Legally Bond
Legally Bond
An Interview with John Riley, Immigration Law and Musical Theater
In this episode of Legally Bond, Kim speaks with Bond immigration attorney John Riley. John discusses his career path from pianist to South Korean law professor to immigration attorney at Bond to composer. While talking about the unique challenges faced in both the legal profession and musical theater, John shares insights into the extensive, creative process of bringing his musical "A Girl I Know" to the stage in Syracuse with a full orchestra and Broadway talents.
"A Girl I Know" is debuting at the Landmark Theatre in Syracuse, New York on Wednesday, February 12. Click here for tickets and more information about the show.
Hello and welcome to Legally Bond, a podcast presented by the law firm Bond, Shenick and King. I'm your host, Kim Wolf-Price. On today's episode we'll be talking with John Riley, Bond's senior counsel at Bond in our Syracuse office, and he practices in the immigration and labor and employment groups. Not only is John an attorney, but also an accomplished pianist and musical theater composer and lyricist. His latest show, A Girl I Know, will be performed as a musical in concert at the Landmark Theater in Syracuse, New York, on February 12th. Hey, John, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Hey, nice to be, here.
Speaker 1:Well, thanks for joining us to talk to us about all of this. So my thought today is we can discuss your journey from pianist to attorney to writing your latest musical. Does that sound like a plan?
Speaker 2:Sounds fantastic to me.
Speaker 1:All right, great. Thank you so much. Well, we like to start each episode asking our guests to talk a little bit about their background so that our listeners can know who's speaking. So do you mind taking a few minutes to talk about your career background, like how you made your way to Bond, where you grew up, law school, college. A little bit about you.
Speaker 2:Sure, absolutely, I would say. How I made my way to Bond? Probably the turning point was COVID. I was working in South Korea from 2009 until I came to Bond, or shortly before I came to Bond, in 2022.
Speaker 1:That's a long time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I was six years away from my retirement. I was a law professor there and I didn't have any intentions of moving back to the US. Then COVID happened, you know, travel in Asia became very restricted and my kids were kind of like getting to the age where keeping them in school. I had to make a decision whether to keep them in schools there, come back to the US, and also I was developing this musical and traveling pretty regularly to New York for workshops in the city. So, yeah, I finally made the decision in 2022 in the spring to move back here full time. So that's how I came to Bond. I'm originally from this area, so it kind of made sense to be in Syracuse area.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense. I think that's why a lot of us end up back here in this way. So you were in Korea and you're a law professor, but where'd you go to law school and college?
Speaker 2:Sure. So I have an undergrad degree from Ithaca College in piano performance and then I tried for about a year after school. Keep pursuing that, and it's just one of those careers that it's so hard to make a living and you have to put in so much time and effort, and you know the chances you actually being able to support yourself as a concert pianist are very, very slim. So I did what anybody would do in that situation went to law school right, the default.
Speaker 2:There you go yeah, I had a lot of friends and family who were lawyers so I made the decision to go to law school. I went to Pitt so I spent three years in Pittsburgh. During that time I did a fellowship for like area studies through the Department of Ed. It was an Asian Studies fellowship. So I kind of ended up taking the academic route and, you know, decided to do a PhD through that fellowship in Korea. After I graduated law school I was working in a firm in Pittsburgh my second and third year doing civil litigation and I just kind of decided that wasn't for me and preferred to kind of like sit in the library and, you know, research and do kind of like more, just have a little bit more freedom intellectually than being a litigator. So, yeah, at that time in my life I went to Korea, studied Korean legal history and, yeah, I ended up getting a professor job there and, you know, working with a couple of firms, mostly doing immigration work, us-bound immigration work.
Speaker 1:So that makes sense that you're doing immigration work at Bonchunik and King, and I know you had some lawyers in your family when it finally struck me, when I first met you, that I went to law school with my brother.
Speaker 2:Yes. I was like oh that's why you kind of look familiar. That was my inspiration, exactly.
Speaker 1:So when did you discover your love for music? I mean, you went to school and, you know, studied music. That's a, that's must have been a lifelong passion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I've been playing piano since I was a little kid and I had a really good teacher in middle school and high school. It's a college professor, so I kind of got like a just a very good background and education in it and then I decided to go to school for music. I actually changed my major a few times in school. I went from business to music to I was like a philosophy major for a semester.
Speaker 1:I kind of didn't know Philosophy in its own way yeah exactly Like I mean to be.
Speaker 2:You know, to be a well-rounded musician, you have to have you have to have a good background and you know the humanity. So that was my excuse. But yeah, I've always. I've always been involved with music and you know that's why I decided to pursue. It is in my in my undergrad years.
Speaker 1:That's really cool. Yeah, I appreciate that a lot. So well, before we dive deeper into music and A Girl I Know maybe we should just talk a little bit. You mentioned immigration law and we say that's what you do at the firm, so can you talk a bit about what that means in your work at Bonchun and King?
Speaker 2:Sure, so we mostly do corporate side immigration. So I work with a lot of companies that are multinational. So they'll have hundreds of affiliates throughout the world, several offices in the US and they need to transfer managers, executives, specialists from overseas to the US companies, right? So we, you know, we process their visa applications for them, we process their green cards for them, we handle their compliance to make sure that you know they're not running afoul of immigration laws in the US. So we do a lot of that.
Speaker 2:I work with a lot of engineers and I would say, like people in the STEM fields, that's, like the majority of our clients. We work with masters and PhDs, who a lot of these employees have very long wait times to get permanent residents, especially like Chinese and Indian clients, just because there are quotas and they just have huge populations and apply for a lot of permanent residents here. So we try to get them into the highest category of applicant, like they're called priority workers. So we try to get them into the highest category we can. So a lot of our work is kind of learning what they do, explaining what they do, explaining why they're great at what they do. So it's very kind of administrative. On that side I learned a lot about really cool fields. That's what I do.
Speaker 1:That's kind of cool. You learn about different like tech fields and things in your work. It's very different for listeners what you're hearing in the media now. This is a very different type of immigration.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I have no idea what's going on now in terms of policy of the US government. Right, it's very different, it's very different.
Speaker 1:I think you already answered what would be my question, which is did you know in law school this was your area of interest? You were kind of looking at litigation for a while, then made a strong turn and then did the PhD route.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had no interest in immigration when I was in law school. My main interest was when I was a law professor in Korea. You know, korea is a very homogeneous society. There's not a lot of Western professional people there. I mean the US Army's there. There's like a few corporations that have expats there, but it's very homogenous. So you know, when these companies like Hyundai or Samsung, when I would go out and network with people or meet people, they would always ask me immigration questions. So I really learned it on the fly. I was never taught how to do this practice, but it was oh, we're building a plant in Macon, georgia, and we need to send 25 people there. How do we do it? That's really how I learned the practice.
Speaker 1:You know, I think that is actually just sort of a good statement on the law in some ways. Right, we learn generally how to lawyer or how to think like lawyers, and then we figure out the more nuanced parts of it that we have to do for, whatever our practice ends up being along the way.
Speaker 2:Especially with immigration, because they have so much discretion and there's so many unwritten rules. I mean, you know, reading the regulations and the statutes, it's kind of useless, honestly, like you really have to know what they actually do, what the actual people who actually decide these cases, how they think you know how to persuade them what they want. So there's there's there's so many unwritten rules that I had to learn, basically by trial and error, when I was younger.
Speaker 1:It's the experience that really builds the practice. That's why I guess, right, yeah, I think fits in really to music. Right, it's about practice, right, it's about getting better.
Speaker 2:I see where you're going with this. Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1:So I think we should talk about a girl. I know, I know you don't want to maybe give stuff away, but can you tell us a little bit about the show?
Speaker 2:Sure. So I wrote this. During COVID there was a tour of Phantom of the Opera. That was very surreal and I ended up recording a bunch of songs for the cast from that show. So that kind of like catapulted me into Wow, I really like. I mean it's one thing to have a song in your head and it's another thing to hear the best singers literally the best singers in the world sing it and record it for you. So yeah, I mean I was so nervous the first time I was in a studio with the guy who is the Phantom from the Phantom World Tour. It was very intimidating to be in that room. But people in theater are very kind of like supportive, and that's one thing I learned from doing.
Speaker 2:This process is like theater. People are very enthusiastic about theater and you know they just bring an energy to it that's very addictive. So that's kind of how I got hooked on it. And then we decided to turn some of the songs into a show. So we took some of the songs that we had recorded, we reworked some of the lyrics, we wrote new songs and then we ended up writing a book. And yeah, the book writing process in theater is very iterative. So, like you write a book and then you hire a bunch of actors to perform the book and then you see what you like and what you don't like, and then you do that again and again and again and, like anybody who has ever gotten a show on to Broadway knows, this process takes like 10 years, like it's.
Speaker 2:It's a long process because it's not just about writing is. It's not just about writing the music or writing the book. It's about you know the logistics of how you make it happen, how you get people, how you schedule concerts, like this particular concert next week took me over a year, you know, to coordinate. There's 100 people in it. There's 85 musicians, there's 10 singers, there's a bunch of stage people. So getting all those people, getting an orchestra to do a new work, really, I'll tell you, that's really tough. I have a bunch of friends who are conductors and I've talked to them for years to try to make this happen.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, that's that process just takes a long time. Because it's not, it's not like you know, you're sitting in your computer and you're copy and paste and email. It's nothing like that. Right, it's slow, it's hard, it's. It just takes a lot of coordination. So that's kind of the process of it and you know the story is. It's basically what I you know because, like my inspiration was Phantom. I kind of wanted to do a musical like Phantom. But I personally found it like I love the music I mean I grew up with it as a child of the 80s but I wanted to like kind of modernize it. The guy who kidnaps the teenage girl and brings her to his dungeon, I just thought it was like a little dated to me.
Speaker 2:So even though I love it like don't get me wrong, beautiful music guys, yeah, but we wanted to have like a female protagonist. So that's what we did and it's, I would say, like the most difficult thing about doing a dark story like that is keeping the main character likable. Like whenever you do a musical like Phantom or Sweeney Todd or any of these kind of darker subjects, it's very hard to make that person likable Like that is the hardest thing by far. So we kind of created this kind of like Elwoods meets Sweeney Todd character. So our protagonist has like a very bubbly, feminine personality, very kind of happy-go-lucky, everything's right in the world, and then she gets cheated on right before her wedding. So it kind of sends her down a dark spiral and that's mostly what the most of the musical is about.
Speaker 1:I'm really looking forward to hearing the music. I mean, I know you've done some local TV and I got to hear one piece, you know to see that. But I think that's like it's fascinating as someone who, many decades ago, I was like house manager for university theater in a school who has a pretty decent theater program and I just it's fascinating how long it takes right, I'm an English major, modern drama, that's my favorite class, right but how long it takes to get one piece fully together and start putting it out to the public. It's quite a process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it really blows my mind because the songs come really quickly. Like it does not take a long time to write a song, it just comes out. I would say like an hour, maybe an hour or two to get the idea. You know, to really get it takes time to refine it. Yeah, it takes more. It takes time to get words, like to fit words over the music. I rarely get the words first. It is easier when there are lyrics because it kind of gives you the rhythm. It's like built into the words already if it's a good lyricist. But yeah, like that process is kind of easy.
Speaker 2:It's it's the storytelling, the production, it's the raising money, the getting the producer. I mean there's like 40 theaters in Broadway. Like you're not going to get a theater in Broadway without producer who has done a Broadway show and has the bona fides to get your show in that theater. Like it's just not going to happen, right, so it has to be. I mean you're going like there's so many people that want to do this, right, it's there's just it's a very, very limited number of theaters and you know kind of unfortunately, like you have to go through New York to like make it a financially viable thing, you have to go through New York. I mean you can, you can put a show on anywhere, but like the stamp of approval or something the good housekeeping seal it really does put you through the crucible.
Speaker 2:I mean nobody is going to look at you, nobody's going to pay attention if it's not great. So like it forces you to try really hard. Like every single time you do it. You know you're trying to impress people who are not easily impressed. They will tell you to your face it's awful. If it's awful, they will tell you this works, this doesn't work. They just don't care. And then also, once you get up to a certain point, you have to start building a fan base. Like you have to start building enthusiasm for it. Nobody knows about it. Like that's why. Like, if you have to start building enthusiasm for it, nobody knows about it. Like that's why, like, if you go to broadway today almost everything is, it's an established intellectual property already. Like neil diamond, the musical, britney spears, the musical, michael jackson, the musical we just have a tour of tina turner return of the musical harry potter the musical.
Speaker 2:there's a reason all of the musicals that are made are like established intellectual property, because the cost and the time and the effort it takes to make a new intellectual property is massive. I mean we have major broadway people in the show but like still nobody knows even what's the show about, Right? So the amount of like teaching the public and like advertising. You know, I was like at the New York state fair a couple of weeks ago, like just talking to people and that probably that just takes a long time to go through that process.
Speaker 1:It's like the most intense. We think political campaigns are intense. I think this is more right Like it's like teaching the public, teaching people what it's about. People say things like labor of love, but this is like blood, sweat and tears.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'm not a salesperson. I'm a musician with a legal background.
Speaker 2:So I have to learn Right, exactly. So this part of the process I have, I have to learn. It does help a lot to have a full orchestra. It does help a lot to have people who have originated major broadway roles, but still you're basically I'm not starting from scratch, but it just requires a ton of momentum and enthusiasm and I think, like every show has to go through that where, like you, there's just no getting around the enthusiasm. You have to have the, you have to have the book, you have to have the story, but you also have to have, like, the enthusiasm.
Speaker 1:Momentum matters.
Speaker 2:Exactly, it really does you hinted to this.
Speaker 1:So I want to just say, like you do have a couple of performers that New York City theater goers they know, and the orchestra as well, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we have great, great singers. Adam Pascal is one of the leads in the show. He originated Roger from Rent. He was also Ramadis and Elton John's Aida. He was in School of Rock, the musical and the movie. He is like a Broadway OG legend.
Speaker 1:Even my kids know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's really well known. And then the director and one of the other singers in the show is Rob Evan. Rob is also phenomenal. He was in the original tour of Jekyll and he played a Jekyll like a thousand times on Broadway.
Speaker 2:Frank Wildhorn is the composer of Jekyll. He's demoed all of his stuff for he's been like on the ground level, like he was in the room with them when half of the producers wanted to cut this is the moment from the show. Like the song. This is the moment like the most famous song. Yeah, Like half of them wanted to cut that song out of the show. So, like those are the kinds of things like you fight about when you're making a musical. Like the song stay, does it not? Well, that was a good keep, Exactly. And then, yeah, the two women leads we have. One is she's like a regular in Chicago. She does mama more in Chicago Broadway a lot, and she also produced hell's kitchen this year, which is the Alicia Keys musical that won Tony, and it just won a Grammy for best I think it was album yeah. So she's great both on the production side and on the performance side, which is really rare. You rarely see talent and producing mix like that.
Speaker 1:It's like Quincy Jones.
Speaker 2:Exactly. And then the other woman who plays the protagonist, the lead character she is. She's just like the best singer I've ever heard. I mean, she's been a lead singer for trans siberian orchestra, which is like a major touring rock group, yeah, and like she toured with yanni when she was a young girl and she had like a recording contract when she was like a kid. You know, like she's just like one of those people who's just got it from birth.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I mean, all those people are going to be here in one night with 85 other musicians on stage and it's going to be loud and it's going to be all the music basically gives them a chance to show off their voices. So it's going to be insane. To be quite frank with you, I'm not trying to like sell it.
Speaker 1:I think it's going to be great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like just from a musician standpoint. I've seen a lot of concerts and shows and I've never seen I think the biggest orchestra I've ever seen in a Broadway show is like 25 players probably.
Speaker 1:Phantom, I think might have had like 30. But you never see like a full symphony style concert with this level of talent. It's just. It's just really really rare. World does know about your music right and has described it, which is so cool, like they talk about your great melodies so people will be able to hear those next week. I mean, I know it's a little early and it's very exhausting time right now, but how does it feel at this point to see your work really start like coming to life in this way?
Speaker 2:uh, it feels a little bit like that scene in oppenheimer the movie, where they're about to test the bomb and they think it's going to work and they spent five years making it, but they don't know exactly. But it's very exciting and also very scary at the same time.
Speaker 1:Like that's what it feels like okay, I mean, that makes perfect sense to me. I have to say, because there's so many things, like you know.
Speaker 2:I've so, so, so we wrote all the orchestra with software, right. So these are all like sampled tracks and they sound really good. I've never performed it with 85 people. There will be 100 people in the last song musicians and singers, like I've never done anything close to that scale. So that is terrible.
Speaker 1:I don't know who would have really.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I know everybody's good, but it's going to be like a crazy few days.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm sure there's not a lot of sleep in your future for this next few days here, but the firm is excited. We're going to do an event, a lot of people from the office are coming over and you've brought some of your bond colleagues with theater backgrounds into the show.
Speaker 2:Yes, so, funny enough, last year we hired an assistant who sits 10 feet away from me, outside of my office and when she came in the first day, just talk for a few minutes. And she used to manage the Syracuse stage and, I think, red House or one of the other theaters in Syracuse. So she had a career before Bond as a theater manager. So when this opportunity came up and basically I talked to this conductor a year ago and I was like, hey, can I do a couple of my songs at one of your concerts? That's how this started. And eventually he was just like, well, why don't we just do the whole thing? And I was like, well, where do I put 85 people? So we needed a big venue to do that and also a big venue to attract the talent from New York to come up and do it because, like, these songs require huge voices and I just don't want them to come off like flat.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, her name's Cynthia Reed and I was like like I really need somebody to handle, you know, the logistics of the sound, the video, the people, uh, the tech. They have to like, hang speakers in the landmark, they have to hang lighting. We have to decide the lighting. I mean there's so many technical things like I can't even tell you what she does, like it's too much. But yeah, so I have her. And then Hallie Greenhouse she onboarded me at Bond when I first came here in HR, I think she's the director of HR.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so she's also a good singer, like a really good singer and a good actress. So, yeah, she's going to be in the show as well. So we have two people at Bond in the show and both central. I mean I could not do the show without Cynthia, like it would be impossible, literally impossible to do it.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic. I'm really exciting to learn more about your process and how this worked. Really thanks, john, for joining us today. It's been really great to talk to you about this.
Speaker 2:Thank you, I had a good time.
Speaker 1:All right, well for our listeners. A Girl I Know will be performed as a musical in concert at the Landmark Theater in Syracuse, new York, on February 12th at 7.30 pm. But I don't think that's the last time that you'll hear about that, so hopefully it will be at a Broadway venue in the not too distant future. Thanks again, john.
Speaker 2:Thank you, and if you're looking for any last minute Valentine's Day gifts, perfect option.
Speaker 1:I really think you should take a date. People Take someone here, thank you. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Legally Bond. If you're listening and have any questions for me, want to hear from someone at the firm or have a suggestion for a future topic, please email us at legallybond at bskcom. Also, don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to Legally Bond wherever podcasts are downloaded. Until our next talk, be well.
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