Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate a Cappella Glory (12 page)

CHAPTER SIX

THE HULLABAHOOS

The Hullabahoos may be rising stars in the world of collegiate a cappella. But their founder, Halsted Sullivan, is surprised the group still exists. "The Hullabahoos almost folded after our first semester,” he says.

A cappella groups frequently talk about their founders in hushed tones—as if these mystical men were endowed with some divinity. The Hullabahoos are no different. The current members of the B’hoos (even the ones who’ve never met Halsted) can recount stories of this man’s undergraduate sexual conquests— in unfortunate, graphic detail, often without prompting. The truth is, more often than not, these founders of a cappella groups were not divine, but rather rejects from existing a cappella groups. “That’s right,” says Halsted Sullivan, UVA class of 1989. “I was rejected from the Virginia Gentlemen. Twice.” Mark Lyons— the first music director of the Hullabahoos—was rejected from the VGs too.

Despite the dismissal, Halsted was determined to sing in an a cappella group. And if the Virginia Gentlemen (a subset of the UVA glee club) wouldn’t have him, well, he’d start his own. In the fall of 1987, with the blessing of the music department, Halsted made his move. He placed an announcement in the school paper,
The Cavalier Daily
, that read, simply, CAN YOU SING IN THE SHOWER? The ad stressed the fact that, unlike the Virginia Gentlemen, this new a cappella group wouldn’t require its members to join the glee club. In fact, reading music would be strictly optional. The first auditions were held at Cabell Hall in January of 1988 and interest was tepid. Halsted actually had to fill the sign-up sheet with fake names. “I wanted to
prime the pump
,” he says. (Not a surprise, really, that Halsted would use a Reaganite phrase; his father had been the secretary of health and human services in President Bush I’s cabinet.) Despite the low turnout, Halsted was impressed with the talent that did show up. Though he admits they accepted a few guys who blatantly couldn’t sing. “We called them
bait
,” Mark Lyons says. “They were the good-looking guys.”

Halsted and Mark wanted the Hullabahoos to be different from the Virginia Gentlemen, they just didn’t know exactly how. And so the two took a road trip—a reconnaissance mission, if you will—to the Cherry Tree Massacre, an annual a cappella festival put on by the Georgetown Chimes since 1974. There, the Hullabahoos would find their inspiration in a visiting a cappella group from Cornell University, Cayuga’s Waiters, a group that wore jeans and tie-dye T-shirts. It was nothing short of revelatory. “The Waiters matched,” Halsted says, “but weren’t
identical
. And they had this fantastic energy.” They were, he says, cool.

On the drive back to Charlottesville, Halsted and Mark debated stealing the tie-dye thing. But the Hullabahoos weren’t sold on the idea. One of the new guys, Andy Erickson, suggested white tie and tails instead. That wasn’t quite right either. In the end they settled on multicolored robes, inspired by an honor society at Sewanee: the University of the South. With a two-thousand-dollar grant from the student senate’s appropriations committee, they promptly spent six hundred dollars on handmade robes from an upscale fabric shop on Barracks Road in downtown Charlottesville. Mark’s robe was red and gold. Halsted’s was a royal-blue plaid. It was a risk. “We looked like Color Me Badd,” Halsted says.

Now they just needed a name. Not surprisingly, they considered an embarrassing number of puns. Someone suggested the Ro
toon
das—a takeoff on the campus’s signature piece of architecture, the rotunda. What about the Poe Boys? (Edgar Allan Poe was a UVA alum.) The Harmonticellos? (Jefferson’s residence, ten miles away, was Monticello.) The Jeffersongs, anybody? Halsted opened up the dictionary to the letter
H
. He was looking for some play on ’Hoos, as in the UVA Wahoos—a campus nickname dating back to the late 1800s. (Though any UVA student will proudly tell you that a
wahoo
is a fish that can drink twice its body weight, it seems the name actually originated with a Dartmouth cheer, Wah-Hoo-Wah.) Halsted came across the word
hullabaloo
—meaning “a din or uproar.” And so the Hullabahoos were born.

Halsted was a conscientious founder and sent typewritten letters to a cappella groups around the country asking for advice. One group wrote back, “No Gilbert & Sullivan.” Another sent the Hullabahoos an arrangement of Squeeze’s “Black Coffee in Bed.” At their first rehearsal, the B’hoos learned “At the Hop.” Then came Billy Joel’s “For the Longest Time.” They were quick, easy arrangements, which was good, because the Hullabahoos had just booked their first high-profile gig. They would be the guest group for the Virginia Belles, the university’s all-female a cappella group.

It would be the Hullabahoos’ first legit university performance, though the show proved memorable for more than the music. “Phil Byers,” Halsted says, “broke his leg onstage.” It had something to do with the choreography. Halsted was too excited to care. After taking a bow, he told Phil to put himself on the bus to the UVA hospital.

The show had been a success, but the Hullabahoos were still fighting the popular perception (not entirely unfounded) that they were nothing more than Virginia Gentlemen’s leftovers. Complicating matters, Mark Lyons (their music director) was graduating. Fearing the worst, three of the Hullabahoos secretly auditioned for the VGs—and got in. Halsted couldn’t blame them for seeking other options. “The Hullabahoos were too much of an unknown quantity,” he says. Even Halsted auditioned for the VGs again! But he withdrew his name.

When the B’hoos returned to campus in the fall of 1988, their numbers had whittled down to just five. Chris Walker, then a second-year, stepped into the role of music director. No one knew Chris could read music, let alone that he was a prodigy. Salvation was nigh. In December, at Garrett Hall, the B’hoos held their first Christmas show. They even had Yuletide robes made. “It was a
Peanuts
pattern,” Halsted says. More impressively, they draped themselves in Christmas lights and extension cords. There was one problem. “Two songs in,” Halstead says, “the lights started to burn through the robes.”

The group’s profile continued to grow, and it soon became popular for women on campus to steal the robes after bedding a Hullabahoo. Perhaps feeling the pressure of their new on-campus rival, the Virginia Gentlemen suddenly stopped requiring its members to join the glee club. But the B’hoos’ reputation really took shape at the end of their second year with the arrival of Paul Snow Hudgins—aka Snowdy. The guy had till then been a brother at Beta Theta Pi, before the fraternity was kicked off campus. A lapsed frat guy? He was perfect for the Hullabahoos.

Just before Halsted graduated, the group received an invitation from the Waiters, the Cornell group that had inspired their cool ethos nearly two years before. The Waiters wanted the Hullabahoos to sing at their big show, Spring Fever—one of the largest a cappella shows in the nation, regularly filling Bailey Hall’s two-thousand -seat auditorium. It’s an unspoken rule in a cappella: Never invite a guest group who is better than you. The Waiters could not have been happy when a review of the concert appeared in
The Cornell Daily Sun
on March 13, 1989. Four paragraphs down, Krista Reid ’91 wrote the following about the visiting Hullabahoos: “Their appearance on stage was quickly followed with whispers and giggles from the women in the crowd. It was said by many that these guys were better looking than Waiters— could it be possible?”

Since Halstead’s era, the Hullabahoos have had pockets of musical brilliance punctuated by mediocre (but raucous) good times. Andrew Renshaw’s version of “Wonderful Tonight” from the early nineties is legendary, even on LimeWire (where it’s often mistakenly credited to Rockapella). But what has remained constant is the look: clean-cut, All-American, handsome. In off years, what they lacked in talent they made up for in charm. And luck.

Howard Spector is the president of Ashley Entertainment, a Washington, D.C.-based event-planning firm. In 1995, he happened to walk by Boston’s Faneuil Hall, where the Hullabahoos (on their annual road trip, Fall Roll) were busking. Howard bought a CD, said he was interested in hiring the B’hoos, and handed a business card to John Stanzione, then the music director of the group. “Like most people we met who said they were somebody, ” Stanzione recalls, “we never expected to hear from him again.” But Howard did call, with a gig no less: He wanted the Hullabahoos to perform at Burger King’s annual corporate Christmas party in Miami. He offered airfare, accommodations, not to mention all the Burger King one could eat. Stanzione details his thought process: “You want to fly us to South Beach in the middle of finals and pay for us to eat and drink?” Stanzione pushed his luck. He told Howard they’d love to do the gig, but he’d need to fly in some “key alumni” to help out. Howard consented and the deal was done. Just out of curiosity, Stanzione said to Howard, who did the Burger King gig last year? “Bill Cosby,” Howard said. Stanzione wrote letters to relevant professors asking if the Hullabahoos could schedule make-up exams.

It was likely the most lucrative gig in the short history of the Hullabahoos. But it came with its own unique demands. Howard wanted the Hullabahoos to learn the Burger King jingle. And so John Stanzione arranged “Aren’t You Hungry for Burger King Now?” the one that went
“Aren’t You Hungry? Aren’t you hungry for Burger King now?”
An hour before showtime, the Hullabahoos ran through their set for Howard. “I meant the
other
jingle!” Howard said.
“Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce, special orders don’t upset us.”
So Stanzione and Nick Geisinger (who’d flown in from Chicago) threw together a Burger King medley, which the B’hoos learned on the spot. Not surprisingly, the executives loved it. “Particularly the lady in marketing,” Stanzione says. “The woman who came up with the idea for the New Fries.”

“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.