1. The Iron Five (/band)
Meet Ryan, Cassidy, and Holly O'Connell and identical twin cousins Evan and Tyler Wright—a five-person family fortress bound by music, accessibility, and sibling sanctuary.
The Cosmos Above. The Rockets to Get You There.
Welcome to stardust.raggiesoft.com (also reachable via thestardustengine.com)—the dedicated cosmic lore portal for The Stardust Engine.
Switch between Light Mode (standing on the surface of a distant Earth-like exoplanet looking toward the sunlit horizon) and Dark Mode (suspended in the lush vastness of deep space), with full respect for prefers-reduced-motion.
1986 CPI Origin Canon • Track 13 on Electric Color (1987)
Why We Are Called “The Stardust Engine”
In 1986, when identical twin cousins Evan and Tyler Wright joined siblings Cassidy and Ryan O'Connell at Commonwealth Polytechnic Institute (CPI) in Blacksburg, Virginia, the very first song the four of them wrote together was “The Stardust Engine”—celebrating their shared love of the cosmos (“Stardust”) and the rockets to get you there (“Engine”).
Too scared to shop the song around at first, they used its title to name the band before finally releasing it in 1987 as Track 13 on Electric Color. When Apex Records signed them, Apex executives screwed around and cheaply branded Cassidy as their “Stardust” and Ryan as their “Engine”—a 1980s corporate naming gimmick that the band hates because it takes away from their genuine love of the cosmos and the rockets to get you there.
Explore the Sanctuary
Five Portals Into The Stardust Engine Universe
2. Discography & Playlists (/discography)
Explore all 14 albums and curated playlists (The Cosmic Tidal Lock Sound™ and Before the Distance: The Story of John & Erin), with direct links to stream and download free CC BY-SA 4.0 128kbps MP3 archives on music.raggiesoft.com.
3. Deep Band Lore (/lore)
From the 1992 Friction walkout and Echoes in the Wire (replacing If You Walked Away) to the 2011 Starfield Calibration sessions and the 2016 Live at The Crucible return.
4. Rolling Sanctuary Fleet (/fleet)
Step aboard the 2002 Sainte-Claire 45H3 (“The Iron Horse”) with its mid-ship hydraulic wheelchair lift and the 2004 Prairie Coachworks RLFD30 (Serial #001) low-floor shuttle on Progress Street.
5. Cosmic Novel Reader (/novel)
Read the Markdown/JSON chapters of The Stardust Engine and Before the Distance: The Story of John & Erin wrapped in our cosmic environment, or jump directly to books.raggiesoft.com.
6. Corporate Lore Handoff
Looking for Holly O'Connell's 2015 Delaware corporate ring-fence, Engine Room Records, LLC, and The O'Connell Family Revocable Trust? Visit our sister property at engineroom.raggiesoft.com/corporate.