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Good and Dead: David Yazbek & Erik Della Penna Unpack the Music of DEAD OUTLAW
Mar 12, 2025
We continue Notes on a Score with the creators of one of Broadway's most anticipated new musicals, Dead Outlaw- David Yazbek and Erik Della Penna. They recently sat down with BroadwayWorld at A.R.T./New York to unpack the show's opening number, 'Dead'.
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0:00
One, two, three, four
0:14
I was told the story of Elmer McCurdy, the true story by a friend of mine named Ted DeWan about 35 years ago
0:23
And he had heard it as it was happening in the mid-70s because his mother was sending him clips
0:29
It's like, isn't this weird? That's how he knew the story. He told me the story, and it just stuck in my head
0:38
The story of a criminal who was sort of not a very proficient criminal
0:46
had a very tragic, sort of funny but tragic life that ended with him being shot by a posse
0:52
at a fairly young age. His body ended up mummifying. And his mummy had the most amazing career after that, like a showbiz career that you would envy if you weren't dead
1:09
The story has everything that was fascinating me and still fascinates me and fascinates a lot of people
1:16
Greed, fame, death, you know, crime. It's just the weirdest American story
1:27
I think Dead started with the rift. I came up with the first riff
1:37
The riff is an A minor It very it just tells you you in for this ride on a jalopy where the brakes are out and you going downhill
1:52
And we're in A minor, but the first verse, I don't know why I did this, but I dropped it, I dropped the verse down to G and drop it a whole note down
2:01
You're born with nothing, your cheeks are apple dumplings, the air, the water, there's something more, you're, you're something more, you're
2:09
you're wanting, the milk, the sugar. Inside you there's a name, but you came with nothing
2:16
You leave here just the same, but here's life. You're born and you smell like apples
2:23
Then suddenly, as you get slightly older, there's a thirst, there's a hunger, and that can go bad
2:32
But remember, you're born with nothing, you leave here with nothing. And then we go into this, not a bridge, I guess it's a B section
2:39
Between dark and dark is the voice you're always hearing Some crazy auctioneer is yelling at you
2:46
And you walk, you run, you flee the dark and see the sun
2:50
And every brick you ever laid will crumble away So that, between the dark and the dark
2:56
Just basically means every day, every day Or it means between beginning
3:01
Before you're alive and after you're alive. The voice you're always hearing, some crazy auctioneer is yelling at you
3:07
Trying to sell you something, trying to sell you something. You walk, you run, you flee the dark, you see the dark, you flee the sun and every brick
3:15
you ever laid will crumble away. So we're just setting an audience up for everything they need to know about this show
3:22
And we doing it in a way that hopefully they just like stomping their feet at the same time You gonna die It all vapor Let have a great time you know
3:34
Your mom is dead. Your daddy's dead. Your brother's dead. And so are you
3:41
A. Blinkin's dead. It changes dead. Your mom is dead. And so are you
3:47
And so are you. We've discussed, like, we had a whole list of, like
3:51
what names do we want to use? We'll use names from The era that this takes place, we'll use a lot of sort of Western names, we use criminals
4:00
But then we started, in later verses, we thought, like, let's use some modern names, too
4:06
I mean, we're all dead. We're all dead men walking. Then Eric sort of picked up the ball and started writing the second verse
4:14
He wrote it more about exactly Elmer McCurdy. But to me, I was like, yes, it's great to put the spotlight on Elmer, but it also applies to everybody
4:24
adolescence was just an open presence. You drank a liquor. It made it all go quicker
4:31
Those dead ancestors, you had to make an exit. You found a bottle, and now your face reflects it
4:39
And so you fill with failures, and you confront your rivals who stand thereon with bibles pointing at you, and you plot, you scheme, you had a chance
4:49
you had a dream, couldn't get a witness so you leave here today
4:54
well, we are the witnesses now. I've been a pilgrim on the road from coast to coast
5:00
I look around and I see it with a hungry ghost, getting it spending on that gravel road through hell
5:07
I know the drill cause I one of them as well That brings it around to the first person The storyteller originally me and Eric then in the show
5:22
Jeb Brown, who's the storyteller, and the guitar player who used to be Eric
5:26
and now is going to be somebody else, they're telling the story, and they're saying, I've been a pilgrim
5:30
This is why I'm qualified to tell this story. And I think it's an important song
5:35
both to tell you what the tone musically is going to be
5:39
and tonally what the speed of this show is going to be
5:43
It gets very slow sometimes and quiet, gets very fast and loud sometimes
5:49
And almost most importantly, it puts the audience's minds in the right frame of mind
6:01
to accept what we're giving them. For me, this is my seventh or eighth Broadway show
6:08
it's the first one where I and my collaborators sort of said, well, here's what we're saying
6:16
here's what we're doing, here's the story we're telling, it's not based on a movie, it's not based on
6:20
it's based on a true story with our editorializing, our storytelling. That makes it very different and very original and very satisfying for me, who's done a bunch
6:34
of stuff based on movies, you know, it's taken me 25 years to sort of really feel like I belong
6:43
to theater, and this show for me really nails that down. It's like, oh, this is why theater and
6:52
musical theater can be very, very, very special
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