Maroon the Shantyman is a vile pirate with a penchant for breaking into song at the worst possible time, like 1:00 in the morning during "Hell's watch" or during breakfast warbling away his 100 verses of "Drunken Sailor" to make everyone want to string him up by his goolies. This would explain why he carries more guns around than a typical English frigate. It’s been speculated that he’s overcompensating for something, but the leather codpiece prevents us from knowing for sure.

He’s got the voice of a mating squid, so he was fully qualified to be the shantyman on board. No one knows what his real name is, but since we found him marooned on a tropical island, we’ve called him Maroon ever since. (The simple mindedness of pirates for ya!)

We pulled him out of the arms of some of the most vicious island women we’d ever seen, it looked like they were sucking the life out of him. He put up a fight like he didn’t want to be rescued, but we knew better. Those women were too tan for him. Yeah, that's it. He’s been trying to find the words to thank us ever since. That probably explains the singing thing.

Craig Lutke may be responsible for many things in his life, but you'll never see him own up to them, especially if they have something to do with pirates. Except on his tax returns, of course, where it all gets marked off as expenses. We do know he prides himself on his rapidly increasing DVD collection, since that way he can store up useless movie trivia to test the rest of the group with when they just couldn't care less.

He's convinced his "day job", which pays the bills around here, is just a side-gig while he's waiting for the "whole pirate thing" to take off. Keep an eye on those pirate stocks, big guy. One way to get a cheap laugh is to watch him slowly sweat himself in a pirate puddle during a show because he's always wearing that damned hot pirate coat in the summer.

Harvey the Corpsman.   In the Royal Navy, every ship has aboard it, someone to serve as the ship's doctor, or Corpman (pronounced CORE-man). These men are usually skilled with many a surgical instrument and life-saving procedure and know how to put those skills to good use.

In the world of pirates, though, we have to make due with Corpmen that were booted from the Royal Navy 'cause they weren't worth keepin'. That's how we got Harvey the Corpman. We found him with his head buried under a table (and a bar wench's skirt) in a pub in Bermuda with only his bloodied bone saw to tell us what he was. We figured that, to be a pirate you needed to know the fine points of wine, women, and song, and Harvey apparently had the wine and women part down, we'd make sure he know the song part as well. Now he's making a living tending the sick and, in between his horrible jokes about maiming the wounded, he'll break into a musical number, bellowing in his voice that sounds like a buffalo giving birth, and proceed to make the worst bedside manner you could wish on your worst enemy.

Dave Ruffin was elected in high school as the man most likely to wear a sofa and tights for a hobby. Boy, were they right on the money with that one! He's got more acting skills than all of The Bilge Pumps combined, but he prefers not to show them in leau of being a complete jackass on stage. Suits us, since it goes with the show and we hate being shown up. The mad scientist in him has forced him to have a secondary address at the local Home Depot where he's always searching for the latest instuments of chaos... er... creation. He can screw his face up into so many different looks, we think he was the original "bitter beer face" man. One day, he'll get out of the teaching business (hopefully, before his students become leaders) and fulfill his life's dream of throwing a pile of fruit on his head and singing Elvis' greatest hits dressed as Carmen Miranda.

Phil McGroin the First Mate started on the Pieces O’ Eight as a deck swabber 1st class. He soon got promoted and we used him to tar the lines since he seemed to stick to everything anyhow due to his penchant for wearing kilts and not washing under them too often. He was very handy for our health, though, since he's good for scaring away the rats by lifting his kilt up in the bilges and sending the poor buggers running overboard to drown happily. The rest of the crew took up a collection and bought him a pair of breeches to cover up his pieces o’ eight and save us all an eyeful when he's climbing in the rigging.

He was promoted to “First Mate” by the captain when he bought the captain a dozen black & tans and the two of them started on a 3-day drunken spree. All our arguments to him that pirate crews don't have first mates only confused the captain, so we just let it ride. We figure one day we'll find the captain, he'll sober up and Phil will be back to tarring the lines again, hoping to avoid rope burn and singing in his cheesy lounge singer voice.

Robert Trotter has one of the great wonders of the world in the back of his car, a black hole that will suck everything you own in as soon as you let him borrow it. Somewhere, beneath that pile of junk is that CD you let him borrow, but it's hard to work up the nerve to dig into that thing and look. He’s the perfect person to take on long road trips since he prefers to drive and never falls asleep since he’s hopped up on enough caffeine to flatten a wildebeast.

If you’re ever wondering where he might be on his free time, try the local truck stop where he’ll be searching the shelves for a book on tape that he doesn’t already own (if there is such a thing). Or you might try any place that looks remotely Scottish from the outside and might sell Guinness. That’ll draw him like a moth to a flame. Just for tricks, walk up to him and ask him to sing a song in anything other than a Scottish accent and see how fast he swallows his tongue trying. Now that's comedy.

Galleon O'Galleon washed up along side the Pieces O' Eight one high tide with a bottle of Irish hootch firmly grasped in one hand and a compass in the other. Even though he smelled like a Kentucky moonshine still, we pulled him out of the water, scraped the ramoras off him and propped him up in the rigging to have target practice at with our flintlocks until he woke up. Unfortunately, he came to before Squint could draw a bead on him and he proceeded to babble on about finding a great, heapin' mound of treasure if we'd let him sign the articles.

Well, we ain't found the bloody treasure yet, but we still have a good time calling Galleon "The Dwead Piwate Wupert" when he gets all dolled up in his black clothes and tries to sing dirgy pirate songs in his voice that sounds like a rusty door hinge. It's kind of like watching a cute lil' bunny try to growl at you.

Initially we all thought that Josh Steinberg had only one talent, blowing all sorts of bad notes on his harmonica. Turns out, we were right. Luckily for us, there are plenty of things he can do bad, so we made sure he hung around. He's always looking for the next drooling lunatic of a woman to come along and tie him up to the bed and call him "Alice", but they seem to be in short supply these days, so he's forced to cope as best he can by doing some type of strange ritual in the closet we promised to never talk about again.

He's hoping to make a career out of acting, so he figures pirating is the next best thing until that big break comes along in the form of that oh-so-elusive talent scout that magically appears at one of our shows looking for solid actors in pirate shows. Ah, dreams are good to have.

John Crow the Cook is always serving the crew "food from the John" and forcing us all to "eat Crow". These jokes may be the lamest groaners in the world, but they're all our famously bearded cook has left in the world to keep him warm on cold nights (along with the Cabin Boy), so we laugh along every time he says 'em so that our helpings of sickly, diseased bilge rat stew with cheese whiz and asparagus tips doesn't turn into cold sickly, diseased bilge rat stew... with cheese whiz... and asparagus tips.

He's been know to serve us heaping helpings of his charred beard tips on the times when he leans over the stove too far when he's scratching his ass. We're hoping the beard never burns off as it's the only thing that serves as a buffer from his singing voice that sounds suspiciously like someone's shoving diseased manatee through a sausage grinder.

Ted Dossey moonlights for one month a year as the creepiest Santa Claus in the world... OK, maybe it's just creepy to us because we've seen him in his skivvies cackling like a demented witch and slinging sticks of dynamite all over the yard. We've all had nightmares about sitting in his lap and are bound and determined to make sure it doesn't happen to us again. The therapy bills are too much.

As the father of our own Natty Nell and the father-in-law of Maroon, he is forced to double up the presents every Christmas at gunpoint, not mention the punches to the cods he gets when he pesters his grandson to the brink of insanity.

Sharkbait Simon the Scapegoat is the chum to all the friendly fish of the ocean. Well, at least he would have been if he was in the water any longer before we found him. Left tied to a bouy (not a boy, as many people assumed) after parading around the quarters of his former captain... while wearing the captain's daughter's dress... while the captain's daughter was still in it... he thought his life was at an end. Until, of course, getting picked up by us scurvy dogs and being forced to sail the seas and singing sea shanties all day. Which proved to him there was a fate worse than death.

Regardless, he stands resolved to give his all with his battered guitar and voice that sounds like a pod of sperm whales humping each other in an oil slick.

Christopher Dallion is by far the grumblingest guitarist to ever join the band, which is saying something if you look at all of the guitarists that came before him. Primarily, because he still can't believe that he actually said "Yes" when asked and that we were going to hold him to it. He thought he'd just come to rehearsal, screw up a few songs for us and we'd decide to let him go. Little did he know that we loooove bad guitar and the worse he did, the more we liked him.

Now he's forced to ride along with us on car trips to small towns across the country, performing in 100+ degree heat for very little money and middling noteriety. Don't taunt him about it, though, or he'll crush your pathetic little car with his monster truck and the last thing you'll see before you die will be his Humphrey Bogart tattoo laughing at you as Christopher gives you the finger as he drives by. His momma would be so proud.

Squeegy the Cabin Boy, aka the barrel-dweller, likes to call himself “Strummin’ Pete” when we’re not listening due to the fact that he thinks he can play any nautical tune on his acoustic 12-string guitar. We always like to point out to him that he's playing a 4 string guitar now since he broke all the other 8 strings. It’s still better than that froggy sound we get when he opens his mouth to sing, though.

Born the son of a poor family in Jamaica, he wanted to call himself Rastafarian the Cabin Boy, but we think Squeegy is funnier. After you’ve seen him scoot around on his butt on the deck planks after a night in the barrel, you’d think it was funny, too.

Patrick McAlister holds the title of being the person who can invariably crack himself up during the telling of a story. I still don’t think we’ve managed to hear the end of a single one. If you’re ever looking for where he’s at during a show, he’s the one in the back busy re-stringing and re-tuning his guitar and grumbling about how the damp weather tears up his nice polished finish.

For many long years, his only social outlet was renaissance faires, so if you ever wonder why he turned out the way he did, now you know. We're determined to make him fit to be seen in public.

Aloysius Smeesy the Ship's Carpenter is a pirate with a knack for woodcrafting. That is, if you consider having a ship's wheel for a peg leg woodcrafting. He creates more holes than he patches when he stumbles around the decks with a saw in one hand and his wood in the other, looking to plug the first available leaky hole he can find on the ship. Wait a minute... am I still talking about carpentry?

Anyway, our favorite of his woody works of art is the belaying pin he hand carved that we use when we sneak up behind him and club him on the head before his latest attempt at redecorating the foc'sle into a victorian tea room so he and his dolls can dress up and have crumpets together while he sings to them in his best whale belching voice. Man, he's a wierd pirate!

Al Olson is a tried-and-true renaissance faire performer. Which means he's still looking for what he wants to do with his life. The 25+ years he's been a part of the Smee and Blogg singing executioners show has given him the life experience necessary to live for a month off $5.00 and a case of Ramen Noodles.

He likes to pretend his a normal-type guy when he breaks out his rocking chair and tell all of us about the (cough) glory days, but we all know that all it takes is a cheering crowd and an available coffee can to make him a happy man. (Don't worry if you don't get the joke, you can ask us about it later)

Splice the Rigger, though new to the sweet trade, has already earned the worst reputation possible in the pirate community... a nice guy. Luckily for him, he is new to the trade as nice guy pirates rarely last very long. They tend to end up tied on the main yard in a ball gown to be used as an extra sail and a cannon target when it's time for a battle.

So, to prevent this dire fate from happening, the crew had dedicated itself to exposing him (sometimes literally) to all sorts of sin and things decent people frown upon: fornication, debauchery, murder, incest, pokemon, twitter, and Michael Jackson impersonations. You know, the things that make you want to be a pirate in the first place. Feel free to help us when next you see him. Him being a rigger and all, you can bet he'll be (ahem) well rigged for the job.

He's got the voice of breaking glass that just got kicked in the crotch, so he'll be perfect to stand watch on the monkey deck on days we want to keep the dolphins away..

Nathan Campbell (no relation to Bruce) is fun to have around just because, until recently, he was an actual Corpsman in the Navy, which irritates Dave to no end. Looks like all that time spent play grab-ass with a bunch of men in uniform claiming to be sailors trained him perfectly for the real world... or at least our real world.

Apparently when you get out of the Navy, there's nothing in the world to do, so he's hoping this whole piracy thing takes off so he can become an official Texas privateer and go up against his old Navy buddies when Texas secedes from the union.

He's a veteran of the stunt show world, having played both bad and good guys with equal enthusiasm and complete lack of regard for his own safety. Which means he's likely to smile and shake your hand in genuine greeting just before he flips over backwards and hauls you off a cliff with him, just to see what will happen.