at that harried part of the holidays.”
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