Goodreads asked David Kamp:

What are you currently working on?

David Kamp Last year (2019), I was privileged to see songs that I had co-written (with an amazing young composer named Benjamin Velez) performed professionally for the first time, in the Berkeley Rep and La Jolla Playhouse productions of a new musical we have co-written with John Leguizamo and Tony Taccone called “Kiss My Aztec!” (It’s a “Spamalot”-style broad comedy set in the Aztec empire at the time of the Spanish conquest, but it’s also quite politically pointed.) We are currently retooling the show to make it even better for the long run (you can guess what that means), and now I have the bug to do more shows, which I’ll tell you about when I’m able. The arduous task of writing lyrics—versus prose, my longtime gig—has heightened my admiration for those who have done it for years at the highest level. So I have persuaded Simon & Schuster to let me write a book called “Words By,” in which I pester some major songwriters and lyricists to explain to me how they’ve achieved transcendence. So far, I’ve been fortunate to interview Bruce Springsteen, Bernie Taupin, Aimee Mann, Robbie Robertson, and Eddie Holland (the wordsmith of the Motown team Holland-Dozier-Holland), among others, with more to come.

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