Captain Ahab’s Motorcycle Club main illustration by Jonathan Arthur Ashley.

About the Club

Captain Ahab’s Motorcycle Club was conceived by filmmaker/musician Cory McAbee. The club was established in 2012 by McAbee and filmmaker/documentarian Gregory Bayne. It is a national and international collaborative, a club and a production studio. Participation will take place at live events and online. Participation equals membership. Local chapters are developing worldwide.

The first two departments being developed are music and graphics. Our online music library features a growing collection of songs written by Cory McAbee. All tracks are available for free download. Additional tracks and mixes for these songs are being generated and posted by club members. McAbee has been performing live to these mixes and will continue to do so as tracks develop and mutate. Members are also welcome to use this material. This department will produce live events, club gatherings, and a feature film soundtrack.

Illustrators and graphic designers are creating a body of work in the form of “chapter patches” for their areas. This is our first online collaboration in the visual arts. As these departments develop other departments in other fields will be introduced. Our final project will be a FEATURE FILM, written & directed by Cory McAbee, produced by Gregory Bayne and created by Captain Ahab’s Motorcycle Club. The film and its elements will be distributed for free. Any profits will be given to charity.

Welcome to the club.

Founding Members

Cory McAbee

corymcabee.com /  crazyandthief.com / @corymcabee

Cory McAbee was born in northern California as the youngest of three children. His father was an auto mechanic. His mother became a preschool teacher in later years. He spent his summers living with his grandparents in the Nevada desert.

McAbee’s formal education ended with high school. He was a poor student with a D- average. He did not read a book until he was in his early twenties.

As a young adult McAbee moved to San Fracisco where he was offered work as a doorman at a nightclub. For the next twelve years McAbee worked as the head of security in bars and nightclubs throughout San Francisco.

In 1989 McAbee formed the musical group, THE BILLY NAYER SHOW. In 1990 McAbee completed the hand painted stills for his first animated short, BILLY NAYER which premiered at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival.

Over the next two years, McAbee wrote and directed short films including THE KETCHUP AND MUSTARD MAN and THE MAN ON THE MOON. As a means of self-distribution, McAbee developed a live musical perfomance that incorporated his short films. The show was called THE BILLY NAYER CHRONICLES. It was presented at the 1995 Sundance Film Festival as the festival’s first multi-media event.

After THE BILLY NAYER CHRONICLES had run its course, McAbee left his job and lost his apartment. He lived without a home for the following three years. During that period, McAbee compiled ideas for his first feature film musical, THE AMERICAN ASTRONAUT.

During the three years that followed, McAbee storyboarded and rewrote THE AMERICAN ASTRONAUT, as well as songs for the BNS albums THE VILLAIN THAT LOVE BUILT and RETURN TO BRIGADOON. The storyboard/screenplay version of THE AMERICAN ASTRONAUT was accepted into the Sundance Screenwriters Lab.

Eventually, McAbee moved to Chicago where he lived for two years. Shortly after moving to Chicago, funds were secured for the production of THE AMERICAN ASTRONAUT. McAbee moved to Manhattan for nine months to work as the film’s writer, director, lead actor, composer, musician and graphics painter. THE AMERICAN ASTRONAUT premiered at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival.

McAbee moved to Brooklyn New York in the summer of 2001. The following years were spent touring with THE BILLY NAYER SHOW. Between tours, McAbee continued to write feature length screenplays. In December of 2006, McAbee was commissioned by the Sundance Film Festival to create a short film for mobile distribution. McAbee created a musical piece entitled RENO. The film RENO became a favorite among operators worldwide. As a result McAbee was asked to speak about small screen films at technology coferences throughout the world. This exposure to new technologies inspired McAbee to write and design a feature film for screens of all sizes. In 2007 he wrote STINGRAY SAM with the intention of self-distribution on multiple platforms. STINGRAY SAM premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.

In 2010 McAbee wrote and directed a short feature entitled CRAZY AND THIEF. Crazy and Thief was created without finacial backing through the use of inexpensive and basic film and recording devices. Crazy and Thief held its world premier at BAFICI (Buenos Aires Festival Internacional De Cine Independiente) in 2012 and continues to play festivals worldwide.

For his work in alternative forms of filmmaking and self distribution Cory McAbee has taught Masters Classes and lectured at universities and symposiums worldwide. These include:

St.Petersburg International KINOFORUM. St.Petersburg, Russia-Lund Film Academy. Lund, Sweden.-Interlochen Arts Academy. Interlochen, MI-Reykjavik International Film Festival (RIFF). Reykjavik, Iceland-Imagin: Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival. Netherlands-Filme Couture’s. Lisbon, Portugal-Yale Film Club. Yale University. New Haven, CT -Sundance Institute Senior Board Meeting. NYC -The South Australian Film Corp -Film Lab. Adelaide, Australia-You Are In Control. Reykjavík, Iceland-IFP’s Filmmaker Conference: The Future of Film. NYC-San Francisco Art Institute. San Francisco, CA-Los Angeles Film Festival. Seize the Power Symposium. LA, CA-Glasgow University. Glasgow, Scottland -3GSM Wold Congress. Barcelona, Spain  -21st Century Global Summit. Oxford, UK-New Frontier Panel. Sundance Film Festival. Park City, Utah-GenCon. Scriptwriting Panel. San Diego, CA-Revelation Perth International Film Festival. Perth, Australia-THE CONVERSATION. Columbia University. NYC-Leeds International Film Fest. Leeds, UK-SCI-FI-LONDON. Genre Filmmaking Panel. London, UK-Fantaspoa Fantastic Film Festival. Rio De Janeiro, Brazil

In 2012 McAbee completed his first opera. He is currently writing and performing with Captain Ahab’s Motorcycle Club.

Gregory Bayne

gregorybayne.com / thislovelymachine.com / @gregorybayne

Gregory Bayne is a filmmaker living and working in Idaho. Bayne’s work as a producer, director, editor, and cinematographer has appeared in several short, feature length and documentary films including TRUDELL, which premiered at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, the ESPN produced and Michael Hoffman directed OUT OF THE BLUE: A STORY ABOUT LIFE AND FOOTBALL AT BOISE STATE, about the 2007 Boise State Fiesta Bowl Champions, and PURPLE STATE OF MIND, a 2008 audience award winner at the Tallahassee Film Festival. His work has shown theatrically, at film festivals worldwide (including the Sundance, Seattle, Munich and SXSW, and deadCENTER Film Festivals), and broadcast nationally on PBS, ESPN and the Sundance Channel.

In 2010, Bayne released his debut feature film PERSON OF INTEREST via Vodo.net direct to file sharing sites where it was downloaded over 40,000 times in its first month of release. Since its debut it has been screened nearly half a million times across the globe, including over 250,000 times from a fan upload on YouTube.

An early adopter of using the internet to finance, build audience for, and distribute his work, Bayne was one of Kickstarter’s early success stories, raising $27,210 in just 20 days to fund his intimate feature documentary, JENS PULVER | DRIVEN, about the legendary mixed martial arts champion, Jens Pulver. The fully fan funded film, which has been hailed as “Beautiful,” “Emotional,” and “Raw and Powerful,” is currently in release through Gravitas Ventures/Warner Brothers Digital, and available on Netflix, iTunes, Hulu, and other On Demand platforms.

He has been a guest speaker discussing the changing landscape of film and media, and the effective use of crowd-funding and crowd-sourcing at Columbia University, the Los Angeles Film Festival and the London Film School, and written articles for Filmmaker Magazine and the film/technology website WorkbookProject.com. He has been featured in FilmThreat, Filmmaker, MicroCinema and WIRED Magazines.

Currently, Bayne is in production on his second feature documentary, and another Kickstarter success story, BLOODSWORTH: AN INNOCENT MAN, about Kirk Noble Bloodsworth, the first death row inmate exonerated by DNA evidence in the United States.