Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate A Cappella Glory

by Mickey Rapkin

  “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.

  And what memories they are. Over the summer of 2007— like countless coeds before him—Joe Cassara, having just graduated from the University of Virginia, went to Europe to celebrate. He was at a hostel in Nice, France, when a girl looked at him funny. She’d just graduated from Virginia Tech. “Um, are you in the Hullabahoos?” she said. “I just downloaded ‘Wonderful Tonight. ’ ”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to Brett Valley, Patrick Mulligan, Rachel Ekstrom, Farley Chase, Howard Sanders, Jim Nelson, Fred Woodward, Michael Hainey, Jason Gray, Mark Kirby, the staff of GQ, Joshua Jacobson, Ben Berentson, Andrea Oliveri, Alanna Zahn, Robert Alarcon, Deke Sharon, Bill Hare, Tim Vaill, Keith Bachmann, James Gammon, Danny Lichtenfeld, Joseph Campagna, and Cayuga’s Waiters. A special thanks to my parents, Jane and Lenny Rapkin, Jon Rapkin and Erin Rapkin, and Julio Gambuto.
/>   I’d like to thank the Beelzebubs, the Hullabahoos, and Divisi—both the current members and their alumni—for sharing their stories with me.

  THE 2006-2007 UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA HULLABAHOOS

  Dane Blackburn

  Christopher Brown

  Joseph Cassara

  Brian Duhon

  Myles Glancy

  Bobby Grasberger

  Patrick Lundquist

  Brendon Mason

  Kyle Mihalcoe

  Matt Mooney

  Chad Moses

  Blake Segal

  Pete Seibert

  Morgan Sword

  Brian Tucker

  Alan Webb

  Joe Whitney

  THE 2006-2007 UNIVERSITY OF OREGON DIVISI

  Emmalee Almroth

  Meghan Bell

  Michaela Cordova

  Sarah Klein

  Andrea Lucia

  CharliRae McConnell

  Keeley McCowan

  Marissa Neitling

  Megan Schimmer

  Haley Steinberger

  Jenna Tooley

  Andrea Welsh

  Rachelle Wofford

  Betsy Yates

  THE 2006-2007 TUFTS BEELZEBUBS

  Paul Alvarez

  Benjamin Appel

  Tim Conrad

  Adrian Dahlin

  Arkady Ho

  Ben Kelsey

  Alexander Koutzoukis

  Matt Kraft

  Nick Lamm

  Matt McCormick

  Matt Michelson

  Andrew Savini

  Doug Terry

  Matt Thomas

  Chris Van Lenten

  Lucas Walker