By Tricia Despres
Performing is Ben Platt’s greatest joy.
So, when the creative master of just about everything began work on his current album, Honeymind, Platt constantly envisioned what the music would look like, while performing it.
“I think the album is designed for live performance,” Platt tells Ravinia Magazine during a Zoom interview from outside his home in New York City, his backdrop a growing curtain of summer rain. “As soon as I started writing in this more emotionally intimate, Americana folk type of space, I was really excited to get back to rooms where I could have a more direct connection to the crowd. I think being somewhere beautiful and outside and in some of the prosceniums that I’m playing, it will just give a certain sense of warmth that the music wants to have.”
Currently prepping to perform for the very first time on the picturesque grounds of Ravinia, the 30-year-old Tony, Grammy, and Emmy winner says he is looking forward to bringing his music—and his fiancée Noah Galvin—to the divine place he has always wanted to perform within.
“I’ve heard amazing things, and I’ve seen photos, but I’ve never been there,” Platt says of Ravinia. “It’s definitely on [Galvin’s] list to see. He kind of comes in and out of the tour depending on where he is excited to go, and certainly [Ravinia Festival] is on his list.”
And for good reason.
“These beautiful outdoor and natural green venues are really suited to this music,” says Platt, who has a plethora of family members who live in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago. “This tour is just about warmth and intimacy and things that feel super grounded in the earth.”
Joining him on the Honeymind tour stop at Ravinia Festival is Brandy Clark, the Grammy winner and songwriter for the Tony-winning Broadway musical Shucked and Platt’s collaborator on the endearing song “Treehouse.”
“[Clark] is so very inspirational,” says Platt of the artist who has written songs for such artists as Sheryl Crow, Miranda Lambert, and Darius Rucker. “She’s such an amazing songwriter in a place that exists at this intersection of Americana and queer identity, and that's exactly what I was hoping to accomplish with this album.”
And with this tour.
“[Clark] fits so perfectly in that energy I am trying to create,” continues Platt about the singer who is not yet a year removed from her first show at Ravinia, last August with Brandi Carlile. “She sets such a great example and sets such a great tone when she opens the show. I don’t think I could have found a more ideal partner.”
Prior to his June 28 stop in Highland Park, Platt finds himself in the spotlight during his very own 18-show concert residency at Broadway’s recently refurbished Palace Theatre in New York, allowing for what Platt says has been time well spent.
“We’ll have an opportunity to get comfortable and sort out the ins and outs of the flow of the show,” says Platt, who exploded onto the theater scene when he won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical with his groundbreaking performance as Evan in Dear Evan Hansen back in 2017. “I think we’ll be more of a well-oiled machine by the time we’re ready to get moving.”
The shows on the Honeymind tour will not only feature favorites from Platt’s prior albums Reverie and Sing to Me Instead, but also shine a bright light on the music from his current album, including the standout track “Andrew.”
“In the broadest sense, it’s about unrequited love,” Platt says about the lyrical backbone of the song he wrote alongside fellow singer-songwriter Alex Hope. “But I think for me, I wrote it very specifically about the experience that a lot of queer young people have, where you have friends who are straight who you admire and love, and you can’t help but sometimes developing feelings for those people. It’s like a chemical misfire. It’s beyond your control.”
Of course, it’s a feeling now in the rear mirror of Platt’s life, as he finds himself basking in the bliss that comes with true love.
Photo: Vince Aung
“As I was writing this album, a large part of it was spent thinking about my relationship with [fellow actor] Noah [Galvin] and our engagement and getting ready to get married this fall,” says Platt, who’s also well known for his roles in movies such as Pitch Perfect 1 & 2, Theater Camp, and, of course, the film adaptation of Dear Evan Hansen. “A lot of my happiness and joy comes from him and from our relationship. I have ups and downs and anxieties and stuff, but I think in a broad sense, I’ve been in a really settled and happy place, and I think that is reflected on the album.”
This inferno of love can be heard all over another new song “Need You Like This,” an enlighteningly truthful song Platt wrote, once again, alongside Alex Hall.
“I think there are moments that every couple has in every relationship or friendship or whatever where you can’t help but feel terrified of the idea of being without this person,” Platt explains. “You feel incredibly vulnerable to admit how badly you need them. I think I wanted to just do a song that kind of threw all that healthy adult masculinity out the window and just say, ‘It freaks me out to think about how badly I need you.’ ”
Certainly, the album seems to point toward Platt finding himself in an almost idyllic place now, but he is the first to admit that this wasn’t always the place he found himself in.
Photo: Vince Aung
“I obviously grew up quite quickly,” says Platt, who called Chicago home for the span of a year when he was just a 19-year-old starring in The Book of Mormon. “I started working so young and then the Evan Hansen musical happened when I was in my early 20s. I think I took for granted the extent to which I was still quite young and figuring things out.”
Today, he is a far different person.
“I think now, being at this age and finding this relationship, I feel more comfortable and assured of who I am and what internally makes me happy and fulfills me,” says Platt, who hopes to fit in a visit to Stephanie Izard’s award-winning restaurant Girl & the Goat while in town. “I can do a better job of taking external validation and critique and opinion and expectation with a grain of salt and not being so dependent on it or so deeply desirous of fulfilling it. I think that has made me just a happier and a slightly more settled person. And I think hopefully that energy will extend to the feeling of the show.” ■
Tricia Despres is a Chicago-area freelance entertainment writer whose work has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, Taste of Country, People, and numerous local, regional, and national publications. Twitter: @CHIWriter