By definition, to be an actor is to consistently put oneself into the mind of someone else. To project a person as a work of fiction. To step into the mind of someone else, and make an audience believe that there is no line between character and performer. But, with his debut album, If the Stars Were Mine, out April 3 via Center Stage Records, Claybourne Elder is stepping front and center to tell his own story. Through a carefully curated collection of cover songs, that range from show tunes from musicals such as West Side Story, Into the Woods, and Floyd Collins, to contemporary pop and jazz songs, Elder tactfully navigates a reflection on his own personal journey, encompassing a disarmingly human scope of themes that range from embracing sexuality, to fatherhood, to religious reconciliation. As he puts it, as we chat over Zoom, the songs read “more like journal entries than anything else.” 

“As an actor, we are so often in somebody else’s show, where we are the paint on the canvas,” he further explains. “These times when we get to make things for ourselves can be very exposing, because if people don’t like it, it’s you who did it.” That sense of exposure became the emotional foundation of the album, and is ultimately what sparked Elder’s initial idea to create a solo cabaret show, which eventually evolved into the album. Rather than beginning with song selection, he started somewhere more personal. “I started with the writing [of the solo show]. What are the things that I want to say? What are the things I’m most afraid to talk about? That’s what I ultimately started with.” The result, he says, is a body of work that mirrors the fragmented way memory operates. “It feels like each song is really particularly tied to a memory or a time in my life. It’s sort of like hanging out with me for an hour.”

A perfect way to describe it. While Elder, a veteran Broadway actor known for roles in shows like Bonnie and Clyde, Sunday in the Park with George, and Company, as well as on television as John Adams in HBO’s The Gilded Age, has obvious vocal prowess, there’s a vulnerability to the arrangements of these songs that manage to give the listener an unguarded look into his greater life story. Even though the album draws from an eclectic mix of material, Elder sees cohesion in emotional continuity, more so than remaining in a certain genre. He compares the listening experience to revisiting old playlists, finding comfort in those sonic snapshots that instantly transport you back to a particular version of yourself. “You go back [to an old playlist] and you listen, and you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh. This is the person I was in love with. This is what I was doing.’ It puts you in such a place.” He says this album evokes a similar feeling. “This is all just songs about where I am right now.” 

Central to the project is the idea that familiar songs can shift meaning entirely depending on perspective. “As an actor, we spend so much time interpreting words for meaning. When you take them out of that context, what do they mean? Because they can mean anything,” he reflects. Elder approached each track as an opportunity to uncover something new, sometimes even unsettling. “I sing ‘On the Street Where You Live’ [a song from the 1956 musical, My Fair Lady]. I was like, ‘I think that guy is kind of creepy. How can we make the song sound a little bit creepy?” he says with a laugh. Other reinterpretations stemmed from deeply personal memories. He described hearing Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” as a child and experiencing it not as celebration, but longing. “I remember what it was like being a little gay kid in Utah and thinking, ‘I don’t know that I’m ever going to fall in love.’ I really wanted to give the listener a chance to hear that song in a different context, and maybe in a different way than how they are used to hearing,” he says. 

That process of reinterpretation didn’t just change the songs, it changed him. “As I explored them deeper, like any sort of poetry that you study deeply, the meaning of it blooms and grows and changes,” he notes. Over time, those evolving interpretations even replaced the original live arrangements, a testament to how fluid and personal the material became. 

Beyond the album itself, Elder’s relationship to storytelling extends into how he thinks about art’s impact. He traces one of the most formative moments of his life to a stranger’s act of generosity after he had been “kicked out of school for being gay” and found himself adrift in New York. A stranger handed him money to see Sweeney Todd on Broadway, unsolicited— an experience that ultimately redirected his life. “It’s a random act of kindness that really changed the trajectory of my life,” he says. And now, having found success (even getting the chance to reunite with that random stranger and thank him personally for the act), he is paying it forward through his charity, City of Strangers, an initiative that seeks to make theatre tickets more accessible. 

That belief in art’s transformative power threads back into the album’s intent. When asked what he hopes listeners take away, his answer centered less on himself and more on reflection. “I have a friend who came to see my show, and he publishes a newsletter once a month, and in his newsletter, he wrote, ‘I left the show briefly wanting to be a better person.’ And I think I have that same feeling about about this album. It’s very introspective, it’s very personal. But also, even though it’s personal to me, I think that when you listen to it, especially when you listen to it start to finish, it asks a lot of introspection of the listener about their own life.”Ultimately, he hopes the music doesn’t provide tidy conclusions. “I hope that it asks more questions than it answers, and it leads you to think.” 

In that sense, the album becomes less a statement and more an invitation to not just to understand the artist, but to revisit one’s own memories, reinterpret familiar stories, and sit with the uncertainty that meaningful art often leaves behind.

You can pre-order/pre-save If The Stars Were Mine here.