The making of the Disco Biscuits-adjacent new musical, ‘The Very Moon’

“Hey Siri, open metronome.” Disco Biscuits keyboardist Aron Magner is ready to write. He proceeds to play a soft and eerie melody on the piano. Nearby, his bandmate Jon Gutwillig sings a high-pitched siren call to emphasize the creepiness as Nick Schmidle, a journalist-turned-playwright, talks through each move.

“It’s got a little bit of Pixar meets Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” Schmidle says. “That makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, like something’s just around the corner.”

They’re developing a song for a character escaping through sewers. The process ping-pongs as Gutwillig goes from guitar to drums, Schmidle describes the steampunk plot, and Magner keeps his hands on the keys. They’re looking for cringe, for “sewer-sneak,” something Sondheimian, with more staccato.

Though Schmidle is based in London, he’s visited Gutwillig’s home studio in Malvern for songwriting sessions over the last year and a half as the trio has been crafting a Disco Biscuits-adjacent project called The Very Moon: A Steampunk Musical. In January, FringeArts will host its second workshop series.

It’s not the typical fare for the Disco Biscuits, Philly’s beloved electro-funk jam band. For Gutwillig, the musical is both a departure and a return. The new batch of songs swaps Bisco brand danceable tunes for musical theater tracks that tend to be slower and more emotional. Though it’s a fresh sound, The Very Moon builds on an epic story Gutwillig wrote decades ago called Hot Air Balloon.

That rock opera debuted at Silk City on New Year’s Eve in 1998, after the band teased out some songs in earlier shows. The work ended up gaining a mythical presence in the fan base, becoming a subject of fervent online discussions. But despite buzzy attention, the reception wasn’t always welcoming.

“One song that was universally panned when it came out was “The Very Moon.” It became everyone’s favorite, but [initially] it was too lighthearted and emotional for the fan base,” said Gutwillig. “It was quite a bit more cinematic musically than what we were usually doing, which was jazzy Philadelphia dance music.”

Hot Air Balloon followed Corrinado, the inventor of the first hot air balloon, whose refusal to sell his flying contraption to the rich and omnipotent tyrant Manilla lands him in jail. Corrinado and Manilla’s wife, Leora, fall in love, and after Corrinado escapes — surviving a cliff jump — he rescues her by balloon and they fly off together.

Gutwillig’s idea grew out of his struggle in a long-distance relationship, when he would look up at the very same moon and fantasize about flying across the country to see his then-girlfriend. That longing ended up resonating deeply with a huge fan: Schmidle.

“I met my wife, essentially, at a Disco Biscuits concert,” said Schmidle, who was attending James Madison University in Virginia in the late 1990s. “I fell in love with the band at the same time.”

In 1999, the pair saw five Biscuit shows in a row before she left to study abroad in Ireland. Hot Air Balloon stuck with him during that difficult period.

“I always felt like it could be bigger — the music was anthemic, it resonated in your soul, you felt it in the gut,” said Schmidle. “It gave me goose bumps. When we started writing, that was one of our metrics … if it’s goose-bumpy, we can put it in there.”

Schmidle played it cool when he first reached out to Gutwillig in the spring of 2022. He had spent about a decade at the New Yorker covering international politics and national security before publishing a book about test pilots, and getting into TV and film writing. After moving to London a few years ago, he met a theater producer who invited him to pitch play ideas. Hot Air Balloon sprung to mind.

He tried a few different avenues to reach the elusive Gutwillig, and when he finally texted the right phone number, the guitarist’s response was short and funny: “This number is defunct, but you should reach out to me on Instagram.” Schmidle didn’t have an account, so he got on Instagram with the sole purpose of pursuing Gutwillig.

“He approached me like, ‘I’m a writer. Have you ever considered working with a writer to realize this project?’ ” said Gutwillig. “It just seemed very professional.”

It was good timing for Gutwillig as the band was resurfacing from the pandemic shutdown. He was open to the chance to work on a longer term piece that could help him “compose my way out,” and he welcomed Schmidle’s collaboration.

The writer had several ideas for how to expand storylines and add new characters into the fictional steampunk world of The Very Moon. No longer lovesick 20-somethings, the two dads refocused the narrative through the eyes of Mabel Mulberry, a young orphan girl. The Corrinado-Leora love story remains, but now the stakes are much higher: The dictator Manilla has outlawed art, and the five-character cast is in the midst of a budding revolution.

To jump into songwriting, they brought in Magner. He had some theater familiarity as well; his mother, Adele Magner, founded Philadelphia Young Playwrights.

Magner and Gutwillig are like converging rivers when it comes to improvising, flowing together and pivoting directions as they continue gathering momentum. They once performed a play on the spot with nothing more than “yes, and” energy. It helped to have Schmidle as a third party to keep them focused once the jam began.

“Project management was such a novel concept that we’d never really experienced before, it kept us on the task at hand and helped us immediately establish trust in Nick,” said Magner.

Within months, the trio had 12 new songs that they wrote mostly over Zoom. This past spring they hosted their first workshop, and, despite little promotion, it sold out in minutes.

Some of the best feedback they received was from a 12-year-old girl who later emailed Schmidle a breakdown of what needed work, from expanding on plot points to necessary character development.

Musicals can take several years to develop before world premieres, but they are hopeful that the work will connect with Biscuits fans and beyond — and, crucially, musical theater producers. The workshop series will run Jan. 17-24, 2024.

For Schmidle, he sees success as earning enough cultural recognition for kids to wear Corrinado or Mabel costumes for Halloween in the coming years.

“The macro theme is that art can save the world,” said Schmidle, who sees the musical’s resonance as evergreen. “It sounds so incredibly Pollyannaish and naive, but there is something that is granular, and that feels very true to it.”

Workshops of “The Very Moon: A Steampunk Musical” will run Jan. 17-24, 2024, at FringeArts, 140 N. Christopher Columbus Blvd., Phila.