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For demonstration purposes only, not for commercial release or sale. All music and lyrics copyright 2010 – I ARE Music (ASCAP) / FISNO, Inc.
  

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"The earthquakes that trembled London surely signal God's wrath against lewd books such as Henry Fielding's The History of Tom Jones."

-The Bishop of London, 1750

What made Henry Fielding's hilarious sex comedy so scandalous in 1750 is what still makes it relevant today--its unflinching satire of hypocritical moralists and their unending obsession with what other people do in bed.

It's this iconoclastic culture clash that led us to envision BASTARD JONES as a rock musical about a himbo with a heart of gold. Nine actors play 37 roles, accompanied by a five-piece rock band.

We've married Fielding's bawdy Restoration comedy style with a musical vocabulary that's both traditionally theatrical and classically rock. BASTARD JONES unites the highbrow with the lowbrow in a fusion style we like to call "the unibrow." At a time when Broadway has embraced rock and the American culture wars rage on, BASTARD JONES reflects the zeitgeist with verve, class and some kick-ass electric guitars.

 
     

MARC ACITO (book writer, lyricist)
is the author of the comic novels How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship and Musical Theater (Editors' Choice - The New York Times) and its sequel Attack of the Theater People.

Composer Stephen Schwartz said the latter caused "gasps of appalled recognition...the kind of book where you read passages to friends and they laugh too." How I Paid for College won the Ken Kesey Award for Fiction and is translated into five languages the author cannot read. 

For the theater, Marc co-wrote the twisted Christmas comedy, Holidazed, which ran for two seasons at Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland, Oregon. His second play, Birds of a Feather, tells the true story of the gay penguins in the Central Park Zoo. It receives its world premiere at the Hub Theatre in Fairfax, Virginia, in 2011. He currently has two other musicals in progress--one with Triumph of Love composer Jeffrey Stock and another with Everclear pianist James Beaton.

A recovering professional opera singer, Marc performs "singing commentaries" on National Public Radio's All Things Considered and blogs about economics, of all things, at AOL's WalletPop.com.

After being kicked out of the musical theater program at Carnegie-Mellon, Marc graduated from Colorado College, which in 2009 awarded him an honorary doctorate. Though he answers to Dr. Marco, he cannot prescribe medication.

Marc divides his time between New York City, where he can't believe a co-op board approved him, and Portland, Oregon, where he teaches classes in story structure to aspiring writers.

  
   
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AMY ENGELHARDT (composer, lyricist)
recently received the 2011 Dottie Burman Award for Songwriting from the Manhattan Association of Cabarets (MAC). Amy was the sole female member of Grammy-nominated vocal "band without instruments," THE BOBS from 1998 to 2011, during which she won numerous ASCAP and ACA awards for her writing and vocal work on the band's CDs and DVDs, and created Rhapsody In Bob, Gershwin's concerto arranged for piano and vocal orchestra, which premiered at Wolf Trap.

Amy's theatrical credits include lyrics for commissioned adaptations of Carl Sagan's Contact with Hungarian rocker Peter Sipos, Nicholas Nickleby with electric violinist Eyvind Kang; and music and lyrics for the Bobs/Flying Karamazov Brothers collaboration, A Comedy of Eras at ACT Seattle. She also contributed special musical material for Hollywood Nurses (Chip Deffaa Festival, NYC), That Sinking Feeling (The Free Associates, Chicago), The Dog and Pony Show (Huntington Theater, Boston and The Free Associates), and The Egg Game (Present Company, NYC). Amy was recently a creative consultant on Ashley Brown’s (Broadway’s Mary Poppins) PBS concert special Call Me Irresponsible and Musical Director/Arranger for the world premiere of Drunk with Love: A Tribute to Frances Faye at San Francisco's New Conservatory Theater.

Her debut solo CD, Not Gonna Be Pretty, hailed as the "unlikely marriage of Nellie McKay and Meat Loaf," was nominated for two Just Plain Folks Music Awards--"The "Grassroots Grammys" according to the LA Times. Her insanely diverse vocal credits include Jim Henson's Animal Jam, Barbra Streisand's Timeless concerts, Neil Young's Living With War and The Doctor Demento Show.

A graduate of Syracuse University's musical theater program and Berklee College of Music, Amy used to claim she was born in a New Jersey Turnpike toll booth until she learned Marc Acito used that line to "impress people." She currently splits her time between New York and Los Angeles.
 




DEMO CREDITS :

Produced/Arranged by Amy Engelhardt

Associate Producer/Band Wrangler: Bob Malone

Engineered by Steve McDonald (Nurviwop Studios, Camarillo, CA), Troy Dexter , CJ Vanston (Treehouse Studios, Burbank, CA) and Gary Stockdale (Stockdale Sound, Los Angeles, CA)

Industrial Strength Thanks to Bob DeMarco and Steve McDonald

CAST:

TOM   - Greg Whipple

SOPHIA   - Jen Malenke

THWACKUM/WESTERN/ALLWORTHY/LANDLADY NANNY - Lance Feldspar

BRIDGET/JENNY JONES/MOLLY/MAIDS - Brynne Whitney

ELDERLY MAID/MISS WESTERN - Cynthia Carle

VICAR/PARTRIDGE - Gary Stockdale

BLIFIL/CAPTAIN BLIFIL - Edward Zanni

BAND:

Bob Malone (All Keyboards)

Troy Dexter (All Guitars)

Lynn Keller (Bass)

Adam Gust (Drums/Percussion)


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