Jeb Brown makes 'Dead Outlaw''s wild true story come alive on Broadway
This interview is part of our New York Talent Guide series, which spotlights rising and undersung Broadway stars whom theatregoers shouldn't miss on stage.
Theatre veteran Jeb Brown has appeared in hit Broadway shows from Grease to Aida to Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, but it's been 10 years since he last appeared on the Broadway stage. The show that's bringing him back? A folk rock musical about Elmer McCurdy, a bandit who dies young, gets embalmed, and tours the U.S. as a mummified sideshow attraction for decades.
"It's a travelogue of early 20th-century America, traveling through the semi-seedy underbelly of pulpy Americana: the wax museums, the carnivals, the sideshows," said Brown of Dead Outlaw. He guides audiences through that landscape as the Band Leader, singing and playing guitar in the onstage band while narrating McCurdy's tale (and repeatedly reminding everyone the whole story's true).
It's nothing if not a dramatic premise. Dead Outlaw began as a collection of songs by Tony Award winner David Yazbek, who ultimately developed it into a full-fledged production with co-composer/lyricist Erik Della Penna, book writer Itamar Moses, and director David Cromer. All but Della Penna previously collaborated on The Band's Visit, another underdog of a Broadway musical that went on to win 10 Tony Awards.
The Band's Visit, however, did not have to grapple with a lead character who dies halfway through. Dead Outlaw "was a great story and a lot of great songs, but I don't think anybody, including its creators, quite knew how it was going to live [...] on a stage," Brown said.
But when Brown and his entire cast first performed the show off Broadway at the Minetta Lane Theatre in 2024, "it came to life on its feet in front of us," the actor said. Audiences were fascinated. "I had a bunch of friends who were seasoned theatregoers and theatre creators who would come and say, 'Oh my god, I loved that so much. I'm coming back the night after tomorrow,'" Brown recalled.
Now that Dead Outlaw is making its way to Broadway's Longacre Theatre, Brown spoke with New York Theatre Guide about what intrigues him about McCurdy's story, his take on the Band Leader, and his interaction with an unexpected guest during the Off-Broadway run.
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You bring your own music background to Dead Outlaw. Talk about that.
I was in bands all my life through my 30s. [...] I toured, I recorded. One of the bands that I was in for the longest was in L.A. [and we] were lucky enough to play some of those great rooms: the Troubadour, the Viper Room.
[It] was a pure Americana band. In fact, they coined that category for Billboard in those very years because there was so much music that was coming out that wasn't quite country. We played a lot of country festivals where we were the "outlaw country" offering or the "indie country”.
Why did the creators decide to put a Band Leader in Dead Outlaw?
It began as a collection of songs, and then they would put it on stages around New York: Joe's Pub, 54 Below, those kinds of places. David would tell the story at the piano, and they'd do the songs, but he'd tell it off the cuff. That was the structure.
By the time Itamar Moses was brought in to write something real and then David Cromer saw that [...] they had a song cycle and a story and a guy telling a lot of it.
One of the big rules in [theatre] is "Show, don't tell." But there's so much story that we enjoy flipping that, making it almost like a campfire story hour with a band that evolves into a theatre piece.
How do you see the character of the Band Leader?
There's a great bridge in an early song, "Dead," that becomes kind of the theme song in the show. [The Band Leader] sings, "I've been a pilgrim on the road from coast to coast. I've looked around and all I've seen was hungry ghosts getting and spending on the gravel road through hell. I know the drill, because I'm one of them as well."
The Band Leader, in my mind, is a guy who lives on the road. He's the guy who has not necessarily been anchored to a firm home base, and that's an Elmer McCurdy story. He's the guy who managed to avoid the deadly traps that Elmer fell into, but he was tempted by a lot of the same things. He rode that gravel road through hell, and he's telling the story as a sympathetic observer with some connection to this young man who's going through it all.
What interests you most about Elmer McCurdy's story?
There's so many stories within stories in this tale. But the way we tell it, the thing that most fascinates me is why we are drawn to the memento mori, the mummy.
I [recently went to] a small convent south of Mexico City, where they claim to have a bunch of these "accidental mummies" in the basement. [...] Just like Elmer, they had been thoroughly embalmed and then left in a very hot, dry place — in a crypt, basically — and they never quite decomposed, and they became a fascination in the town and eventually became part of this museum.
You can't stop staring at them, just like in our show. There's a song called "Something About a Mummy," and it's very interesting to examine what that pull is. It's something about coming to terms with the fact that this whole business of being alive is a fatal condition.
Did you ever expect Dead Outlaw to transfer after the Off-Broadway run ended?
For New York actors, the Minetta Lane is a special spot in and of itself, so we were thrilled just to be doing that. And then there was a point at which, during the run, it became clear that there was a hunger for more, not just among our ranks, but out there in the theatregoing public.
There were a lot of people coming back multiple times, and there were a lot of people who weren't able to see it who were really crushed. And then we started to hear rumblings of exactly how [a transfer] might happen, and little by little, it came together.
I've heard people say, "Oh, your show is going to Broadway. That's so great. I saw it downtown. It's pretty punky for Broadway."
Do you see that as a compliment?
I do. Scrappy, punky — there's something unexpectedly basement-band raw about it. At the same time, it's a beautiful piece of theatre.
What other audience responses to Dead Outlaw off Broadway stick with you?
The dead outlaw is named Elmer McCurdy, an actual person, and we had a McCurdy in the audience one night. [...] We were basically genuflecting at the altar of Elmer McCurdy by this time, so this guy got a real surprise that he was suddenly the guest of honor.
[Elmer] was his great-great uncle or something like that, so he had always heard the story [...] but he was about as disbelieving as we were. To see it all played out on stage suddenly, for him, confirmed he was connected to a very special, real American story.
Have you ever had a theatre experience as an audience member that really moved you?
The show I saw the most was Hedwig [and the Angry Inch] downtown, when [it] was first off Broadway at the Jane Street Theatre.
I saw that six times. I couldn't get enough. It's something about the place where rock and roll and theatre intersect. That's always been very important to me, and [...] that was the best example I'd ever seen — a true rock and roll band on stage and a rock and roll story being told, but also something transcendent, something like our story, that's about many, many things.
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This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.
Photo credit: Dead Outlaw off Broadway. (Photos by Matthew Murphy)
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