Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate A Cappella Glory

by Mickey Rapkin

  Julia Hoffman, an alum of the Stanford Harmonics, stepped in to run the CARAs. Maybe “stepped in” isn’t right. “We had a coup,” Julia says.

  Don, meanwhile, hired Amanda Grish, an alum of the University of Illinois a cappella group No Strings Attached, to run the ICCAs. In her new role she’s had several surprising phone calls. “I’ve had parents call me to ask, Of the schools my child is applying to, what are the places with good a cappella?” she says. “The parents are desperate. They say, My kid wants to sing, and I want to know where he’ll have the best chance.”

  In 2007 Amanda Grish bought Don out. “I’m forty-nine,” Don Gooding said. “I’ve been at this for sixteen years.” He’s selling a-cappella.com as well (though he’ll retain a small stake in future profits for five years). He wants to get involved with the centennial celebration of his old Yale Whiffenpoofs, set for 2009. “Besides, I have the constitution of an entrepreneur,” he says. “Once businesses are up and solid I lose interest in the day-to-day operations. I like to reinvent myself.” More than that, it was about the music. “I’m hoping to sing again,” Don says. “It’s the old saw about the cobbler’s kid not having any shoes. I’m the a cappella guy who isn’t singing.”

  The thing about collegiate a cappella is, no one wants the party to end. That’s the buried—but not too deep—emotional hangover of all this CASA infighting, lawsuits, and shingles. It shouldn’t be surprising. Isn’t collegiate a cappella just another Behind the Music story? But in place of Grammys and world tours, it’s CARAs and spring break trips to Mexico. The emotional scar may be proportional. Leif Garrett winds up homeless and in rehab for heroin. The a cappella idols just graduate, forced to weather sudden anonymity and BlackBerry slavery. Most adjust. For others it’s like being cast out of Eden. You can’t really blame these adults for mourning the loss of their campus fame— even thirty years later.

  If there truly is an a cappella Garden of Eden, it might just be on Martha’s Vineyard. This is the story of Vineyard Sound—a summer job that celebrates all that is holy in a cappella: sex, music, and camaraderie.

  In the early nineties, Townsend Belisle was a student at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, majoring in music and economics. In his free time he sang with the university’s all-male a cappella group, the Bandersnatchers. (The name, among the best in a cappella, comes from a Lewis Carroll poem, “The Jabberwock. ”) In the summer of 1991, while his friends were pursuing résumé-padding internships, Townsend waited tables at the Seafood Shanty on Martha’s Vineyard, the tony playground of the Kennedys, among other noble families. Townsend loved the sea air. He loved Captain Parker’s chowder. Life was good. It would turn out to be a formative summer. Upstairs at the Shanty, you see, there was a makeshift cabaret where a bunch of Yale kids would perform for cash. Townsend had an idea.

  Townsend called up his buddy Chris Bettencourt, a member of Connecticut College’s all-male CocoBeaux. He had a proposition: I want to create a ten-member all-male a cappella super-group made up of guys from the Wesleyan Spirits, the CocoBeaux, and the Bandersnatchers. Martha’s Vineyard was surely starved for entertainment, he said. “We’ll learn Sesame Street songs for the kids,” Townsend told Chris, “and Sinatra for the older crowd. We’ll call ourselves Vineyard Sound.” He didn’t have to work very hard. Chris was in. It would be the a cappella equivalent of being a cabana boy.

  Over spring break in 1992, Townsend took the ferry to the Vineyard and, with the help of a broker, found a spectacular house for that summer—a three-bedroom on the Bay of Edgartown with hardwood floors, cedar siding, and a hot tub. The landlord was nervous about renting to a bunch of college kids. But Townsend, a self-described mama’s boy, convinced him to do the deal and Townsend signed the lease that day. The rent on the house: sixteen thousand dollars for the season.

  Back at school, Townsend and Chris recruited for Vineyard Sound. And for the first two weeks of the summer, the group rehearsed eight hours a day, learning some twenty songs. To introduce themselves to the locals, the Sound set out on a listening tour. They’d walk into a restaurant, find the manager, and ask to sing a song for the patrons. That song was usually “Taking Care of Business.” “It was upbeat,” Townsend says. “And most people couldn’t imagine it being sung that way.” By that way, he means without instruments. On the way out, Townsend would hand a Vineyard Sound business card to the restaurant’s manager.

  Their big break came at the Seafood Shanty, where Townsend had seen the Yale kids perform the summer before. Townsend negotiated a regular gig at the Shanty. They’d charge a five-dollar entry fee, collecting additional tips in a bucket that read FINANCIAL AID. But for the most part the gigs were slow in coming. They would cover the cost of the house, but Townsend couldn’t guarantee the guys would go home with any money. It was a disappointment—most of them had to get other jobs— some at the Yacht Club, others at the grocery store. The lucky ones were lifeguards. But there was momentum.

  The members of Vineyard Sound would never need a second job again.

  That second summer—all ten original members returned— the Vineyard Sound expanded their repertoire. They even booked a few regular gigs in advance. They were also back at the Seafood Shanty—with one slight change. That first year, the boys had fought with the waitresses. “They’d disrupt our set,” Townsend says. It wasn’t pretty. He had an idea: Why didn’t the men of Vineyard Sound just serve the tables themselves? In place of one long set, the Sound would do several short sets, serving drinks in between. Tips skyrocketed. Even better, chatting up diners between sets, they got to know the locals, which led to more gigs. Eventually they were performing at the Shanty three nights a week, not to mention church gigs and community center events.

  Townsend graduated in 1993 but went back for one last summer with the Vineyard Sound. That’s how he met Merv Griffin.

  It was the summer of ’94 and Vineyard Sound was performing upstairs at the Seafood Shanty. One of Townsend’s buddies from Martha’s Vineyard happened to be Merv Griffin’s pilot. Townsend asked for an introduction. And so, one night after dinner, the guy brought Merv Griffin and his six-member entourage down to the Shanty to watch Vineyard Sound perform. Merv was sitting at a table, chomping on a cigar. “Merv was shit-faced,” Townsend says.

  Billy Joel’s “Lullaby” was a big part of the group’s repertoire that summer. Garth Ross, a founding member of the Sound and an alum of the CocoBeaux, remembers that night Merv Griffin showed up. (In 2008, the self-same Garth Ross would organize a ten-day a cappella festival for the Kennedy Center, called Singing Solo.) When the Sound came to the end of “Lullaby,” it was dead quiet. In that breath of silence before the audience begins to applaud, one husky, cigar-stained voice could be heard way in the back. “Beautiful,” Merv Griffin said. “Beautiful.”

  “That sound, Beaaauutiful, is ingrained in all of our minds,” Townsend says. In fact, they printed it on a T-shirt.

  That would not be the last Vineyard Sound saw of Merv Griffin. The pilot took a Vineyard Sound business card and passed it on to someone in Merv’s camp. And, lo and behold, three days later Townsend Belisle was standing in the Vineyard Sound house when the call came through. He signaled to the guys to quiet down. “It’s a guy from Merv Griffin Entertainment,” Townsend whispered, pointing at the phone. The Sound gathered in close.

  The man wanted to hire Vineyard Sound to open for Paul Sorvino at Merv’s property in Atlantic City in the fall. “He kept saying to me, ‘What’s your fee?’ ” Townsend says. Generally, if the Sound made five hundred dollars for a gig they were thrilled. But this was Merv Griffin! Townsend was stalling. “Well,” he said, “a lot of us have significant others. Can we bring our girlfriends? ” Yes, the man said. He even agreed to pay for travel. Again, he said, What’s your fee? Townsend blurted out five thousand dollars. “Done,” the man said.

  And so, in the fall of ‘94, Vineyard Sound reunited in Atlantic City to open for Paul Sorvino. “We sang three songs,” Townsend
says. There was a big discussion over what three songs to sing, though today no one actually remembers what those three songs were. What they do remember is how bad the show was. First, they were poorly mic’d. Also: It was Atlantic City. “Three-fourths of the crowd was over seventy years old,” Townsend says. The show was over in less than fifteen minutes.

  Merv was in the audience that night, however. And after dinner, as the Sound went to hit the tables, Townsend ran into the entertainment director for Merv Griffin Resorts International. “Let’s go back into this room over here,” the guy said, taking Townsend by the arm.

  Suddenly, Townsend found himself in a small private room with Merv Griffin, the actor Robert Loggia, and Barbra Streisand. Merv Griffin was eating his favorite frozen yogurt—chocolate, always. And everyone was talking about the yogurt! “Barbra Streisand, Robert Loggia—they were gushing over Merv Griffin’s frozen yogurt. They were kissing his ass,” Townsend says.

  “What do you want to do with your life?” Merv Griffin asked Townsend.

  “I want to learn marketing within the entertainment industry, ” Townsend said, smart enough to take advantage of this very bizarre introduction.

  A few months later, Merv Griffin hired Townsend to be one of his six personal assistants. “I was a scout,” Townsend says. “I was always three days ahead of Merv’s traveling schedule. I had to make sure his yellow pillows were warm and fluffed and that we could find the right brand of chocolate frozen yogurt.”

  Townsend meanwhile had bigger dreams for Vineyard Sound. He liked the formula. The guys were having fun. And by now they were making good money—more than four thousand dollars each for the summer (all expenses paid). Townsend felt they could re-create the magic on nearby Cape Cod. And so he found a two-family house in a shady part of town, close to a strip mall and a U-Haul rent-a-center. "If there was such a thing as a ghetto on Cape Cod,” he says, “that’s where it was.” But the house was within walking distance of the action and it had a big backyard with a volleyball court. He christened this new group Hyannis Sound.

  While the Vineyard Sound was strictly made up of members of the CocoBeaux, the Bandersnatchers, and the Wesleyan group, there would be open auditions for this new venture. In the spring of ’93, Townsend went on a mini-college tour, scouting guys from the Hullabahoos, the Bubs, and elsewhere for a new group to perform that summer on the Cape. It was the same business model. Except that Hyannis Sound would have one advantage: population. Where Martha’s Vineyard was made up of six towns, Cape Cod comprised some twenty-three towns.

  On the first night, Townsend sat down with the boys of Hyannis Sound to lay out the group’s mission statement. This was not The Real World: A Cappella. “This summer, you’re looking to grow as much as possible in musicality and stage presence,” he said. “You’ll also grow personally. You’ll make some money too.” He appointed two music directors. He assigned house responsibilities. “The best thing you can do,” he told the ten men of Hyannis Sound, “is to put yourself in front of an audience. Learn five songs and knock their socks off.” Musically they were probably better than Vineyard Sound. But they weren’t motivated. On the weekends, Townsend would take the ferry to Cape Cod to check in on the newbies. “They’d say, We’re not making enough money,” Townsend remembers. “Well, there are probably sixty empty cases of beer on the porch. Why don’t you go return those bottles and make some money?” They were loving the volleyball court, though.

  Both groups began doing community outreach work, stopping by the local schools at the start of every summer to conduct music workshops (which were really advertisements for both Sounds disguised as goodwill). Needless to say, women everywhere fell in love with them. Both Sounds were invited to family barbecues. They were doing a hundred shows in ninety days.

  Fairly quickly, the groups took on their own personalities. In a reverse, Vineyard Sound embraced a laid-back spirit. Meanwhile, improbably, Hyannis Sound became something of the overachiever. They moved out of the house with the volleyball court and began recording albums—a live album every summer, and a studio album every two years. (The Vineyard would only do live albums.) But both were thriving enterprises. The Hyannis Sound albums sell close to two thousand copies each—and the money goes right back into the group. They even performed the national anthem at Fenway Park.

  And then Townsend got cocky. In 1995, the year after launching Hyannis Sound, he set his sights on Newport, launching, yup, Newport Sound. It flopped. Early in the summer the group scored a one-night, eight-thousand-dollar gig on a yacht. And then they didn’t work for two weeks. “The gigs were too inconsistent,” Townsend says. And so Newport Sound folded.

  Ed Boyer of the Bubs was a member of Hyannis Sound and recorded their 2006 album, Route 6. This is what he remembers of his time on the Cape: “The house was not well maintained,” he says. And the house parties were frequent. “Every Friday night,” Ed says. “Sometimes more. Inevitably a handful of girls would crash on the couch.” This was actually a good thing, and not for the reasons you’d expect. “I’d wake up in the morning,” Ed says, “and these eighteen-year-old girls would be cleaning our house.” What? “Cape Cod is full of old people,” Ed says. “Except for us ten guys. We were the only market in town, literally.”

  As the empire expanded, Townsend—who by now had left Merv Griffin Enterprises and was living in New York—set about legitimizing the operation. Formal auditions for Hyannis Sound were scheduled annually in Boston. (The only restriction was age: Auditions were open to anyone from the summer they’d graduated high school until the summer after leaving college.) In 1998, a formal board of directors was put in place. In 2003, Hyannis Sound became an official 501c3 nonprofit in Massachusetts. They’ve got an accountant, a lawyer, and all the trappings of a nonprofit.

  The corporation is there to ensure the group’s continued existence, but the summer is student run—by design. Every summer Townsend sits down with the boys on both forks and gives what’s come to be known as the Speech. The one that begins: “We are handing this to you on a silver platter. You’re in the public eye. All we need is one person to sleep with a seventeen-year-old and this is over.” Townsend trains the new business managers every year and then walks away. “I learned so much from negotiating with Merv Griffin’s people,” he says. “I want these kids to have that kind of experience. It’s priceless.” Townsend himself had learned the most important lesson of all in a cappella: when to walk away.

  In the spring of 2006, Townsend Belisle got a call from one of the Hyannis Sound guys. They’d been having trouble finding a house for the summer. Finally they’d found something with promise. “It’s in walking distance of everything,” the kid said. “It’s kind of in a sketchy part of town, right near the U-Haul. But it’s perfect for us. And there’s a volleyball court in the backyard!”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  DIVISI

  Wherein personal tragedy becomes triumph in the spring of 2007

  In a mirrored dance studio somewhere in downtown Eugene, Divisi primps for their spring concert. For the night’s first set, they’ve forsaken their black shirts and red ties—Divisi’s signature red-hot—in favor of a little individuality. The color palette remains the same, but the girls are mostly in dresses, some with halter tops, some with big red belts tied at the waist. The girls run through a bit of complex choreography, some counting the steps to themselves. Andrea Welsh applies bronzer to her legs. “Why won’t my boobs stay separated?” Haley Steinberger asks, staring into the mirror.

  Outside, the auditorium is filling up. Peter Hollens and Evynne Smith—the founders of On the Rocks and Divisi, respectively— mill about. They talk about their upcoming wedding—on campus, near the Student Center, fittingly, where they performed on so many Friday afternoons. If this were Grease, they’d be the Danny and Sandy of Oregon a cappella; he’s even wearing a leather jacket.

  Divisi walks out onstage in two lines and assumes an attitudinal pose, all hands on their hips, weight shifted t
o one side. Marissa Neitling steps up to the microphone. And she sings: “I got the stuff that you want // I got the thing that you need // I got more than enough // To make you drop to your knees.”

  Marissa sings, beautifully, clean: “ ’Cause I’m the queen of the night...”

  Those who know Marissa couldn’t help but see this performance as a triumph.

  Marissa Neitling had been mindful of keeping her story to herself this year. “Whatever is going on,” Rachelle Wofford says, “Marissa always leaves it at the door.” But the week before this final concert, Divisi showed up en masse for the performance of Marissa’s thesis, the one-woman show she’d been working on all year. They were unsure of what to expect. They knew it would be personal, that it had something to do with the ex-boyfriend who was now married (with a child on the way, no less). But they were not prepared for the seething, raw anguish on display that afternoon.

  Marissa stood before the audience in the seventy-two-person black box theater, so small up there. True to herself, Marissa had written a play that was both theatrical and precise. Moving about the space, she told the story of her father—of his drug abuse, of his breakdown, of the anger—in exacting, matter-of-fact detail, making eye contact with the members of the audience. She was not intimidated by her father’s childhood friends who were in the audience, the ones who’d accused Marissa and her mother of being (in her mother’s words) “the bad people.” She talked about the night she and her mother had to leave their home in fear, because her “father was a good shot.”

  Marissa talked about the calm she’d found. No, calm wasn’t the right word, because this thing would still devour her if she wasn’t careful. But she was learning to let go—not because she wanted to, but because she needed to. It had been over a year since she’d spoken with her father. He wasn’t the same man anymore. No, the father she had known was buried inside, in some unreachable place. She didn’t say much more. What would have been the point?