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The Players
Live at the Carlsbad Village Theatre
 Stephen Baird
was born in Boston during World War II and raised for twelve years in the Bible Belt
where he grew up on country and gospel music. After moving to California and
attending Stanford University he underwent a conversion to rationalism. Almost
immediately he noticed the dearth of scientific gospel music. He lacked the means to
do anything about this problem, being a lapsed cello player (and that was forced on him)
so the problem lay dormant. He then spent a few decades obtaining an MD degree,
marrying, raising children, getting tenure, and achieving financial security and
happiness, but not much else. After acquiring a modicum of competence on the guitar
in the 1980’s he actually began to enjoy music again. While teaching medical
school classes, he has acquired the habit of reducing medical and other scientific
concepts to popular song form, shamelessly perverting the original intent of Christmas
carols by using them for melodies. The number of scientific concepts being large, he
soon exhausted Christmas carols as sources of melodies and moved on to gospel and well
known hymns.
This led to a relatively large body of material on such arcane subjects as cytokynes,
interleukins, gene function, chromosome structure, cellular immunology, and so on.
Occasionally more cosmic subjects such as the Big bang or black holes caught his
attention. Prompted by a letter from Dr. Eugenie Scott in Science News noting that
the other side (creationists) have all the good songs, he decided to return to the long
neglected problem of scientific gospel. Hallelujah! Evolution! is the beginning of that
liturgy.
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 Daniel Baird
started out playing the piano at the "urging" of his parents. After two years he finally decided that the piano wasn't for him and stopped playing music altogether. Then, after several years, Daniel joined the high school marching band in the percussion section and played most of the drums the school had available. After graduation in 1990, boredom and the lack of a summer job led Daniel to start messing around with his father's guitar. He has been playing guitar ever since. After graduating from UC Santa Cruz, Daniel formed a band with his singer roommate. They played coffee shops and open-mic nights around Santa Cruz with moderate success. With a Biology degree and a desire for a change, Daniel moved back to San Diego in late 1995. Shortly after moving, Daniel joined Throwin Stones, and 2 years later Lost Disciples. Both bands enjoyed local radio airplay and numerous packed houses at local clubs.
Daniel then decided to give music a rest and started a web design company in San Diego. After 4 successful years, Daniel decided to venture out into the corporate world and combine his computer skills and love of music into a successful career as a software engineer. Daniel has worked for Musicmatch, where he was responsible for creating the Musicmatch On Demand, Radio, and Store for the award winning Musicmatch Jukebox over the course of almost 5 years. Musicmatch was eventually acquired by Yahoo!, where he stayed on for almost 2 years. Yahoo! was a glimpse into "big" corporate America, and was not what Daniel was hoping it could be. Instead Yahoo! systematically dismantled the Musicmatch products, and eventually most of the key personel decided to leave. In June 2006, Daniel joined a small team (with some ex Musicmatch folks) at the startup known as Slacker.com. Daniel is hoping to again change the music world with his development of the Slacker Web Player. As far as the GMB go, Daniel began helping his father arrange his "funny" songs a long time ago and began to perform with his dad at several gigs supporting the Hallelujah! Evolution! CD. In 2000, the Opossums of Truth were officially formed with Dr. Baird, Daniel and Ron Jackson. After Ron's untimely death in 2007, the band name changed to The Galapagos Mountain Boys.
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 Dwight Worden
Dwight Worden was the founding partner of a law firm in Solana Beach, Worden and Williams, in which he practiced environmental law from 1975 until his retirement in 2001. He has taught, lectured and published extensively on environmental law topics throughout the state and region and remains as "Of Counsel" to the law firm. He is a lifetime member of the Surfrider Foundation sitting on its national advisory board, and has served as an officer in the Sierra Club and various other environmental organizations. He served as a governor's appointee to the California Coastal Commission, and on the California Attorney General's Environmental Task Force. He is a recognized authority on environmental law in California.
Musically, Dwight plays the guitar, both finger style and flat pick style, as his first instrument, having played for more than 40 years. He also plays fiddle, mandolin, and upright bass. He is on the Board of Directors of the San Diego Bluegrass Society and is active in bluegrass music activities throughout the region. He writes a monthly column for the Troubadour Newspaper called the "Bluegrass Corner", and plays fiddle in the San Diego bluegrass band Bigger Fish. He also plays on occasion with the San Diego roots band the Seventh Day Buskers, and appears on two of their CDs on fiddle and vocals (Long Live the Caboose and Born to Pick). Dwight lives in Del Mar and is proud to be an Opossum!
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 Mike McColm
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Oposi Emeritus
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After Ron Jacksons untimely death in 2007, the Opossums Of Truth were officially changed to The Galapagos Mountain Boys in tribute to the fact that he can not be replaced and it was he that named the band. We will honor Ron's memory with rational thought and good music. In addition Ron is the first member of an elite group, the Oposi Emeritus.
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 Ron Jackson
Ron Jackson was born on March 4, 1950 in Pasadena, California (d. 2007, La Costa, CA) of mixed
Scotch-Irish, Welsh and German Mennonite extraction. He began studying the
clarinet at age seven, and was quite active in harmony singing at home and in
church from an early age. At age twelve he acquired his first guitar, and
began learning folk music in addition to playing clarinet in school
orchestras. At fourteen he traded in his clarinet for a banjo, and became
active in the folk and blues scene in the Orange County area, performing
professionally as a solo blues act and in a folk duo in high school. An avid
student of traditional Piedmont and Delta style blues, Mr. Jackson became
convinced by age twenty, after years of arduous genealogical research, that
he was indeed white, as many critics of his blues vocal stylings had been
proposing. Based on this discovery, he changed musical directions, moving
into bluegrass, folk rock, and country rock. Meanwhile he received his B.A.
degree in Mathematics from U.C.S.D. and accepted a fellowship at the
University of Minnesota in the Ph.D. program. While studying in Minneapolis,
a thriving folk and blues scene in the 1970's, he drifted into a full time
music career, abandoned graduate studies, and moved back to California. His
first full-time band was Molly Stone's New Honkytonk Band, followed in
succession during the 1970's by Squatters' Rites, Squatters' Last Rites, and
Fancy Peaches, culminating in the formation of the Unstrung Heroes in 1981,
which band is still active, and performs in the San Diego area from time to
time. During this time, he was also a member of the La Mirada Gutter
Strutters jug band and performed from 1979-1985 with Gabe Ward, last
performing member of the well-known Hoosier Hot Shots of the 1930's National
Barn Dance. He also played rhythm guitar for Patsy Montana on her Southern
California tours. In the late 1970's, Mr. Jackson again acquired a clarinet,
and began studying Eastern European clarinet styles, touring with San Diego's
Big Jewish Band and Robboy's Jewish Orchestra from 1979 through 1993, playing
both mandolin and clarinet. In 2000 he began performing with Dr. Steve Baird
and the Opossums of Truth, and maintained teaching music at Buffalo Bros.
Guitars in Carlsbad in addition to performing solo and with the Unstrung
Heroes and the Gutter Strutters.
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