Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate a Cappella Glory (33 page)

One story remains to be told. Did the Hullabahoos meet the president?

Before the show, Howard Spector escorted five of the B’hoos to the front of the receiving line, where President Bush was shaking hands. “We were expedited with the members of Congress and bigwigs who’d paid a hundred thousand dollars to sit on the main stage,” Patrick Lundquist says. Howard tried to manage expectations. It would be a two-second deal, he’d said. Pause. Smile. Keeping walking. Well, it didn’t work out exactly that way.

“We rounded the corner,” Patrick Lundquist says, “and there he was, just chillin’, GDUB.” He’s talking about the president.

“Now, who are you guys?” President George W. Bush said.

“We’re the group that’s singing tonight,” Morgan said. “From UVA.”

“University of Virginia, huh?” Bush said. “My little brother, Marvin Bush, went to the University of Virginia.”

Morgan didn’t exactly know what to do next. And so he just kept walking.

Patrick got in a few more words. “I hope you enjoy our singing tonight,” he said to the president of the United States.

“Well,” George W. said, “I’m sure I will—if I can ever get out of this line.”

And then Patrick made his move.

“With the president’s hand in mine,” Patrick says, “I leaned in, hand on his left shoulder, and whispered into his jolly elf ear, ‘Dude, seriously, I feel really bad for you right now.’ ”

Patrick immediately realized he’d committed an obscene (and potentially dangerous) faux pas. Worse: Of all the things he could have said to the president, he sympathized with the man about having to shake hands with donors?

And then President Bush made
his
move.

“I backed away,” Patrick says, “and as I let go of his hand, he grabs mine, and my upper forearm, pulls me back in closer, looks me in the eye, and goes, ‘Don’t feel sorry for me. I knew exactly what I was getting into.’ ” The Republican National Committee took in more than fifteen million dollars in donations that night for the 2008 campaign.

EPILOGUE

In the summer of 2007, not long after Morgan Sword and the Hullabahoos met President Bush, public perception of a cappella seemed to be turning—from pop culture curiosity to mainstream pursuit.

It started with a professional a cappella group from Ithaca, New York, called the Fault Line. The five men made their national television debut on NBC’s summer reality series,
America’s Got Talent.
They were alums of Ithaca College, where they’d sung in an a cappella group, Sons of Pitches. Their style had matured since then—both musically and sartorially. And for their big semifinal appearance on
America’s Got Talent
, they wanted to look like a band, so they dressed in tight T-shirts, tighter jeans, and studded belts. One couldn’t help but notice something else one of the members was wearing.

Sitting at home in Evanston, Illinois, Freddie Feldman—a partner in acaTunes and CASA board member—was watching
America’s Got Talent
when he nearly fell out of his chair. Years ago, Freddie had developed a special microphone for vocal percussionists that he called the Thumper. “It’s like a dog collar with a microphone attached,” Freddie says. It was designed to pick up the low tones the same way an AKG D12 mic sits in a kick drum. Freddie jerry-rigged the prototype with a tiny Shure mic, a Jansport backpack strap, and some Velcro. The thing worked like a dream. The mic has since undergone seven or eight incarnations, dropping in price from seven hundred dollars to two hundred and fifty thanks to advancements in technology, and Freddie (who never kept great records) thinks he’s sold fifty or so. Apparently, one of those sales was to the vocal percussionist for the Fault Line, who was, to Freddie’s shock and awe, wearing the Thumper on
America’s Got Talent
.

The Thumper looked like the kind of choker a teenage girl might wear. Still, for a moment, it seemed like contemporary a cappella would finally have its day in the sun.

“Well, hello, gentlemen,” Sharon Osbourne—one of the judges—said. “And what’s the name of your group?”

“We are the Fault Line,” the vocal percussionist said.

“What kind of group are you?”

“We’re a vocal rock band,” he said. “We’re bringing a cappella to an edgier level.”

“Do you think you’re worth a million dollars?” she asked, invoking the show’s big prize.

“Absolutely.”

With that, the Fault Line sang thirty seconds of “Some Kind of Wonderful.” The Hoff—David Hasselhoff—was one of the judges too. And when they finished, he was beside himself. He couldn’t believe that what he’d just heard was a cappella. “It sounds like a track is playing,” the Hoff said. “It blows my mind.”

Sharon Osbourne weighed in. “Yeah,” she said, “I think that you’re really, really unique guys in what you do. I’ve never seen anybody do this before—and you do it well. I am in love with you.”

Days later the Fault Line was eliminated.

One can’t help but wonder: What happens to all of these collegiate a cappella singers once they graduate? Well, there is always the world of professional a cappella groups. Blake Lewis had been the 2007
American Idol
runner-up, a fan favorite for incorporating his beatboxing skills into his performances. Blake previously sang with a pro a cappella group, Kickshaw. Likewise,
Idol
finalist Rudy Cardenas sang with a group called
m-pact
. (The two had been at a mutual a cappella friend’s wedding a few months before the
Idol
auditions in ’06, where they’d both sheepishly admitted they were going to try out.)

But the professional a cappella circuit, it turns out, is just as dirty and competitive as the undergraduate world. Of all the touring contemporary a cappella groups—including Deke Sharon’s the House Jacks—very few members actually make their full-time living as musicians. In the United States, you could count them on one hand. One of those groups is Ball in the House—largely considered the bad boys of pro a cappella. They’ve co-written and produced twenty-three lucrative Cool Whip commercials. “We’re on the road two hundred days a year,” says group member Aaron Loveland. At one point they were signed to Warner Bros. Records, and hit the Billboard chart with “Something I Don’t Know,” an original tune. The label hoped they’d be the next Backstreet Boys. It wasn’t to be. A major marketing push was set for, yes, September 11, 2001. “I still have the press release, ” Loveland says. They got some good press. A
Boston Globe
review: “Ball in the House has everything you would expect to find in a successful pop/rock band—the one thing it doesn’t have is instruments.” But the music industry shifted.

“There’s a stigma from the a cappella community,” Loveland says. He’s given up on dreams of major label stardom and seems content to be a working musician. Perhaps contemporary a cappella just isn’t meant to cross over. Bruce Leddy’s movie,
Sing
Now or Forever Hold Your Peace—
a cappella’s answer to
The Big Chill
, featuring the Bubs’ version of “Take Me Home”—finally opened in theaters on April 29, 2007. It grossed a total of $20,903.

The latest professional a cappella group to make a push at crossing over is called Mosaic. At one point, Scott Porter, the quarterback on NBC’s
Friday Night Lights
, was a member of Mosaic. When he left the group for Hollywood, Mosaic took up residence in Las Vegas, where they landed a one-year deal opening up for veteran comedian George Wallace in his six-hundred-seat theater at the Flamingo. There Mosaic would thrive. At the time, Prince—yes,
that
Prince—had his own standing gig in Vegas, at the Rio. One night, Prince caught the George Wallace show, fell in love with Mosaic, and invited the boys to perform at his 2007 New Year’s Eve gig.

And so, on New Year’s Eve, Mosaic opened for Prince. They sang a short set, went to dinner, and never expected to hear from Prince again. “We thought, That was cool,” says Mosaic’s Josh Huslig. But later that night a message arrived from Prince: He wanted Mosaic to meet him at his signature nightclub, 3121, where he regularly played an intimate, late-night set. Mosaic was thrilled. Even more so when, sometime around four in the morning, Prince invited Mosaic back up onstage with him to close down the club. “Do you know any Sly and the Family Stone?” Prince whispered. Actually, they did. “How about ‘Thank You’?”

Josh Huslig tells the story. “So Prince gets the guitar out and doesn’t say another word,” he says, reenacting what may be his career highlight. “And Prince just starts
jamming
.” Six handheld microphones appear. Luckily, the band played “Thank You” in E—the same key Mosaic sings it in. There isn’t much more Huslig can say. He still can’t really believe it himself.

The image of that night—Mosaic and Prince—eats away at Scott Porter from
Friday Night Lights
. “That’s a rock star moment, ” Porter says, taking a breath. “I am on this massive, amazing TV show that everyone loves, but I devoted eight years of my life to taking the next step with a cappella music, and turning something I was passionate about into a way of life. And there is a huge part of me that regrets leaving Mosaic.” Uh, what? You’re on
Friday Night Lights
, a show some consider to be the second coming. “I would regret it more if I was on the WB and wasn’t doing groundbreaking television,” Porter says. “There’s no rehearsal on our set, no marks to hit. It’s gorilla-style for prime-time network television. It’s incredible. I’m happy where I am. At the same time, I wanted to make people go, Holy crap
—
a cappella. That’s something
new
. I want to imitate that.”

Scott Porter is right. There is some undeniable pleasure in a cappella music—something so simple about the human voice, about harmonizing with your best friends. But for every John Legend, who leaves the UPenn Counterparts and goes on to win Grammy awards, there are thousands of a cappella alums who will never sing again.

Andrew Renshaw was there at Big Spring Sing Thing XIX in April of 2007. Renshaw, a legendary member of the Hullabahoos, may just be the best soloist in the group’s near twenty-year history. He went to the Philippines with Ron Puno and the Hullabahoos a few years back, when they sold out the Hard Rock and became minor celebrities. After school, Renshaw tried to make it as a musician, touring the country with his guitar, playing to small crowds in smaller bars. At one point he even considered going back to the Far East to capitalize on the Hullabahoos’ name. In collegiate a cappella, Andrew Renshaw is the kind of guy one worries about.

He was hard to miss at Big Spring Sing Thing XIX—what with the crutches and all. Earlier that day, hours before the concert, he and some of the alums played a game of pickup basketball. Renshaw, now in his thirties, twisted his knee and wound up in the hospital. It was a poignant moment. Renshaw sang at the show’s after-party. Howard Spector listened, hanging on every word of “Wonderful Tonight”—Renshaw’s big solo from years ago—backed by the Hullabahoos. “It’s a crime that you’re not still singing!” Howard said.

The Bubs refer to their alums as Dead Guys, and it’s not so far off. Graduation is the death of one’s a cappella career. For guys like Morgan Sword—talented in a karaoke sense—it’s tough enough to move on. But for guys like Renshaw—the truly talented musicians—graduation can be a heartbreaking sucker punch. It’s like being torn out of the womb. One day you are in the Philippines with your best friends, being interviewed live on television about your music. The next day you are playing open mic nights to half-empty coffeehouses. Or worse, sitting in a cubicle. Seeing Renshaw on crutches that night—it was like seeing a fallen Superman. Renshaw’s not the only one. John DeTriquet, a former Hullabahoo, was at the show too. He’s living in Nashville, hosting karaoke nights at the Wildhorse Saloon (under his stage name, John Deech), hoping to make it big on the country music circuit with his band, Mack Cadillac. A few months before the Big Spring Sing Thing XIX, Renshaw finally hung up his guitar and enrolled in grad school. “Music just became about business,” he says. “It wasn’t fun anymore.”

The thing about college a cappella is that it exists in this incredible space: college. It’s the one time in life where everything is momentum. With a cappella—a great tradition on these campuses—one can both step out and blend in entirely. For the same reason one joins a fraternity, or an athletic team, one joins an a cappella group. The problem arises when you take a cappella out of the context of college—then what is it, really? A cover band. With no instruments.

Which is why some a cappella fans believe that, for the sake of legitimacy, groups like the Bubs need to write their own material. But even Alexander Koutzoukis of the Bubs admits, for all their musicality, “our fans don’t want to hear original tunes.” James Van Der Beek remembers his college days with Drew University’s 36 Madison Avenue. “I had some friends who played in actual bands,” he says. “And ten people would show up to their gigs. Meanwhile, we were singing for hundreds of fans.” There’s a reason. When you’ve got the entire canon of popular music to choose from, what’s the chance some kid is going to write something better? And then arrange it for fifteen voices?

Deke Sharon knows how Andrew Renshaw feels. In the summer of 2007, Deke started a new program with CASA. He called it the Contemporary A Cappella League. “There are approximately five thousand experienced college a cappella singers graduating each year, and most of these folks have little or no opportunity to continue singing in a similar ensemble,” the Web site reads. “CASA intends to change that through the formation of this league .... This is not your grandmother’s community chorus. For lack of a better term, imagine a postcollegiate group modeled after and comprised of members from the best college groups.” Deke was bullish on the league’s success. Twenty-three collegiate a cappella alums across the country signed up to organize groups. But there was something sad about it maybe: It was sort of like Will Ferrell starting a fraternity for adults in
Old School
. Some memories are better left in the past.