Farewells and Acknowledgments,
First of all, we must thank anyone and everyone who listened, helped, laughed and let me sleep in their chairs.

I'd also like to thank the song writers, for all the songs we used throughout the production, here is a list compiled by Skyler Fell:
Brother Can You Spare A Dime - Written in 1931 by lyricist E.Y. "Yip" Harburg and composer Jay Gorney, "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" was part of the 1932 musical New Americana.
One Jug Ov Whiskey - by Fiddlin' Mike of The Sour Mash Hug Band
Old Rub Alcohol Blues - by Moran Lee "Dock" Boggs
St James Infirmary Blues - is an American folksong of anonymous origin, though sometimes credited to the songwriter Joe Primrose (a pseudonym for Irving Mills). Louis Armstrong made it famous in his influential 1928 recording.
Whiskey Your The Devil - Traditional Irish Drinking Song
Griselda - traditional
Mussel Slough Song - written by Skyler Fell specifically for Eva's Outlaws
The Cuckoo (Jack o' Diamonds) - Traditional
The Nonsense Song - by Charlie Chaplin
Freight Train - by Elizabeth Cotton
Bei Mir Bist Du Shane - by Jacob Jacobs & Sholom Secunda
The Voice of The Lobster - music by Chains & Sean Lee, inspired by Lewis Carroll
Bubamara - written by Saban Bajramovic
For the Love of Whiskey & Beer - by Chains & Dylan Blackthorne
When You Die - traditional by Accordion Plague
The Big Rock Candy Mountain - by Billy Mack 1928
Dirty People's Anthem - by Sansa Asylum & Jesse Trashed
Silver Wedding - traditional klezmer tune
The Gomper - by Sean Lee aka The Gomper
Green Balloons - by Zombie Dan Abbott aka Professor Plague
Folsom Prison Blues - by Johnny Cash

Finally it's time to thank the players. It was a grand old ride but now it is done. The Evans and Sontag gang is disbanded, each riding towards his or her own sunset, I'd like to wish us all well on our journeys.

First I'd like to thank Lisa Bartfai, host of the show we hijacked for a month, and our beloved Eva. She continues her Passerby broadcasts, thepasserbyshow.blogspot.com, making wednesday morning commuters and slackers alike happily entertained from 8-10am with her silver tongue and glorious record collection. Check her out at Pirate Cat Radio 87.9FM.

Then our dear Dan Field, writer, actor, legend of the obscure knowledge. If you have any questions about anything, Dan is more likely to know than to not know, and even if he doesn't know, he'll probably be able to tell you anyway. Expect to hear his sonorous soliloquies on the Passerby as a correspondent from the Far East starting in August.

Danny Drachsler is a sort of jack of all trades, writer, actor, sound man, baker, farming enthusiast. He brought energy and guts to the project whenever those two ever important ingredients were lacking, and even when they weren't lacking he piled 'em on anyway. Danny continues to work and live in San Francisco, so if you see him on the street, please ask for challah and tell him I sent you, you'll never see bread the same way again.

Skyler Fell owns and operates an accordion repair and sales shop in San Francisco that you can check out on the web at accordionapocalypse.com. She also gives lessons, and is a member of the ever enigmatic jug band "The Hobo Goblins". Her accordion and funny voice expertise was put to valuable service in our little production, and we wish her all the best for her upcoming birthday.

Seamus McMullan is from Connecticut, a very recent transplant to San Francisco, though it is not his first time exploring the west coast. He has roamed and rambled much in his young life. A constant of the last three years has been his guitar, an instrument featuring prominently in episode 4. His willingness to step right off the plane and into the lead role of Chris Evans was much appreciated, as was his winning personality.

Andrew McMullan is an accomplished chef, a graduate of New England Culinary Institute and the master of a very dry wit. His contributions, beyond playing John Sontag and various nefarious fellows, namely consist in snickering off mic during the most touching scenes, to add a sense of realism that this piece sorely needed. He continues to live and Work in San Francisco, so please eat his food at the soup kitchen, or the Warfield theatre.

And well I guess that leaves me, Brendan McMullan. I am leaving sunny California for a pickup truck sojourn to the great north lands in about 8 days, and from there I know not my blessed route. I leave behind great memories and close friends, and I look ahead to the next great adventure.



Thank you for listening!


THE WORD ON THE STREET IS,
ROBBERY IS IN!
In the Studio at 21st and Florida, Pirate Cat Radio and Cafe, where all the magic happens on Wednesday morning, 9am to 10am!
Eva's Outlaws: California Train Robbers!
Our 3rd episode was a smashing success on Wednesday, drawing a crowd of onlookers to stare at the enigmatic performers as they bounced around the air studio, stabbing water melons, playing accordion and blowing train whistles.

A brief synopsis follows:
Evans and Sontag, suspected Train Robbers and livery stable owners lose everything in a night of hellfire, their stables burned to the ground, they split up. Train robberies rock the nation, as John's brother George comes to live with the Evans Clan. A train is robbed at Collis, a fortune in South American gold is the prize, and George Sontag is arrested on suspicion of train robbery. When the detectives come back for John Sontag and Chris Evans, a gun fight erupts, Evans and Sontag go on the lam, leaving a dead man, Oscar Beaver, to seal their fate as outlaws.
The entire country begins to follow the Evans and Sontag story, as they continue to evade capture, killing more bounty hunters at Young's Cabin and taking part in an interview with famed reporter for the San Francisco Examiner, Henry Bigelow. We left our tale with an ambush, near an old cottage called Stone Corral.
Is this the end of our Woebegone Wanderers?
How in the world will they get out of this one?
Tune in to 87.9FM, Wednesday, May 6th at 9AM to get the full scoop! Or listen at Pirate Cat Radio for...
The Series Finale you do not want to miss!
Episode 4 of Eva's Outlaws: California Train Robbers!

Podcasts!!

Podcasts?! Yes! Find the shinybright recordings of Eva's Outlaws below, or via Lisa's radio show The Passerby.

In each 2-hour recording you can listen to The Passerby in the first hour, then Eva's Outlaws in the second hour!

Episode 1:
Passerby: 04/15/09

Episode 2:
Passerby: 04/22/09

Episode 3:
Passerby: 04/29/09

Episode 4:
Passerby: 05/06/09

(That's right Aunt Sarah... It's the caste system of the pod people, aaaiieeeeeeee!)

Railroad Monopoly as The Octopus


In the arms of the octopus, clockwise from top left:

  • Railroad directors' mansions subsidized by federal bonds
  • Wheat Export
  • Stage Lines
  • Lumber Dealers
  • Fruit Growers
  • The Farmers
  • Mining
  • Wine
  • The Telegraph

G. Frederick Keller's 1882 cartoon "The Curse of California" appeared in The Wasp, a satirical newspaper edited by the notorious Ambrose Bierce.

A giant octopus stands for the Southern Pacific Railroad Company's stranglehold on commerce. The image was memorialized in Frank Norris' 1901 novel of wheat farmers, The Octopus.

For its eyes the Railroad octopus has Charles Crocker, the construction magnate, and Leland Stanford, the Company's political glad-hander in California and later founder of a university.

At left a tenth arm waits, as if held in reserve for a new victim. Perhaps the tenth arm has just finished laying to rest the men shot in the Mussel Slough Tragedy. Their graves are marked "Killed By the Railroad Monster."

Chris Evans recounts the Battle of Mussel Slough with his typical bravado in the first episode of Eva's Outlaws. Listen to a podcast of the show in "Passerby: 04/15/09" at the halfway point.

...Or perhaps the tenth arm in its concealed position is hiding the Railroad's imported Chinese laborers and California's race problems?

What is most striking in "The Curse of California"? While one might view the severe cruelty of Keller's octopus in aesthetic terms, its size and spread are no exaggeration of the economic circumstances.

We can't really intuit how profoundly the Southern Pacific wielded its influence in the California of those times. The Railroad monopoly exerted very broad control, far greater than functions of dollars or miles of track... influence without quantity.

What was it, some strange genus unclassified to this day?

At any rate, one can imagine Chris Evans and his friends, yeoman farmers, railroad workers, looking at this political cartoon in wonder...

What is that thing?!

Somewhere from within the blank mugs of those railroad barons (or in spite of them) projects the image of the modern faceless corporation... the behemoth, unique, beyond the limit, extension of man.

Yet another chapter in the riveting tale!! Wednesday April 29th, 9:00 a.m.!

Radio play?! some have muttered. What sort of thorny personalities would do such a thing? Well here are a few! Left to Right:

SEAMUS reads Chris Evans & other shysters
LULU UKULELE does Sam the Dog & coaches us on beastie voices
ANDREW reads John Sontag & other crustaceans
LISA reads Eva Evans & somehow hosts the show
SKYLER plays accordion & reads various droogs
DAN reads various chellovecks
DANNY does sound FX & reads various malchicks
& BRENDAN (not pictured, will be apprehended soon) does a little of everything, reads various stockjobbers & takes surprise photos

EPISODE 2 A JOY TO THE EARS!

The folks at Thieves and Tygers have done it again, with fanfare and accordion they've blown open your eardrums with train robbing excitement.

Synopsis of Episode 2:
The train at Pixley was robbed for 5,000 smackeroos, a family called the Evans's shared a meal and discussed the robbery, another train is robbed at Goshen, this time unburdening a drunken Bank Messenger of 20,000 green backs. Our friends the Evans family move to Modesto to start a livery stables business. Young Eva Evans is suspicious that her father, Chris Evans, and her Fiance, John Sontag, may be the very train robbers discussed in the papers. Our episode ended with the destruction of the Livery Stables, burned to the ground in the middle of the night, we left Chris Evans sobbing on the shoulder of his 14 year old daughter. How will they move on from this awful set back? Rob another train? Probably...
You'll have to listen to find out!
Episode 3 of Eva's Outlaws: California Train Robbers
Wednesday the 29th at 9am
Pirate Cat Radio 87.9fm
Tune in or be square!

THE ROBBERS HAVE LANDED

The first episode of Eva's Outlaws a resounding success.

Brief Synopsis of Episode 1:
We were introduced to a storyteller, family man, and farmer Christopher Evans, and his daughter Eva. We met John Sontag, injured and out of work brakeman for the Southern Pacific Rail Company, and due to certain circumstances, sworn enemy of his former employer. We heard the atrocities performed in the name of justice in the Mussel Slough Tragedy. And we left our performance with the start of a train robbery in Pixley, California.

Don't miss Episode 2, April 22nd at 9am. The robberies continue, and so does the drama!