[music]

Kousha Navidar: Dead Outlaw is a musical from the creators of Broadway's, The Band's Visit that proves sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. Now, it's nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award for outstanding musical. It follows this real criminal named, Elmer McCurdy who is made out to be larger than life after his death. The real Elmer McCurdy was kind of a failed outlaw and safecracker. He died in a standoff with police, but that's really where the story begins.

After his death, people find absurd ways to benefit off of making up stories about him, and the show tells this story through a live rock band playing and singing right at you on stage. While this band is rocking out, the stage is moving, symbols are flying, and there's a standoff between police and train robbers happening around them. It's like someone left the doors to a theater open and a bunch of talented performers showed up and said, "Listen, we're going to drive this car like we stole it, or at least until the cops show up."

Dead Outlaw just finished its run at the Audible Theater but the cast joined me in WNYC Studio 5 with a live band led by music director, Rebekah Bruce as well as Erik Della Penna who co-wrote the music and lyrics for this show. I also spoke to actors, Julia Knitel, Thom Sesma, and Jeb Brown who are up for outstanding feature performer and outstanding lead performer respectively and they performed some tunes for us. Let's take a listen.

[music]

Erik Della Penna: We're about to hear what might be our theme song. The title of the show is Dead Outlaw. This song's called, Dead and it book ends the show. We play once in the prologue and then we play it later at the end of the show. It's interesting to hear from audiences how differently they receive it 90 minutes after they first heard it.

[laughter]

Kousha Navidar: Go for it.

Erik Della Penna: This is called, Dead.

Speaker 1: Here we go, you all.

[MUSIC - Erik Della Penna: Dead]

Erik Della Penna: You're born with nothing

Your cheeks are apple dumplings

The air, the water

There's something more you wanted

The milk, the sugar

Outside you there's a name

And you came with nothing

You'll leave here just the same

But between the dark and the darkness

The voice you're always hearing

Some crazy auctioneer is yelling at you

And you walk

You run

You flee the dark and see the sun

Every brick you ever lay will crumble away

Your momma's dead

Your daddy's dead

Your brother's dead

And so are you

Abe Lincoln is dead

Frank James is dead

Your momma is dead

And so are you

And so are you

Your adolescence

Was just an overpresence

You drank the liquor

And made it all go quicker

Oh, dead ancestors

You had to make [unintelligible 00:03:32].

You went and found the bottle

And now you face reflection

And so you've bear with values

And you confront your rivals

You stand there on with Bibles pointing at you

Then you cry

You scheme

You had a chance, had a dream

Couldn't get a witness, now you stand here today

Your momma's dead

John Gotti's dead

Dellinger's dead

And so are you

Balzac is dead

Tupac is dead

Anne Frank is dead

And so are you

And so are you

I bear the [unintelligible 00:04:05]

Welcome cause you're closed

I look around and all I seen was hungry ghosts

Yelling and standing on the gravel road to hell

I know the drill cause I'm one of them as well

You're wild as I am

And know you must acquire

More love, more money

But don't you find it funny

But still, you're hungry.

In fact, you're really famished

You're craving and the panic

Until that day you vanish

You just keep pushing, pushing

You just keep cheating cheaters

Like those religious heathens

[unintelligible 00:04:48] to do

So you kick

You scream

You hear the ride

You wishing [unintelligible 00:04:52]

[unintelligible 00:04:54] calls your name

And then she takes you away

Babe Ruth is dead

George Caster is dead

Black Elk is dead

And so are you.

Joe Young is dead

Bert Convy is dead

Glenn Gould is dead

And so are you

Your momma is dead

Your daddy is dead

They're all just dead

And so are you

Look at them dead

Look at me dead

Look at you dead

And so are you

And so are you.

[music]

Kousha Navidar: Dead Outlaw at the Audible Theater through April 14th. We are so lucky to be joined by the cast, the performers of this show. We are going to talk a little bit about the conceiving of this show, and Erik Della Penna, I have a question for you. You wrote the music and lyrics for Dead Outlaw with David Yazbek who's credited with conceiving the show. How did Yazbek approach you with the idea for this musical?

Erik Della Penna: It was a long time ago like in the late '90s. We were both musicians and songwriters in town, and his career took off in theater. I also played in his band and he came to me with [unintelligible 00:06:22]. He heard this story from another musician. I think it was a news item for a while so people knew about it, it wasn't hidden. He said, "I think we should write this," and we never did for 20 years.

[laughter]

Erik Della Penna: Just before COVID, we took a crack at it. We wrote two tunes, and then COVID hit, and then nobody had anything to do and that was the time to write the music.

Kousha Navidar: Oh. What interested you about this story of Elmer McCurdy?

Erik Della Penna: Well, it's a good story. It's not hard to be intrigued by it.

Kousha Navidar: What about as a musician? When you learned about this story were you like, "Oh, man, I already have songs going into my head?"

Erik Della Penna: Sure. There's so many details and facts and forensic nuggets that are just great fodder for a song, so it was easy.

Kousha Navidar: One of the wonderful things about this story is that you're able to pull apart elements of the story, the forensic elements that you're talking about, and it exploded into these songs that dive into characters who might not otherwise know about. We're going to get into the band's importance into the show in a little bit, but the way that we see that is really through the actors whose songs we'll be hearing throughout the segment. We've heard from Jeb the narrator, Thom, and Julia, would you please introduce yourself? Julia, let's start with you.

Julia Knitel: Hi. I'm Julia Knitel and I play all the women in this story.

[laughter]

Kousha Navidar: Thom?

Thom Sesma: Hi. I'm Thom Sesma, and I play, I think the program says I play Actor 4 [chuckles] which means I play a number of characters, but the main character that I play is the celebrity Coroner, Thomas Noguchi.

Kousha Navidar: When you think about Elmer McCurdy's story, what stands out to you both as performers because you're occupying many different roles throughout the show, you're going into parts of his life, did you know about Elmer McCurdy beforehand? Did you learn about this while you were performing? How did you approach it as actors?

Julia Knitel: I remember I got sent the script before my audition and I read the whole thing and could not get it out of my mind because it's one of those stories that consumes you because it's unlike anything you've ever heard before and every detail is true and you can't get it out of your mind. It was really exciting that we got the opportunity to do it, and I know that all of us who did the workshop in the fall were pretty obsessed with it [chuckles] off the bat, wouldn't you say?

Thom Sesma: Absolutely, absolutely. It was one of those things when you read the script, and you go, "There's no possible way that this could work. A writer couldn't make this up, so it has to be true." Actors pay a lot of lip service to being truthful every single minute recreating the truth. The stakes are so high in this because the story is just so out of the box, it's so weird, and so our obligation to being truthful is even higher in some way. So much of what we're doing on stage as actors is counter-intuitive because this stuff is true, it's not made up.

Kousha Navidar: Not only is it true, the story itself, but one interesting thing about this show is the interaction between actors and band. It's quite true because the band are musicians that are performing, not acting, they're actually just performing on stage. How is it for you having a show where you have this authenticity that you might otherwise not have access to because these musicians are musicians first and they're just performing as they would any other show?

Julia Knitel: I think it helps ground us. I think it keeps us all in that reality. It feels less like a traditional musical and more like a folk rock concert that we just step out and do scenes sometimes. [chuckles]

Thom Sesma: The whole language of the play is about storytelling. Not just in a narrative sense, but in the way you tell a story and what it means to the audience, how they hear how a story is told. We're just one component of that. Cromer, David Cromer, brilliant director, in the course of rehearsals, kept saying over and over and over again, "This whole thing is like one long run-on sentence with people handling one phrase and then passing it off to another. Sometimes, it's musical, sometimes, it's in a scene, but it never ever stops." In a weird way, it's not like we're ever dealing with the band or the score as a separate thing. It's just part of one long crimson thread if you will.

Kousha Navidar: Trains are a big part of the show. It sounds like you're laying down the tracks as the train is moving along, perfect.

Julia Knitel: Beautiful metaphor.

Kousha Navidar: Thank you. We've got another song, maybe, could you set it up for us, Thom?

Thom Sesma: Oh, yes. This is a song sung by the aforementioned celebrity Coroner, Thomas Noguchi, who has done a deep dive into what Elmer is. I don't think it's giving away any secrets, but he's been dealing with the remains of Elmer McCurdy in the course of the play. Somewhere near the end, he sums up what Elmer means to him and I think to everyone else. Go.

[MUSIC - Thomas Noguchi]

?Thom Sesma: Marilyn Monroe

When she left the show

Came to my table

Not long ago

Our final scene

Me and Norma Jean

End of the fable

Tag on her toe

When Elvis broke

That empty tether

Our time together

It'll be in my memoirs

In which I write

I wonder whether

He floated like a feather

Up to the stars

Oh, Natalie would

Oh, Natalie won't

Leave a legend

When she left that boat

Who, when, and why

Did this person die?

Go fish the ocean

Where the answers float

Poor Sharon Tate

So dark and scary

So arbitrary

It left some nasty scars

But set me straight

These things you buried

It ain't what you carry

Up to the stars

Take it, Hank [unintelligible 00:13:23]

Oh, oh, yeah, ah

Once I get you up here

On the stainless steel

I'll take the wheel

And watch it ride

Once I get you up here

Where it's all so real

You can't conceal

What's deep inside

Ooh, dead, dead, dead

Blind, deaf and dumb.

You ain't just a mummy

So you [unintelligible 00:14:21]

I can't make you walk

But I'll make you talk

Tell me what you were

Tell me where you are from

The cause of death

For now is pending

Soon, I'll be sending

Off to the lab in [unintelligible 00:14:45]

Pieces of you

That need some tending

For that happy ending

Up to the truth

When we conceive it

And we believe it

That's when your story [unintelligible 00:15:04]

Til we achieve it

We'll have to leave it

Up to the stars

Up to the stars

Oh, shiny stars

Twinkle, twinkle stars.

Kousha Navidar: That was the band and some of the cast from Dead Outlaw performing some numbers from the musical. There is more on the way.

Announcer 1: WNYC supporters include the Blue Note Jazz Festival taking place at multiple venues across New York City featuring Wynton Marsalis, Andra Day, Harlem Gospel Choir, and more. June 1st through July 1st, tickets at BlueNoteJazzFestival.com. Lincoln Center Theater presenting Uncle Vanya. Steve Carell plays the title character alongside an ensemble cast who together bring Chekhov's classic to life in this new version by Heidi Schreck, directed by Lila Neugebauer. More at Vanyabroadway.com.

WNYC is a media partner of Mother Jones. In partnership with Grist, and the Tishman Environment and Design Center, present the talk US Climate Leadership: Equity and Justice in the Green Transition, Tuesday, April 23rd at the New school. More at grist.org/events.

[music]

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[music]

Announcer 3: This is WNYC 93.9 FM and AM 820, NPR News and the New York Conversation.

[music]

Kousha Navidar: Dead Outlaw is a rollicking new off-Broadway musical with a live onstage band. It's about a real-life outlaw who became larger than life. The cast join me in WNYC Studio 5 with a live band and they perform some tunes for us. Let's take a listen.

[music]

Kousha Navidar: We've heard from the actors and now I'd love to talk about the band, which is center stage for almost all of the production. Rebekah Bruce is the music director, the conductor, plays piano, does vocals. Rebekah, could you introduce yourselves, the band, and the instruments that they're playing?

Rebekah Bruce: Yes. Hi. I'm Rebekah and I've just been introduced, but we have Spencer on the drums.

Spencer Cohen: What's up?

Rebekah Bruce: Hi, Spencer. We have Chris on bass.

Kousha Navidar: Hey, Chris.

Chris Smylie: Hey, buddy.

Rebekah Bruce: Hank on guitar electric acoustic. We have Erik, who you already heard from on several instruments, electric guitar, lap steel, banjo, mandolin. Is that all of them?

Erik Della Penna: Yes.

Kousha Navidar: Big variety of instruments. They're all sitting with us right now, listeners, in the stage. It is a full I guess 180-degree panorama of different instruments and multiple people playing multiple things. Rebekah, the question I have for you is, as the show's music director and member of the band, I noticed you were also conducting on stage. How do you balance all of these roles while you're on stage in the show?

Rebekah Bruce: It's taking on and taking off many hats constantly. It's juggling. It feels like juggling, keeping it all in the air. You're trying to do a lot of different things at once. It's tricky to do them all, but you just keep all the balls in the air.

Kousha Navidar: Erik, question for you, thinking about the band, when was it clear to you and the other creative team that the band would play such a central part in the show?

Erik Della Penna: Early versions of this, before we had the great script and book by Itamar Moses, we only had the songs. We would perform the songs in concert, and Yazbek would just tell the story of Elmer to thread them all together. I guess it was a song cycle. Is that what a song cycle is?

[laughter]

Erik Della Penna: When the book was being written, we decided to retain that quality of it because the best part of the story is to keep reminding people that it really happened because in just telling somebody this, the Elmer McCurdy story, that people stop you two minutes into it and say, "Wait, wait, this really happened?" You have to keep saying, "Yes, this really happened and then this and then this and then--" That was an important part of the storytelling.

Kousha Navidar: I'd love to get to one more song if we could. Julia, we're going to go out on the song that you sing in the show. Could you give some background on the song? What should we know about how it fits into the story?

Julia Knitel: Yes. In part two of our show, Elmer is a dead body played brilliantly by Andrew Durand. He comes into contact with many different people and one of them is a little girl who finds him in her house. They become very close friends. Throughout the song, you watch their relationship develop and learn a little bit more about her, whose name is Millicent.

Kousha Navidar: All right. Let's hear that.

Julia Knitel: [chuckles]

[MUSIC - Julia Knitel]

You're a funny-looking thing

How'd you get that scary face

You're so ugly

I just have to say

That isn't very nice

I'm so sorry what I said

Because I don't like it

When they're saying it to me

Those girls at school

Could make me cry

But I don't let them see

What would you do if you were me?

There's a boy I think I like

And his name is Steven Hill

What I don't know is if he likes me

While I laugh at all his jokes

And he often looks at me

When he does, somehow I always look away

And it's only you

That I can tell

As strange as that may be

What would you do if you were me?

Life is changing

Pretty fast

I'll be moving

Pretty soon

So I won't be seeing much of you

Well, you get to stay the same

And I wish that I could too

Growing up

Ain't as easy as it seems

So keep my secrets here with you,

Because I have more

You'll see

Waiting

Waiting

Wait for me.

[humms]

Kousha Navidar: We're listening to the cast and band of Dead Outlaw gracing us with some of their songs. That was Julia Knitel an actor with the vocals of Millicent-

Julia Knitel: [unintelligible 00:25:00].

Kousha Navidar: -in that part. Rebekah, question for you. This is such a musical song, the writing, even just the absurdity of it, really gets captured in the music itself. Any favorite musical moments of the show that really excite you night after night?

Rebekah Bruce: Oh my gosh, so many. The opening riff, the opening riff, is, to me, the most exciting. As soon as we start, I'm like, "Yes, here we go. Let's do it."

Kousha Navidar: What is it about it?

Rebekah Bruce: What is it about it? It's the tone of the guitars, it's the tempo. It's awesome.

Kousha Navidar: Erik, last question to you. You think about all of this different style that you hear. If you had to tell listeners, "This is the sound of Dead Outlaw," in maybe 30 seconds or less, how would you describe it?

Erik Della Penna: Mid-20th century Americana.

Kousha Navidar: What would people say if they wanted to know, what would you hope people walk away from when they're watching the show?

[laughter]

Kousha Navidar: Tough I know, a good time, I guess, right?

Erik Della Penna: Walk away with? A sense of the timeliness of existence, and don't sweat the trivial things and just try to be a better person.

Kousha Navidar: [chuckles] We'll roll with that. The cast recordings will be out later this year. I want to say thank you all so much. Let's just say goodbye on three, 1, 2 3.

All: Goodbye.

?Erik Della Penna: Thank you.

Kousha Navidar: That was the band and some of the cast from Dead Outlaw performing some numbers from the musical. The musical has just been nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award for outstanding musical.

[music]

[00:26:55] [END OF AUDIO]

 

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