Exclusive: Audible Resurrects DEAD OUTLAW As A Bold New Audio Musical Experience

What happens when a failed outlaw dies, and nobody claims the body? In the case of Elmer McCurdy, he becomes a sideshow, a movie prop, a forgotten ghost, a shocking folktale, and now, thanks to a squad of Tony-winning theatre artists-- a haunting, hilarious, and deeply human musical turned Audible immersive audio experience that fans have come to know and love as Dead Outlaw.

When the project first crossed the desk of Audible Theater’s Head of Development, Kate Navin, however, it was a collection of simple yet explosive songs from Tony-winning composer, David Yazbek and fellow songwriter and bandmate, Eric Della Penna.

"This story has been turning in my mind for 30 years. It’s compelling. It makes you think about mortality, presence, death and all of that has stuck with me. It simmered in my subconscious for decades," Yazbek told BroadwayWorld, "I’d tell the story to friends because it’s just so captivating, and when I told it to Eric, who’s a deep songwriter, we started thinking about it poetically."

Dead Outlaw tells the bizarre true story of Elmer McCurdy, a failed train robber whose mummified corpse traveled the country for decades after his death, winding up as a prop on a film set before being identified and buried nearly 70 years later.

When Audible reps attended Yazbek and Della Penna's presentation of the show at 54 Below the material showed an instantaneous spark. Navin was struck by Elmer's story and immediately saw its potential as a fully realized piece.

"It was wild and completely unknown to me. It felt like something I should’ve heard before, especially being in the entertainment industry. How he was discovered… it’s the kind of thing that should be in a history class somewhere. It covers so much ground. It's like a real-life Forrest Gump in that way. I was struck by that. I bounced the idea off colleagues at Audible, and no one else had heard of it either. That told me audiences might have the same reaction I did: 'Why don’t I know this story?' That was exciting," she explained.

"I had a meeting with David where we talked about his goals for it. He asked a lot of questions that made me really excited; questions about legacy and who owns your legacy. To quote another musical: who gets to tell that story? I thought that intersected really nicely with this cool, true story."

Dead Outlaw the Musical eventually took shape for the stage with the help of book writer Itamar Moses and director David Cromer, Yazbek's Tony-winning collaborators on the acclaimed sleeper hit, The Band's Visit. 

The show went to become Audible’s most ambitious and notable theatrical endeavor to date. It premiered to acclaim in an extended run Off-Broadway at Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre in winter 2024. The show soon made the move to Broadway and opened at the Longacre Theatre in spring 2025 with an outstanding cast that included Tony Award-nominees Andrew Durand, Jeb Brown, Julia Knitel, and more. Dead Outlaw the Musical quickly earned a cult fan base and earned seven Tony Award nominations including Best Musical.

After the show took its final bow in July 2025, the show's fans didn't have to nurse their disappointment for long when it was announced that Audible would release the full recording of Dead Outlaw as an immersive audio experience mixed in Dolby Atmos. 

While Audible has previously produced plays and spoken-word performances for audio, Dead Outlaw marks its first full-length musical, and the process, Navin said, was thoughtfully collaborative from the outset. "From that very first call, David was like, 'Well, I hadn't thought about that, but that's cool.' They always saw it as an opportunity, not an afterthought."

The creative team approached the two mediums- stage and audio- as equal partners, with careful thought given to how the story would live in each. For Yazbek, the transition also allowed for a deeper dive into a story he’d long wanted to tell. 

Even so, turning a highly visual stage show into an audio-only experience required technical dexterity. Navin noted that the biggest difference came during post-production. "They would sit around a room and say, 'How are we going to put this audience under that night sky?' And they'd find a poetic, organic solution. It doesn't feel superimposed. It feels part of the story."

Yazbek agreed: "Dean [Sharenow] and I spent so much time on this piece, making sure the world of sound was as immersive and compelling as the show itself. We wanted the songs to hit in an organic way."

The result is a production that evokes the ghostliness of McCurdy’s story with eerie intimacy. "That was the big question," Navin said. "Without the visual reminder of Elmer being there, how do we remind the audience? Some of the narration stayed that wasn’t on Broadway, and some lines were added to keep us grounded in Elmer’s presence."

Still, the team didn’t aim to replicate the live show. They aimed to evolve it. As Yazbek put it, "There are no new songs, but there’s a lot of new music. Underscoring, sound effects, transitions. The Audible version is its own animal."

As for how the Audible recording diverges from the usual cast recording fare, Yazbek explains, "With Dead Outlaw, we made the cast album like a great rock record. We recorded the band first and made sure it sounded fantastic. Then we brought in the singers. We treated it like a real album, not just a document of a show.

The Audible original was something else entirely. The songs are essentially the same, but we created an entire world of sound around them. We recorded all the scenes, overlaid sound effects with the help of a fantastic sound designer Audible brought in, who also did the Atmos mix. Dean and I worked closely on it. Cromer was there for the acting and pacing, but Dean and I handled the final calls. We wanted the world of sound to be just as immersive and compelling as the show itself, and for the songs to hit organically, the way they would on stage. It was a totally unique experience for both of us. I’ve done radio stuff before, but this was different. Really special."

Beyond its multimedia extistence, the musical has taken on another, more poignant, legacy as a lasting tribute to the real-life Elmer McCurdy with fans of the show leaving bandanas, guitar picks, and playbills at McCurdy’s gravesite in Oklahoma. The show’s emotional core, the quiet tragedy of a man lost in life and desecrated in death, has struck a chord.

"The first time I saw a photo of his grave with a playbill, I got emotional," said Navin. "It didn’t polish him up. It just told his story, and did it with care and respect. I feel honored to be part of that next leg in Elmer's journey."

The journey isn’t over. Audible has already announced its next musical, Mexodus, billed as the first live-looped musical to play Off-Broadway. For Navin, projects like Dead Outlaw and Mexodus represent Audible’s unique role in a shifting artistic landscape. "From the beginning, the mission was to create more opportunity for theater artists, not just Audible IP. And to reach an audience that isn’t all in New York."

That mission aligns with a broader cultural moment . With the Cherry Lane Theater reopening in September under the auspices of film studio, A24, Quentin Tarantino reportedly working on a play, and Netflix’s Stranger Things drawing crowds on Broadway, the overlap between film, television, and live performance is only growing.

Dead Outlaw stands as an example of how theatre can evolve to meet the moment, preserving its emotional core while embracing new modes of storytelling. 

Yazbek said of the recording, "It’s not easy, even for someone like me with multiple shows under my belt, to get a totally original, non-IP musical produced. You’d think it would be easier for me, Eric, and Itamar, we did The Band’s Visit, we’ve won awards. But it wasn’t. It was Kate Navin at Audible who saw it and said, “I think we can do something with this.” That opened the first real door for this piece. That took foresight. It took creativity. And it took nerve. We closed on Broadway surprisingly early. Maybe in another season we would’ve run longer, I don’t know... But we always knew we had this amazing Audible version that would live forever. You can listen to the entire show, nowhere else can you do that. So for me, Eric, and Itamar, it’s incredibly meaningful. Same perfect cast, full show, captured forever. That’s thanks to Audible. It’s rare. And it’s deeply appreciated."