Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate a Cappella Glory (8 page)

In the past four years, the Hullabahoos have lost just one kid—an honest-to-God cousin of President George W. Bush, a kid named Sam Bush. Perhaps
lost
is the wrong word. At the auditions, the Hullabahoos ask each kid to fill out a form, which lists their hometown, major, voice part, that sort of thing. There are a few personality-based questions too. Example: Fill in the blank. I have the most extraordinary _______. Sam Bush wrote
cock
. He would go on to join—and quit—the Virginia Gentlemen.

Not much was memorable about the callbacks this fall—save for Joe Whitney, a six-foot-something stringbean with blue eyes and a goofy grin, a guy whose friends regularly describe him as the whitest guy they know. For callbacks, each kid is asked to prepare five minutes of entertainment. For his talent, Joe Whitney showed up pushing a microwave on a handcart. “What’s that for?” Morgan asked, though he was pretty sure Joe was about to blow something up.

“Oh,” Joe said. “I’m going to cook!”

With that, Joe Whitney opened up his backpack and pulled out some peanut butter, graham crackers, Marshmallow Fluff, and chocolate bars. He used to make this snack when he was a kid, he told the Hullabahoos. He proceeded to nuke the fluff, which he then spread over the graham crackers. He handed the s’mores out to the Hullabahoos one by one. But he was not done. Just as the B’hoos were finishing up their snack, Joe Whitney removed his sweater to reveal a white T-shirt underneath. In black marker on the T-shirt he’d scrawled the words SECRET INGREDIENT, with a giant arrow pointing down to his crotch. Needless to say he was accepted.

When the audition week was up, the Hullabahoos took five new guys. Very quickly, four accepted the invitations. Joe Whitney (and his microwave) was the final holdout. He’d been leaning toward the more classic Virginia Gentlemen. What changed his mind? First, the Hullabahoos’ “wall of sound,” he says. Two? “Every girl I asked told me the Hullabahoos were better than the Virginia Gentlemen.” What did the girls say, exactly? “AVP is the group you want to show to your little brother. The Virginia Gentlemen are the group you want to show to your mom. And the Hullabahoos are the group you
don’t
want to show to your girlfriend.”

The Hullabahoos are, in many ways, the anti-Beelzebubs. For one thing, they don’t have that kind of discipline—and they wear their laziness as a badge of honor. Their music director, Pete Seibert (a genial kid from West Virginia who recently lost ten pounds by spending money on alcohol rather than food), often ends disagreements in rehearsal by saying, “It’s just a cappella!” Also: They’d sooner disband than do choreography. About the only thing the Bubs and the Hullabahoos would agree on is the foolishness of competing in something like the ICCAs. Which is easy to say when you’ve already got a national reputation.

The Beelzebubs have nearly five decades of alumni experience to draw on—with alums regularly arranging new music for the group. The Beelzebubs may have an off year now and again (see the mid-seventies, or the early aughts) but what they lack in standout soloists they make up for in energy, sheer force, and dedication. The Hullabahoos, not so much. Their founder, Halsted Sullivan, remembers coming to the Hullabahoos’ fifteenth anniversary show in 2003. “The group was pretty terrible,” he says. It doesn’t help that most of the Hullabahoos don’t read music. In fact, several never sang before college.

The lax Hullabahoos attitude can come back to bite them. A few years ago, the Hullabahoos were four thousand dollars in the red. They’d recorded an album,
Jacked,
and were borrowing money from their families to pay the printing costs. “Poor planning,” says Keith Bachmann, who was music director at the time.

The B’hoos have frequently flirted with insolvency, spending twenty-five thousand dollars on their 2006 album
Off the Dock
. The album has since sold more than a thousand copies at fifteen dollars apiece—which still leaves them in the red. Worse, the sales are likely illegal. Collegiate groups have only just begun paying royalties for the rights to these songs, figuring the U.S. government won’t crack down on a bunch of college kids. Of late, some production warehouses—the people who actually print these CDs—have started to ask the groups to provide verification that they’ve secured all clearances. (The Harry Fox Agency in New York has carved out a niche securing what’s called mechanical rights for bands—including a cappella groups—so that U2 actually gets a couple of pennies every time someone sells a cover of “With or Without You.”) Not that the Hullabahoos worry much about the IRS, the RIAA, or anyone else. Actually, the only thing they’re worried about is cannibalizing their own sales. They’ve laid down tracks for a new disc, including songs by Justin Timberlake and Rascal Flatts, but don’t want to put the album out too soon. “
Off the Dock
is still selling well,” says their music director. Though not as well as it should be. Like the major music labels, the Hullabahoos have to deal with piracy. “Our shit is all over LimeWire,” Morgan says.

Salvation for their financial woes came from an unlikely source: the Republican Party. A company called Ashley Entertainment (who’d worked with the Hullabahoos on and off since the mid-nineties) hired the boys to perform for a series of events at the 2004 Republican National Convention in Manhattan, including a Union Pacific Railroad pep rally. The boys learned a bunch of songs about trains, including Marc Cohn’s “Ghost Train” and Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready.” Later, at an RNC event at Sotheby’s, Trent Lott actually joined the B’hoos on “God Bless America.” (Footnote: Lott was part of his own a cappella group, the Singing Senators, a barbershop quartet that also included Larry “Wide Stance” Craig.) The Hullabahoos earned thirteen thousand dollars for three days’ work. Suddenly they were flush with cash. Yet, in typical Hullabahoos style, the group quickly lost touch with their contact, the owner of Ashley Entertainment and the man who had hired them for their most lucrative gig in years.

But in the fall of 2006—not long after Joe Whitney and his microwave show up—Morgan Sword gets back in touch with Howard Spector at Ashley Entertainment. Morgan is now planning the group’s winter-break trip, which is set for January 2007, and he’s set his sights on booking one major gig: singing the national anthem at a Los Angeles Lakers game. Morgan has been chasing the booker at the Staples Center for months, sending press kits and following up with phone calls, and he reaches out to Howard Spector for a letter of recommendation. Then there is the talk of a possible B’hoos trip to Hong Kong for the summer of 2007. If the Hullabahoos have a goal for this 2006-2007 school year, it’s to compete on the level of a group like the Tufts Beelzebubs without sacrificing their laid-back soul. But can a group pull off a tour of Hong Kong when its music director still says, “It’s just a cappella!” Or when its treasurer regularly forgets to cash checks—and compounds the problem by siphoning cash from the Hullabahoos’ account to pay for beer?

“The Hullabahoos are nipping at the heels of the Beelzebubs in terms of success,” says Lib Curlee, the business manager of the all-female UNC Loreleis. “But there’s an aura around the Bubs’ name.” In a few weeks, the two all-male groups will collide at UNC, courtesy of an invitation from Lib, who invited both to North Carolina for the Loreleis’ 2006 Fall Jam, setting the stage for an a cappella showdown.

On campus, meanwhile, the Hullabahoos have gotten a reputation for being cocky. But they may just have the goods to back it up. Not only is Hullabahoos B looking solid—they’ve got a new recruit, a freshman named Bobby Grasberger—but musically, as the group approaches their twentieth anniversary (with arguably its strongest lineup), this may be their best year yet. Which could be their downfall. Most a cappella groups are lucky to have one standout soloist. This year, the Hullabahoos have three—and another two who would be starters on any other team. But the proliferation of talent has actually led to a divide in the group. The biggest fear? “That we’ll become Patrick Lundquist and the Hullabahoos,” one of the B’hoos says.

Patrick Lundquist is the blond Hullabahoo, and he’s hard to miss. He’s six foot three, a natural athlete with an easy smile and cartoonish dimples, a man so good-looking your dad might sleep with him. It’s almost an accident that Patrick finds himself in the Hullabahoos. When he was a kid, an older brother told him singing was “gay.” But when the school’s chorus teacher heard Patrick sing, she wouldn’t let the boy quit. And so Patrick went on to play baseball and sing in the choir. As a senior in high school, he even starred in a local production of
Les Misérables
. No one made fun of him.

Patrick actually wanted to take this school year off. “I wanted to go to Los Angeles to act,” he says. His parents—lovely, private-school types—begged him to stay in Charlottesville. Los Angeles wasn’t going anywhere, they said. There was more to it. His parents weren’t worried their boy would wind up waiting tables. “I think my mom was worried I’d succeed,” Patrick says, “that it would be too easy for me.” One gets the sense that Patrick awoke every morning to a standing ovation.

The thing is, Patrick’s not even the biggest diva among the Hullabahoos. Brendon Mason is not just difficult but proud of it. Then there’s Dane Blackburn, who is generally known to do exactly one selfless act a year for the Hullabahoos. “I make chicken wings for the auditions,” he says.

The Hullabahoos don’t really talk about any of these personality conflicts; rather it simmers under the surface, the hidden truth behind every offhand comment. And there’s some healing to be done. Last year was rough, personalitywise, with the Hullabahoos essentially split in two. “There was the cool, former high school athlete house,” says Joe Cassara. That’s where Morgan and Patrick lived, along with another Hullabahoo. Then there was the Hullaba-house on Wertland Street—which was “the former-drama -kid” group. The Hullabahoos may just be their own worst enemy.

“Patrick probably sells more tickets than any other member of the group,” Morgan says. “He’s probably the most recognizable. But the one thing we do not tolerate in the B’hoos is people getting big egos.” This will all come to a head. But on the most beautiful night of the school year, why ruin it?

It is close to ten o’clock on a warm September evening in Charlottesville, Virginia, and four thousand coeds crowd Thomas Jefferson’s fabled Lawn. UVA was, in many ways, the first true college campus. But it’s unlikely that Jefferson could have imagined this scene. Tonight, boys recline on bedsheets, passing cups of beer from some unseen keg. Pretty blond girls in strapless linen dresses greet each other with a kiss—sometimes a double kiss. The stadium lights crack on in the distance.

These four thousand students—more than twenty-five percent of the campus population—have gathered before the rotunda, an imposing bit of architecture modeled on the Roman pantheon. They’ve come for Rotunda Sing, an a cappella blowout that’s easily the most popular orientation week event at UVA, despite its ass-numbing length. By the time the Hullabahoos take to the stage, eleven a cappella groups have already performed, including the Academical Village People—an all-male group known for humping the white columns of the Rotunda every year. A jazz group performs—something about chili con carne. There is even a Christian a cappella group, CHoosE (short for Christian ’Hoos Exalt).

The concert feels a lot like
American Idol
, a show whose effect cannot be understated in collegiate a cappella. Especially on the UVA campus. Travis Tucker, a finalist from
Idol
season three, started UVA’s first R & B a cappella group, ReMix.
Idol
is the reason an otherwise good singer turns a word like
baby
into a nine-syllable vocal embarrassment along the lines of:
babe-ay-ay -ay-eh-eh-ay-ay.
(Technically, that flowery trill is called a melisma.) The Rotunda Sing organization committee likes to say the lineup of acts is drawn at random, but the Hullabahoos regularly close the show—a testament to their prominence on grounds.

For all that’s been said about the Hullabahoos, they take to the steps of the rotunda casually and unassumingly, arranging themselves in a single arc. The crowd—a bit fatigued, understandably—perk up. These people have been waiting more than two hours for this moment. It’s the only reason they haven’t already decamped for the first fraternity parties of the year.

Pete Seibert, the music director, blows into his pitch pipe, counting off two-three-four. And the Hullabahoos come to life, singing,
“Doooooh-ooh
(pause)
doooo-ooooh.”
Perhaps it’s Patrick Lundquist stepping up to the mic. Or maybe the audience just recognizes
dooh-ooh
. There are catcalls. A guy way in the back yells, “Yes!” And a cute girl says to her friend, “I know we’re Hullaba-
hos
, but I told Katie we’d meet her, like, twenty minutes ago.”

Patrick sings:
“Turn down the lights // Turn down the bed // Turn down these voices inside my head.”
He clutches the corners of his robe like a kid holding on to the last scraps of his security blanket. It may be an act. Who knows? But there is a visceral sense that he understands what he’s singing—which is unnerving. That’s what separates this from karaoke. He continues.
“Just hold me close // Don’t patronize me.”

Last spring, Patrick suggested “I Can’t Make You Love Me.” He and Pete downloaded every version they could find, including one from Bonnie Raitt and another from George Michael. They even borrowed bits from a Luther Vandross version. It’s been simmered down like some port wine reduction. One doesn’t notice the genius of Pete’s arrangement until the third chorus, where Patrick sings,
“And I will give up this fight.”
The Hullabahoos echo, singing
“figh-igh-ight.”
When they come back in, they’ve changed keys, modulating up a half step. The key change is a pop music cliché for a reason (see everything from “The Gambler” to the Kelly Clarkson oeuvre). It happens, famously, in Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer.” If you can’t hear it, just watch the video. The key change happens just as wires hoist Jon Bon Jovi into the air like Peter Pan. The key change is the reason why karaoke amateurs fall apart in the final chorus. It’s why the solo is suddenly out of their vocal range. The casual listener probably doesn’t know what a key change is, but they know how it makes them feel—hopeful. Tonight, Patrick throws in a Christina Aguilera- like trill. He can’t help himself. Then he belts
“Ain’t no use in tryin’, baby.”