Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate A Cappella Glory

by Mickey Rapkin

  “The Burger King people went nuts!” Howard says.

  Now, this is where their stories diverge.

  Howard is a big-picture guy. “I told the Hullabahoos—you need to get into a studio and record that jingle right now,” he says. Burger King was talking contracts, he says. The fast food chain was preparing a new campaign aimed squarely at the African American community. Howard says they were interested in signing up one of the B’hoos. “They wanted to bring back the ‘Have It Your Way’ jingle,” Howard says, “and they wanted Kevin Fudge from the Hullabahoos to sing it.”

  Stanzione has his own version of events. “I remember Howard mentioning something about recording the jingle, but we all assumed he was blowing smoke up our ass,” he says. “No one from Burger King ever talked to us about it, nor did Howard encourage us to talk to anyone.” Kevin Fudge has no recollection of any interest from Burger King.

  Periodically, Howard Spector would call the Hullabahoos with a gig, including an event for Vice President Dick Cheney. In 2004, he hired the B’hoos for the Republican National Convention. (The client had wanted Rockapella but, alas, the Folgers boys were booked.) “Howard told us we’d get four thousand dollars,” says Keith Bachmann, who was the music director at the time. This was good news. The Hullabahoos had been living hand-to-mouth for years. They were working on a new album, Jacked, and were several thousand dollars in the hole. Parents had kicked in money to finish the album, and morale was low. But then, suddenly, there was this luxury bus picking the Hullabahoos up on campus and delivering them to New York.

  “The Hullabahoos were one of my special, magic tools,” Howard says. “They’re crisp. They’re all-American. They’re good kids. They always sound good.” Howard has worked with Gloria Gaynor, Clint Black, Aaron Neville. “Some acts are really good,” he says, “but they’re assholes. I’d rather go with really good and professional. The Hullabahoos have a great working attitude— and that’s half the battle.” At the close of the 2004 RNC convention, Howard surprised the B’hoos with a check for thirteen thousand dollars. “Suddenly we were eight thousand dollars in the black,” Keith says. If the Hullabahoos had been smart, they would have sent Howard periodic updates, CDs, that kind of thing. But, true to form, they forgot all about Howard, and quickly lost touch with the man from Ashley Entertainment.

  But in the fall of 2006, Morgan Sword got back in touch with Howard, who was happy to provide his old friends from the Hullabahoos with a letter of recommendation for their planned trip to Los Angeles. Also: Much to Morgan’s surprise, after his pursuit of Lisa Estrada from the Lakers, she agreed to book the Hullabahoos for a date in early January. The B’hoos were thrilled. That Hong Kong trip they’d been talking about, however, was quickly sidelined. For all of their talent, the B’hoos don’t really have the drive to put on a tour of Asia—at least not without assistance from the Philippine government. But a Lakers game was certainly something to talk about.

  From the first days of the 2006-2007 school year, it was looking to be the group’s best ever. It had been luck that led the Hullabahoos to Howard Spector outside Faneuil Hall in 1995. (He could have just as easily fallen for the Beelzebubs.) Lady Luck would smile again on the Hullabahoos when, three weeks after auditions, they found themselves on a plane to Portland, Oregon—all expenses paid. The attention was almost embarrassing. A fleet of Town Cars greeted them at the airport in Portland, waiting to shuttle them to the Hilton downtown. And upon check-in, each was handed a wicker basket containing local potato chips, a Portland guidebook, and a Pendleton blanket. It was a fitting gift for a boy band, this blanket. Pendleton, based in Portland, is an internationally known manufacturer of woolens. In 1960, a music group calling themselves the Pendletones (after the wool shirts they wore) made their debut. That group would later change their name to the Beach Boys.

  But there was something else in the basket—a handwritten note from Julie Neupert Stott, the woman who’d sponsored this trip. Mrs. Stott bristles at the term benefactor. “If I can open a door or make something happen,” she says, “I will. I’m just enthusiastic about the Hullabahoos.” Or one Hullabahoo anyway.

  “Mrs. Stott wants Patrick to marry her daughter,” Morgan Sword explains.

  The backstory: Two years ago, when Patrick Lundquist was a freshman, he’d been flipping through the campus Facebook when he came across a picture of a girl named Preston Stott. She was gorgeous, he was lonely, and so he went online to investigate. “I pretty much stalked her,” Patrick admits. Preston eventually agreed to meet her stalker. And Patrick, ever the gentleman, walked her to class. He even carried her books. When Preston’s mom and dad came to campus that fall, she took them to see the Hullabahoos perform. While Preston’s romance with Patrick was short-lived, her mom still carries a torch. “I think I have the bigger crush on Patrick,” Mrs. Stott says. For Preston’s last birthday, her mom threw her a blowout party in Charlottesville and hired the Hullabahoos to perform. “I don’t think Preston even wanted us there,” one of the B’hoos says.

  If there’s something Julie Stott loves more than the Hullabahoos it’s UVA itself. In 2006, she and her husband kick-started a local booster club for the Jefferson Scholarship program, which sends thirty-five ultracompetitive students to UVA every year, free of charge. She’d planned a fund-raiser in Portland and imported the Hullabahoos. “The Hullabahoos are the best ambassadors for the school,” Mrs. Stott says. She also filled their schedule. A friend at Nike arranged for a VIP tour of the company’s Beaverton headquarters, including a stop at the employees-only store, where the Hullabahoos bought a boatload of Nike gear for something like ten cents on the dollar. Mrs. Stott also booked them a lucrative gig at a prep school. That the Hullabahoos were driven around Portland in a stretch Hummer was just gravy. “When they came out of the limo at the school,” Mrs. Stott says, “some of the students were like, Is that ’N Sync?” That week the Hullabahoos sold forty-five hundred dollars’ worth of CDs.

  That Facebook message Patrick sent may turn out to be the best thing he’s done for the Hullabahoos. As it happens, Julie Neupert Stott sits on the board of the National Committee for the Performing Arts at the Kennedy Center in D.C. The Kennedy Center happens to be in the midst of planning a ten-day celebration of a cappella music, “A Cappella: Singing Solo,” set for May 2008. The lineup is still in the works. “I’m trying to get the Hullabahoos’ name in front of the committee,” she says.

  It’s good to be a Hullabahoo. And the trip to Portland went a long way toward ironing out the personality conflicts Morgan had worried so much about. A subsequent trip to Princeton—in an RV—for their annual Fall Roll would only serve to foster the group’s newfound unity. As for missing so much class, well, Joe Cassara (the president) offered to write each student a note. (He even wrote one for Kyle Mihalcoe’s Spanish teacher in Spanish.) The notes are “all in the phrasing,” Morgan explains. “No teacher actually knows the rules to this stuff, so we’re at liberty to make them up a bit. One thing I picked up along the way is that saying something with enough conviction can make it true.”

  It wasn’t just the traveling that brought the group together. It was, more than anything, as simple as the group having a convenient, neutral place to hang out. That place was Morgan’s room. Morgan lives on the west side of the UVA Lawn—the heart of campus. It’s a coveted spot, and it’s easy to see why. Each room opens directly out to the Lawn, which gives the whole thing the feeling of some Ivy League Motel 6. It’s sort of like living in a brochure. While the bunks may be tight, this is one instance where size really doesn’t matter. To land a room on the Lawn, one must go through a rigorous application process. Thus, Morgan lives two doors down from a Rhodes scholar, the editor-in-chief of The Cavalier Daily, three varsity athletes, and the student-body president. Morgan never locks his door, and on any given Sunday—or Monday, or Tuesday, or any day of the week, for that matter—he might come home from class to find one or more of the Hullabahoos watching TV on his couch. The other ni
ght the Hullabahoos even had a mixer there, with one of the better-looking sororities spilling out onto the Lawn. The homemade liquor-dispenser on his dresser—loaded with Jose Cuervo and Tanqueray—was a nice conversation piece, much more so than the Jose Reyes bobblehead.

  Musically, things are falling into place too. Pete Seibert is something of a prodigy, despite himself. He came to music late; he quit saxophone early, then quit piano only to come back to it in the eighth grade. He is not an audiophile. He counts Sister Act among his musical inspirations. But it turns out that his inherent laziness may be an asset. Where the Bubs arrangements often try to mimic the original song—down to every last high hat and tambourine—the Hullabahoos are finding their own voice. “I’m not going to listen to a song five hundred times,” Pete says, “to imitate every sound in the background.” Instead, he starts with the simple chords and the solo (the foundation) and adds his own ideas from there—usually a jaw-dropping bridge. James Gammon owns a recording studio nearby and works with the B’hoos. “Pete’s arrangements are pretty much all the same,” he says. “But at least they have a musical idea. There’s some tension. There’s some drama. I mean, you could say the same thing about Coldplay. But that formula works for them.”

  The Hullabahoos are working on U2’s "One.” (Pete first heard the song when Elliott Yamin sang it on the American Idol finale with Mary J. Blige.) He actually sat down to arrange the song with pen and paper. “But it sucked,” he says. “So I threw it away.” While the Bubs arrangements are written down—practically in stone—you’d be hard-pressed to find a stash of Hullabahoos arrangements. Most of the Hullabahoos don’t read music, and Pete teaches by ear, often arranging songs on the spot, with the Hullabahoos gathered around the piano. He knows it’s tedious. “The guys don’t like it because they feel like I’m just shooting in the dark for a good arrangement.” Which he is. He remembers the night he taught “One.” “That rehearsal was terrible,” Pete says. But there was a turning point. “When we added the vocal rhythm part”—the song goes all hip-hop in the second verse as they sing nomina nomina nomina nomina—he knew they were onto something.

  The Hullabahoos needed a big song like this. Because they were headed for a showdown with the Beelzebubs. They just didn’t suspect it would involve fists.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE BEELZEBUBS AND HULLABAHOOS COLLIDE

  Wherein two groups clash in a very unusual Mason-Dixon throwdown in October of 2006

  Sometime after midnight on Saturday, October 4, the Beelzebubs and the Hullabahoos come face-to-face in a parking lot outside a house party at the University of North Carolina. The night had started innocently enough. The Bubs and the B’hoos had both performed at Fall Jam, an annual a cappella concert hosted by the all-female UNC Loreleis. But then here we are, bathed in the yellow glow of a streetlight, tensions high, the members just inches from each other. Members of the Beelzebubs are holding back their man Andrew Savini. “We respected you!” Andrew Savini shouts at the Hullabahoos. “And you crossed the line!”

  Riding high on liquid confidence, Patrick Lundquist and Bobby Grasberger of the Hullabahoos approach the Bubs. “Look, nobody wants a fight,” Patrick says. Though if it came to that, Patrick was pretty sure he knew how it would end. “Bobby and I are both significantly bigger than most Bubs,” he says. Still, Patrick attempts to diffuse the situation. “It was a rookie move,” he says. "It wasn’t the Hullabahoos. It was one Hullabahoo. Don’t hate the entity.”

  Doug Terry of the Bubs watched this scene play out. Though Doug was openly gay, this wasn’t the kind of man-on-man action he was hoping for on this road trip. Just as the situation seemed to be cooling off, from deep within the Beelzebubs camp came this cry: “You have a small dick!”

  Weeks later, Andrew Savini would describe Patrick Lundquist as “that tall kid with the big voice.” Patrick would refer to Savini as “incoherent” and “that kid who really wanted to fight.” How did it come to this?

  Being a Beelzebub means giving your life over to the hive. On top of the travel schedule—it is not uncommon for the Bubs to drive through the night to sing a five-song set at, say, the University of Michigan—there were rehearsals three nights a week. In the days leading up to a concert, Bub rehearsals had been known to last until sunrise. When you are the first a cappella group to have your music played in outer space, that comes with some expectations. Their album Code Red had been about perfection— imitative a cappella that was indistinguishable from the original tunes. The Bubs held themselves to the same impossible standard.

  When their music director, Ben Appel, left school suddenly on medical leave, the Bubs found themselves in a precarious position: They had nothing to sing. It had been Ben Appel’s job to make sure new arrangements were coming in, to make sure the Bubs had music to learn at each rehearsal. As president, Matt Michelson shoulders some of the responsibility here. “I should have seen the warning signs,” he says. He would ask Ben about the arrangements but always got the same response. “We’re all good,” Ben would say. This arrangement was coming in on Tuesday, another on Monday, that sort of thing. “He was specific about it,” Michelson remembers.

  When Ben Appel left Tufts, he sent an e-mail to the Bubs’ alumni network, the Bubnet—a listserv of members dating back to the group’s founding fathers, some now in their sixties. The response came in loud and clear. “The alums thought the group was falling apart,” Michelson says. Lucas Walker was the newly installed music director and one of his first moves was to e-mail Danny Lichtenfeld ’93, who’d previously agreed to put together a song for the Bubs. Unlike the alumni of most a cappella groups, the Beelzebub alums still frequently contribute music arrangements. Danny was surprised to hear from Lucas. He’d had no idea there was a deadline attached to the arrangement. “Do you need it now?” Danny said. There were other mix-ups. Marty Fernandi ’85 had agreed to arrange “Love It When You Call,” a catchy bit from a new British pop band, The Feeling. Lucas was eager to add the song to the Bubs’ repertoire and e-mailed Marty for a status update. Marty was floored. “Lucas even offered to send me the song,” Marty says. Marty didn’t need the song. He’d suggested the damn thing to the Bubs in the first place. “In this game of telephone,” Marty says, “that seemed to have been forgotten.”

  This was not the first time the Bubs had looked to the alumni for help. In the mid-seventies, the Beelzebubs nearly called it quits. Tim Vaill—the founder of the Beelzebubs—recalls brokering a peace agreement between two warring factions who showed up late one night at his house in Wellesley Hills. The situation in the fall of 2006 was not nearly as dire. But still, the Bubs’ alumni network—extensive, smart, thoughtful, concerned—threw open its safety net. They had never given the undergraduates money, but they certainly wouldn’t let the group fail. Membership does have its privileges. And, just as suddenly, music arrangements were on their way and the Bubs were back on track. Travis Marshall, Class of ‘03, arranged Keane’s “A Bad Dream.” And to fill a hole, Alexander Koutzoukis, a Bubs sophomore, quickly put together “Inaction,” a song from an obscure Brooklyn-based indie band called We Are Scientists. If the song appeared to be an odd choice, the Bubs didn’t see it that way. No, the Bubs are musically quite cocky (perhaps with good reason—their blend is legendary) . Most a cappella groups have a repertoire heavy on kitsch, like eighties tunes and one-hit wonders. “But I like to think people come to hear the Bubs,” Lucas Walker says, “not a cover band.” The audience might smile when they hear a song they recognize, he says, but then what? “Then you’ve got another three minutes of ‘Hey Ya!’ to sit through.” It should be noted that the Bubs recorded the Black Eyed Peas song “Let’s Get It Started” (a kitch classic) for their 2005 album, Shedding, though Lucas insists the Bubs were trying to be ironic. That point was apparently lost on the Best of College A Cappella committee, who selected “Let’s Get It Started” as the opener for the 2006 BOCA compilation album.

  “We only perform a song when we think we can
improve upon the original artist,” Lucas says. Perhaps their hubris is to be expected. Even the president of Tufts, Larry Bacow, is indebted to the Bubs. It’s not just the music. “Alumni who are active tend to be alumni who were deeply engaged and connected to something during their time in college,” he says. To translate, active alumni means alumni who donate money to the school. (In February, the Bubs will perform at the grand opening of the Granoff Music Building at Tufts, home to the BEELZEBUBS TICKET OFFICE. Price tag? A two-hundred-thousand-dollar donation from The Beelzebubs Alumni Association.)

  The Bubs have staked their reputation on perfection, and they treat every show as if it is a nationally televised competition that might ruin the group’s good name. They even have a saying for it. “We like to win the show,” Doug Terry says. Andrew Savini, a senior, believes they have been beaten only once in recent memory—by none other than the Lisa Forkish-era Divisi. The ladies from Oregon had been out to Boston for spring break 2006. The Bubs were exhausted from their own travels, and they hadn’t been expecting much competition, especially from an all-girls group—on their home turf, no less. By the time Divisi unleashed “Yeah” on the Tufts crowd, there wasn’t much the Bubs could do. They haven’t been caught off-guard since.

  Ben Appel’s replacement, Lucas Walker, quickly grew into the position of music director—able to quiet the group down with a simple command. He even held the electric pitch pipe with assurance. (An electric pitch pipe? “It’s more professional,” Lucas says later. “The old pitch pipe, depending on how hard you blow, it changes the pitch.”) The new Bubs album was on track too. Several times that semester, Ed Boyer ’04 had come to campus to record background tracks (the chords, the oohs and aaahs that would make up the foundation of each song). But if there was one thing still troubling the Bubs—one thing the alumni network couldn’t help with—it was stage presence. In Ben Appel’s absence, it had fallen to Andrew Savini to teach the new members how to perform.