For Benjamin Coach Wade, Courtney Yates, James J.T.
A new pursuit that became bigger than the game itself.
This is their music.
Credit: CBS
This is their story.
This is the tale of the greatestSurvivorrock band that ever was.
These are the Dragonz.
CBS
Benjamin Wade (a.k.a.
the Dragonslayer) was the first person voted out for theHeroes vs. Villainsjury.
And I was there, documenting his lonely life.
CBS
BENJAMIN COACH WADE:There’s a great amount of boredom and restlessness that settles in at Ponderosa.
So, you’re looking for things to do.
NORWOOD CHEEK:And it’s raining.
CBS
The weather at Samoa that season was horrible.
It was just pouring down rain.
CAITLIN MOORE (contestant manager):It was raining so much that season.
CBS
We really were stuck inside.
Coach started playing it, and he was really good at it.
He was good at the guitar parts and really good at the drum parts.
CBS
And then Courtney gets voted out.
She arrives, and, of course, she’s really pissed at first and is bummed.
COURTNEY YATES:Coach was playingRock Band.
CBS
got kind of roped into it.
I think we had maybe 12 days left, or something.
It seemed like an eternity when you’re still locked down.
CBS
it’s possible for you to’t do anything.
you’re free to eat, and then you just sit around and gain weight.
So I was like, “Man, I hope we can find something to do.”
CBS
COACH:We started playingRock Band.
I jumped on the drums, and J.T.
jumped on the guitar and we did vocals and we were kind of passing it back and forth.
CBS
Because Coach is competitive.
NORWOOD CHEEK:She started performing on some of thisRock Bandstuff.
And her vocals were great!
CBS
I was like, “Wow, you’ve got a great voice.”
The song that I was actually singing was Maps by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
NORWOOD CHEEK:We were laughing at how we can just form a band.
CBS
I played in bands and still play in bands and music is a big part of my life.
Apart from just watching TV or playingRock Band, there’s nothing to do.
COURTNEY YATES:And so then overnight, Coach wrote all the lyrics and Norwood made music on GarageBand.
CBS
And then we started recording it and then it became, like, very serious, very fast.
NORWOOD CHEEK:We literally took the microphone fromRock Bandand plugged it into my computer and started recording songs.
For the most part, I was writing all the music.
CBS
And we just started recording.
THOMAS:Norwood told me they had a guitar there.
And I said, “Well, I’ll play that a little bit.”
CBS
NORWOOD CHEEK:J.T.
was pretty adept at playing guitar.
THOMAS:I can strum a couple of chords, so, not really that great.
CBS
I probably played as much at Ponderosa than I had played in the past five years at that time.
But I knew enough to play the right chord, anyway.
COURTNEY YATES:Coach was actually fairly musical, and J.T.
CBS
So this joke ended up actually taking on a life of its own.
THOMAS:It went from playingRock Bandto playing around as arealband.
NORWOOD CHEEK:I went online and looked up to see if there was another band called the Dragons.
Ponderosa director/Dragonz producer Norwood Cheek as the DJ.CBS
Whether it was the Soup Dragons or whatever, it was reported back that there was another Dragons.
The joke band was a joke no longer.
At least not to some.
CBS
NORWOOD CHEEK:We all know Coach is a musician.
I mean, he isveryserious about music.
So he and I certainly bonded over that.
CBS
And so Coach and I were actually kind of serious about it.
is just a good sport, and I like to do stupid stuff.
CAITLIN MOORE:Coach was definitely the leader of the band.
CBS (3)
Coach made this happen, 100 percent.
He put in the hours.
And Courtney kind of thought it was just kind of silly and fun.
But Courtney was really good at stroking Coach’s ego and letting him still take the reins.
COACH:In that moment, it became our lifeline.
If it hadn’t been for Norwood and his experience in this, then it would’ve just tanked.
CAITLIN MOORE:Norwood is the technical mastermind behind the whole project.
He had the skills to put the music all together.
He created the beats.
He knew how to record everything for them.
They had their own music producer in Norwood.
It just was all consuming.
That’s all we did.
That was literally everything that we did at Ponderosa.
It was all revolving around the Dragonz!
So when Jerri and Colby showed up, he was like, “Handle this.
I’m making music.”
I was writing and recording music, and they were writing the lyrics and adding the vocals.
So, I was definitely open to anything.
COACH:You’re out there playing the game, trying to win challenges, and making great confessionals.
And when that’s taken away from you, what do you have left?
We want to breathe in the life that could be this band."
COURTNEY YATES:We even invented our own backstory.
The Dragonz were huge in Samoa.
We decided we had many albums and it was just a joke that we kept feeding.
And the three of us were full of drama.
And then I had a solo career, Coach had several heartbreak songs, and J.T.
we imagined would leave and come back to the band.
Because we couldn’t go anywhere!
They didn’t take us anyplace.
There was only one television.
There was really not a lot to be doing.
So this ended up being a time-consuming fun project for all of the losers of the camp.
THOMAS:We were at it all day.
We had nothing else to do.
You want to see our music video?"
How did you get blindsided?
What happened to me?
How did I get voted off?"
And this was like acompletelydifferent Ponderosa.
They were like, “We have a band.”
They didn’t give a s— what was happening in the game.
This is like, “Welcome to Ponderosa.
We are in a band.
This is about the Dragonz.
COURTNEY YATES:They’re filthy, and so upset.
And we’d be like, “Aren’t we hilarious?”
We terrorized everybody with the Dragonz for, like, two weeks, basically.
Because it became invented as soon as J.T.
got there, and then everybody else who got voted off had to deal with us.
Rupert had a really deep voice, so we used that on Dragonz Rap.
He was very sincere about the whole thing.
He was like, “Thank you for letting me be a part of this.”
And we’re like, “Okay, buddy.”
CAITLIN MOORE:It was almost like they had to audition for the background vocals for the Dragonz.
but everybody wanted to be part of the band because that’s what Ponderosa was.
It was just a band!
It was the Dragonz!
THOMAS:Coach was just dying for somebody new to come listen.
COACH:How did everybody feel coming into it?
They freakin loved it, man!
The synergy between the three of us really forced people coming out of the game to be into it.
DANIELLE DiLORENZO: I was like, Really?
Like, do they have any musical talent?
I was kind of intrigued, but concerned.
Like, what am I going to walk into here?
THOMAS:When Danielle joined us at Ponderosa, she was participating.
Coach was in the process of making a complete album.
He had it in his mind to get it done before we left Ponderosa.
And I was like, “Coach, that’s a lot.”
I think we just did that in one take and she nailed it.
She didn’t necessarily participate as much as we wanted her to.
We really wanted her to become a bigger part of it.
COURTNEY YATES:Candice was very pro-Dragonz.
She was really there for the fun.
It was all silly, but we needed to pass the time.
They were trying to record the song, and I just felt like it was flat.
COACH:Candice was like, “Come on, Coach!”
COURTNEY YATES:I have to give it to the other contestants.
It was patronizing, like we were children.
They were like, “Yeah, good.
Great job, you guys.”
But it was also a situation of nobody thinks you’re as funny asyouthink you are.
DANIELLE DiLORENZO:I was being entertained.
They really cared about their own lives.
The vast majority of the Dragonz lyrics were penned by Coach… for better or for worse.
COURTNEY YATES:Coach wrote all the lyrics, which do not make any sense.
That’s also the funniest part.
It’s literally written as if English is our second language.
Like, none of it makes any sense.
Well, at least I likequotingother philosophers.
And I’ve always liked writing poems.
So, I’d wake up and I’d have something on my mind.
We’re not in the game and that sucks.
How can I put that eloquently?
THOMAS:In most cases, you would think coming up with the lyrics would be the problem.
Not in our case.
We had Coach, and he would literally write down page after page after page of lyrics.
Coach had plenty of material there to sort through.
He would spit it out just like his stories.
He just keeps all that stuff in his head.
NORWOOD CHEEK:Coach is really good at writing ridiculous lyrics.
And I’d be like, “Yeah, that’s cool.”
Sometimes I’d think about the rock, sometimes I’d think about pop.
Well, what about that?
And so, he came up with the genre and then we would just take off.
After writing out his lyrics, Coach was very protective of whom he would allow to actually sing them.
COACH:I think Amanda tried to sing, and it was just so bad.
AMANDA KIMMEL: I dont remember singing much.
I have a terrible voice, so hope it wasnt a lot.
CAITLIN MOORE:Amanda is actually is a really good singer.
You’ll hear her on some of the tracks.
COACH:And Rupert was going to venture to sing.
Rupert would sing and then we said, “No, we can’t do that.”
Some people have pitch, some people don’t.
Even with Auto-Tune, you’re able to’t get somebody in that’s three steps flat.
And we’d just cut people in the editing process left and right.
tried singing, but he couldn’t sing on pitch.
And I didn’t know it until I heard myself back on TV.
And I know it.
COURTNEY YATES:J.T.
was our guitarist, so he was the silent one who speaks through his instrument.
And also, I don’t think he was that great of a singer.
But he did do some harmonies.
And then he randomly was a really good beatboxer.
So that came in handy for our rap.
NORWOOD CHEEK:My favorite part of Dragonz Rap is the beatbox.
That’s all J.T.
He was really good at it.
And he was like, “Dude, that’s perfect.”
CAITLIN MOORE:J.T.
Come on, man, it’s five notes!
The resulting confrontation led to one band member almost refusing to attend a Tribal Council in protest.
COURTNEY YATES:We decided to go to Tribal Council as the Dragonz.
Coach, J.T., Amanda, and I all wore black with sunglasses.
That was our Dragonz outfit.
COACH:I was already branding.
If you think about it, branding is everything.
NORWOOD CHEEK:They arrive at Tribal Council, and they’re wearing a lot of that gear.
Jeff Probst calls them in, Now lets bring in the members of the jury.
And they’re wearing all this stuff.
I’m sure in the end, they cut around that on the show.
I was like, Oh, they’re obviously looking for things to entertain themselves with.
But I was like, I wonder what the hell are they doing?
COURTNEY YATES:The producers didnt like that we wore the all black and had sunglasses on.
I said to Jeff, “Look, bro, we don’t care about your show.
We’re making ourownshow.
We got webisodes!”
CAITLIN MOORE:Oh, Dragonzgate.
How could I forget?
THOMAS:Somebody had the idea to make some custom Dragonz T-shirts.
We then handcrafted cottage industry some T-shirts, and we were all going to wear them to Tribal Council.
CAITLIN MOORE:Those T-shirts were terrible.
They were green T-shirts and a really ugly green with the word Dragonz Sharpied on them.
Like a child made it, right?
They were pretty bad.
COACH:In my mind, I’m thinking, “Were rock stars!
And we then said, “Let’s make it so that we’re like in the 80s.”
CAITLIN MOORE:I called production.
I said, “Listen, they started this band.
They’re really into their band.
It’s called the Dragonz.
They want to wear them to Tribal.”
COACH:They got approval!
This is what makes me mad.
And we got approval!
There’s the green light!
Not what we envisioned.
Guys, youcannotwear these shirts.
There’s writing on them.
You’re still on a TV show here.
You’re not in a band yet.
Save the band for when you’re back in the States.
But right now, we’re still makingSurvivor.”
CAITLIN MOORE:Coach kind of had a tantrum.
And I was like, “Excuse me, we’re not taking them off.
We’ve got approval.”
And she was like, “No, you’ve got to take them off.”
I said, “We’re not taking them off.
you’ve got the option to take them off of us personally, butwe’renot taking them off.”
When she left, I told everybody, “We’re not changing for nothing.
They can’t film this episode without us walking out there for Tribal Council.
And everybody was like, “Okay, man.
Yeah, that’s right.
Let’s do this.
We’re going to stand strong.”
I said, “We can freaking boycott this.”
They didn’t want to go on set.
They were refusing to go on set unless they got to wear their Dragonz T-shirts!
And I’m like, “Oh my gosh, this is a disaster.”
NORWOOD CHEEK:They were so mad because this was going to be the big break for the Dragonz.
CAITLIN MOORE:I have never seen this in all my years.
So now we’re just scrambling to find clothes.
CANDICE CODY:We had some inkling that they weren’t going to let us wear the shirts.
I’ve got nothing.
COACH:I was like, “We won’t take no for an answer.”
So the wardrobe lady comes back with some clothes and says, “Okay, here you go.”
And everybody immediately was like, “Well, okay.”
We went, “Fine.
THOMAS:He was fighting mad about it.
Coach was like, “I can’t believe they did that.”
We were like, “Yeah, actually, wecanbelieve it, Coach.”
CANDICE CODY:They found some random crew shirts for us.
They gave Amanda and me these tank tops, and they found J.T.
this red shirt that he never would have worn otherwise.
So we wore other stuff.
COACH:They brought us dirty laundry to wear.
I was like, “F— this!
CAITLIN MOORE:Coach was just devastated.
I’ve never seen Coach like that.
I don’t think he was crying, but he was close to crying.
I’m telling you, it was a mess.
COACH:I just snapped, and I let out a primal scream.
And I told them, “I am walking off the set!”
And I freaking just started taking off through the jungle.
CAITLIN MOORE:I just remember hearing him scream.
COACH:I started taking off in the juggle.
I mean, not even on a path!
He was like, “Coach, stop.”
And I was like, “Screw this, man!
They gave us approval.
He talked me off the ledge.
He says, “Coach, come on.
Just come back here.
Let’s film it.
And, he was really cool and very sympathetic.
COURTNEY YATES:Everyone’s in other clothing now, but Coach wouldn’t do it.
And he’s a grown man.
What are they going to do, wrestle him?
Or not let him go on the show?
You’re just going to not have him on the jury for that episode?
So I think they were just like, “Fine, let him do it.”
COACH:See, there’s the last man standing, honor and integrity.
Most people think integrity is having a high code moral code.
That’s not the definition.
COURTNEY YATES:I was like, “Wow, Coach is pretty hardcore.”
I was like, “Way to just die on a hill.
What a weird thing to really go to the wall for, but okay.”
DANIELLE DiLORENZO:That’s obviously a really random T-shirt to choose to wear on national television.
The duo made a rare pilgrimage to Ponderosa to check out the band.
COURTNEY YATES:My impression was that they forced them to come.
I’m pretty happy to stay in one place and just chill out, but J.T.
was climbing the walls like, stir crazy.
CAITLIN MOORE:The producers felt really bad that the jurors were on such an intense lockdown.
I think they felt really bad about that.
COACH:Caitlin said, “Jeffs going to come by.
He heard about the rock band.
He wants to come check it out.”
So he comes, and we’re all excited to see him.
I’m starstruck, per usual.
And I said, “Man, we’re writing this thing.”
He’s like, “I brought a didgeridoo!
COURTNEY YATES:It was Jeff and John Kirhoffer.
They were like, “Hey, kids, heard you had a band.
We brought our instruments.”
So he brought a didgeridoo and sheet music for Maggie May, the Rod Stewart song.
DANIELLE DiLORENZO:I just remember them coming and I was like, Wow, this is serious.
Even Jeff Probst is taking this seriously.
I hear you guys have a song that you wrote.
Who wrote the song?”
Of course, I immediately jump up and take credit for the song.
I was like, “I wrote this song!
I have the lyrics right here, Jeff!
You want to see them?”
And, I show it to him.
THOMAS:He wanted to hear the Dragonz.
So we played it for him.
COACH:He was like, “Let’s hear what you got!”
was nervous because he’s not really a guitar player at that point, and so then J.T.
He was a big fan of the Dragonz.
DANIELLE DiLORENZO:In the beginning, it just seemed like it was a joke.
The support from Jeff was shocking, actually.
I didn’t think Jeff Probst would take the time to come and watch.
Why would he do that?
This is insane!”
This is so awkward.
CAITLIN MOORE:We had a good old jam session.
They hung out for a long time and it was really chill.
It was like one of those crazySurvivormoments.
COURTNEY YATES:And then they made them stay and have dinner with us, too!
But, also, amazing.
It was just very weird to watch.
There were a lot of Dragonslayer drinks going on.
It was like drinking acid or something.
I don’t remember what’s in it exactly and I don’t want to know.
COACH:There were bars all over the North Eastern Sierra that were serving that drink!
They would even post it on their drink board.
The Dragonslayer: It will slay your ass!
We were even working on writing a song that featured him playing didgeridoo.
But, sadly, we ran out of time.
It was really cool to get that validation, so that we could then take it evenmoreseriously.
NORWOOD CHEEK:Courtney, Coach, J.T., and I had been really rocking out a lot.
And we decided, Listen, we should take this seriously.
And if you’re going to take it seriously, you need a music video.
So we havegotto make a music video.”
I mean, we were laughing so much when we were making it.
COURTNEY YATES:We wanted it to be very 80s.
And I wanted to be standing on a minivan with, like, sheets blowing in the wind.
We didn’t get that, but we got pretty close.
We’re standing on the rocks, so as the cymbals clash, a wave jumps up.
We thought it was the funniest thing that ever happened.
I actuallystillthink it’s pretty funny.
Well, we had the perfect spot, because that was all natural.
The wind was really blowing that hard, and waves were really crashing that hard up on us.
CAITLIN MOORE:Coach had a vision, right?
COACH:You get off ofSurvivor, so you’re obviously ripped.
I don’t have the tire around my stomach.
I know I’m looking chiseled, let’s get that shirt popping open.
This is going to be a hit, man!
COURTNEY YATES:Danielle and Candice and Amanda are also heavily featured in our video as our background hotties.
CANDICE CODY:There was a dance scene where we were all dancing in a club.
It was at night and we all had a couple of beers.
It was one take, play a song, dance, and that was it.
It was not a high budget part of the video.
They can’t really think that this is going to go anywhere.
But I think that they thought that it was.
DANIELLE DiLORENZO:I was into it in that moment.
Norwood plays the DJ.
We also had Caitlin in it.
CAITLIN MOORE:I had to help with lighting.
I was always doing those weird little tasks that Norwood needed me to do.
So, yeah, you see me holding up lights in the video.
Players arrived at Ponderosa and we were like, “This is our chef, Russell.”
Everyone hated Russell, so they were like, “Agh!”
Poor chef Russell was always like, “What did this guy do to you?
Why do you hate that name?”
And Courtney is such a star.
I just thought she did so great in that music video with her performance.
It was like going to the discotheque in Samoa.
I would say, “Of courseI was doing it on purpose!
We’re talking about getting on the dance floor!
This is like life or death!
Is it a campy?
Are the lyrics bad?
Is it a kind of a joke?
Yeah, but we saw the video and we’re like, “This is pretty good.”
THOMAS:I thought Norwood did an amazing job putting it all together.
We’re talking, like, within a day.
We started it and finished it the next day.
It was all really fast, and just throw thrown together.
CANDICE CODY:The one song that they made the music video for, I kind of liked it.
That surprised me, because I thought it was complete garbage when they were practicing.
And when I saw the lyrics.
And when they were first singing it.
DANIELLE DiLORENZO:Watching back the video of them on the cliff…
I mean, the song is kind of catchy.
I’m not going to lie.
But it was, like, Ponderosa good, you know?
It was Ponderosa good.
We were like, “This is the best music video of all time!”
NORWOOD CHEEK:The dream was that On the Dance Floor was just the first video.
We were going to make music videos for every song.
But we ran out of time.
By then, I think we were already on, like, day 35.
So there was only four more days.
At one point, the video was on the homepage of CBS.com.
I have a picture of it with me, Coach, and J.T.
standing on the rocks with the wind blowing.
Coach’s shirt is open.
It’s so epic.
But, like, kind of nobody cared.
Unless you were friends with us, nobody cared.
I hate me, slate me, fate is gonna break me
My whole soul is bare.
While their exploits lived on in the Ponderosa video series, the band did not.
COURTNEY YATES:In my life,Survivoris one of the most random footnotes about me.
So then, within the pantheon ofSurvivor, my second weird footnote is that I made a fake band.
We had a video.
And that is just the next level of,What?!?
COACH:Do I think that we would become the next Rolling Stones?
Do I think we would have done anything truly great with it?
Maybe, you never know.
But I think that at least it would have been fun to have seen that out.
NORWOOD CHEEK:For Coach, this was very serious.
For Coach, the Dragonz was a real deal.
And I love that about Coach, because it made him serious about it.
Courtney has such a great sense of humor and she was having fun with it.
It was a great distraction for her.
But, for Coach, it was like, Hey, I am taking this seriously.
The way Coach takes all that he does seriously.
And that’s what makes him so great.
Let’s just set something up really quick.”
And then, it would’ve at least given us some closure.
We talked about doing more recording together.
And we still talk about it.
And so it was the perfect way to end mySurvivorexperience, to just be completely silly.
What happened then is kind of like what is happening now.
Everybody’s in quarantine and stuck and can’t go anywhere, can’t do anything.
It’s the same as being on the jury.
you’re free to’t go anywhere.
You’re stuck with these people that you may not want to be stuck with.
So you have to find something to do to entertain yourselves and to make the time pass.
That’s how the Dragonz were created, out of necessity.
COURTNEY YATES:The enduring legacy of the Dragonz is always the music, which is mediocre at best.
And so, really, a music video, which is hilarious.
NORWOOD CHEEK:I go back and listen to the songs every so often.
They’re great, fun songs.
And the vocals, theres no auto tuning or anything like that.
This is pretty much as raw as you might get.
And I don’t know that I would change a thing.
I just want to write more songs with the Dragonz.
THOMAS:Thats definitely a piece of my life Ill never forget.
It was an honor.
I wish my fellow Dragonz the best, and I look forward to the reunion tour!
Norwood talked about the Dragonz, says Andrea Boehlke.
And we were all trying to find things to do at Ponderosa.
There was this monkey that was at Ponderosa that we liked looking at, says Boehlke.
And also the idea of us being, Dance, monkey, dance!
being kind of these little players in this game ofSurvivorthat the producers are making us do whatever.
While there were several other potential band members on the jury, Chucho remained a power trio.
I don’t think they were having as good of a time, Boehlke says of the other jurors.
It was a pretty bitter jury andRedemption Islandwas a bit of a darker season.
Definitely Matt and David and I were having the most fun.
We would stay up all night.
We were always kind of the partiers.
We were going to do a music video, but our time was limited, reveals Boehlke.
And the day we were going to shoot the music video, it rained.
Ladies and gentlemen, EW is proud to present the exclusive worldwide debut of Chuchos Monkey in a Cage.
I came up with the melody.
We didn’t really accomplish rock and roll.
Hali turned it into an actual project, says fellow band member Shirin Oskooi.
She kind of went off the rails with this thing.
As more people got into Ponderosa, we were like F— it!
Everyone thought it was bad, but we had a fun time making it.
And no one ever has.
Not only does the song remain buried (perhaps on Ghost Island, where it is accumulating new powers?
What classic images have been lost forever with the banning of the Merica music video?
I remember Jenn floating around in the swimming pool drinking cocktails and rapping, says Ford.
And we were running down the beach in these crazy outfits at one point.
I’m picturing us on Joe’s shoulders, but I don’t really know.
We were drinking a lot the whole time.
It was truly awful admits Oskooi.
Ford warns that the quality of the find may not even reach Chucho levels.
Ive heard Andrea sing before and she can sing, notes Ford.
None of us knew how to sing.
There was no musical talent.
So we said, “Chris, we’ll shoot something if you write something.”
Oh, did he ever.
But the true magic of the performance is in the pimped-out Ponderosa lifestyle on display in the video.
A lot of it was just looking around at what we had, says Seale of the video.
I became aware of it after we released Chris' Ponderosa rap,” says Seale.
“And then everyone was like, Oh, what about the Dragonz?
That thing is epic, for sure.
For moreSurvivornews, follow Dalton on Twitter@DaltonRoss.
