Two-time Tony Award winner and Webster alum Norbert Leo Butz returned to St. Louis to celebrate the release of his latest album, “King of Hearts,” at The Sheldon Sept. 29. Born and raised in St. Louis, the Broadway actor and singer accredits his successes to Webster.
“It’s that thing where you have to return home to kind of remember who you are,” Butz said. “I’ve lived a lot of life, and I’ve lived all over the world, and I’ve done really cool things everywhere, but the core is me. I’m still that shy kid playing piano from South St. Louis, and I want people to remind me of that.”
Butz left St. Louis in his early twenties after graduating from Webster in 1990 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Webster University’s Sargent Conservatory of Theatre Arts. He said Webster taught him to open up and allowed him to pursue the love of singing he’s had from a young age.
“I was able to do contemporary plays, I was able to do classical plays, I was able to do film and television,” Butz said. “I was able to do cabaret and musical performances and that kind of diversity in my training, I think, has allowed me to do this professionally for 30 years now.”
Butz recorded the majority of his album “King of Hearts” while stuck in Vancouver, British Columbia for 10 months during the pandemic. He returned home to finish recording the album once the travel restrictions were lifted.
The record dives into several themes, including the beauty of a father-daughter relationship and the strain the pandemic had on essential workers. The album features songs from his daughter, Clara Davis, and discusses their relationship.
“I hope people can hear kind of the family connection on the record and identify with it. The country went through a lot of loss during the pandemic. And that’s what family is to me. It’s your tribe, your people who are there, through loss and through pain…The record is about resilience,” Butz said.
Butz and his daughter began working on songs together late at night after family dinners. The two played in their basement, which is where Butz asked Davis if he could feature two of her songs on “King of Hearts.”
“The album talks a little bit about our relationship,” Butz said. “You know, we’ve had some bumps in the road like a lot of dads and daughters have, but it’s really a dialogue between the two of us, between father and daughter, two songwriters. It was just really, really special.”
Davis began working on the two songs she wrote for “King of Hearts” for fun during the pandemic. She began writing the title track satirically after a breakup, but it quickly became more meaningful to her as she continued songwriting.
“It was a song in which I was almost mocking myself. But then as I started writing it, it kind of morphed into a love song. And it kind of became a song more about hope and recreating a future better than your present moment … My dad is my favorite person to play music with, and he’s my favorite person to play my music for when I write a new song. He’s the first one I want to show it to,” Davis said.
Butz refined his skills as a performer during his time at Webster’s Conservatory of Theatre Arts, preparing him for a professional career.
“Going to Webster, it opened me up to myself,” Butz said. “I met other kids who are like me. I started to get validated by teachers and professors that said, ‘Hey, you know, I had a talent,’ I had something that I could build on. I had to be told that I had talent … I had to be sort of given the permission to be an artist.”
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