Phil Vassar photo by Jim Wright, courtesy of Universal South.

Phil Vassar has done several different kinds of writing in his career. He’s penned plenty of his own material; written hits for Jo Dee Messina, Alan Jackson and Tim McGraw; and even authored “Live For Today,” a theme for NBC’s “The Today Show” that got Phil an Emmy nomination.

Now he’s trying something completely new: writing music for a Broadway play. Barry Weissler, who’s won Tony Awards for his work on Annie Get Your Gun and Chicago, asked Phil to write the music for a theatrical production of Waitress, an independent 2007 movie about a small-town server in the midst of a life crisis.

“It’s such a great story,” Phil told his hometown paper, The Lynchburg News & Advance. “We’re staying as close as we can to it.”

It’s a different role for him as he tries to shoehorn the right song into the right spot in a storyline, providing some emotional moments but staying true to the plot. An album typically requires about a dozen songs, and Phil’s already penned enough for Waitress that it could be an album unto itself.

“I’m 10 or 12 songs into this thing,” he said. “I never realized how many songs are in a Broadway show.”

In the meantime, he’s got a new album, Traveling Circus, which came out earlier this month. It’s the first project Phil’s produced on his own, and he took the name from a phrase he and his band toss around often.

“We’re just always laughing about [going on tour],” he said. “The traveling circus is on the road again.”

The traveling circus begins anew in 2010. Phil plays the Green Ranch Valley Resort in Henderson, Nev., on New Year’s Day, according to Pollstar, and he’s got several European dates in January and February, including shows in England, Ireland and Germany.

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