Rockapella Ready To Blend Harmonies At Extended Edmond Town Hall Run
From the storied street corners that birthed early doo wop vocal groups of the late 1950s to the polished rock star productions of contemporary global phenoms like Pentatonix, groups relying on the world’s oldest instrument — the human voice — have always had significant audience appeal.
Edmond Town Hall audiences will be able to revel in great vocal arrangements when Rockapella, one of the more seasoned vocal groups on the concert circuit today, hits the stage for a multi-show run September 13 and 14.
Presented by Zoot Live, an entertainment promotions venture of former Newtown resident Kyle Lyddy, the five-man vocal band will be doing an evening show Friday, September 13, at 8 pm; as well as 5 and 8 pm sets the following day, in the intimate Edmond Town Hall Theatre.
Advanced tickets are still available for all three shows at zootliveevents.com, although they are selling quickly. Tickets are $33.50-$45, with Meet & Greet Upgrades availbale for an additional $20.
As one of the progenitors of the astonishing full-band sound of “contemporary” a cappella, Rockapella has shown every audience the raw power of pure vocal talent and originality, according to an advance from the band.
“There’s nothing in the way between us and the audience; it’s very human music,” says Rockapella’s human beatbox Jeff Thacher. “No instruments, no tracks, no mirrors.”
Since the early ‘90s when they first achieved national television fame on PBS’s Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego? Rockapella has toured the globe and provided a funky powerful soundtrack to several generations of vocal music fans, while keeping it all fresh.
The current Rockapella line-up features Scott Leonard (since 1991, High Tenor), Jeff Thacher (1993, Vocal Percussionist), Calvin Jones (2013, Tenor), Mitchell Rains (2016, Tenor), and Bryant Vance (2016, Bass). This line-up marks a new generation of Rockapella, who remain keenly focused on musical excellence.
With a combination of catchy original pop songs and complete contemporary revisions of sparkling Motown, pop, and soul classics, this group has always been the one to watch. “Often imitated — never duplicated” applies.
Leonard, who joined the group five years after it formed, is Rockapella’s chief songwriter, arranger, and an architect of its ever-evolving and imitated dynamic sound. He recently called into The Newtown Bee to answer a few questions about the group and how they put their arrangements together, and he hinted at what Edmond Town Hall audiences are in for when they come out to the shows in mid-September.
The Newtown Bee: My first experiences with the kind of music you do probably began with Bobby McFerrin but then hit overdrive after seeing a vocal group called The Bobs back in the ‘80s. Do you look to either or both of them as being part of the inspiration for originally forming Rockapella?
Scott Leonard: You know, we’re really contemporaries of The Bobs because the earliest version of Rockapella started back in 1986 at Brown University, and I’m the last guy left in the band when we started doing the TV show [Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego?] in 1991. So when we were just getting together, we were doing so right alongside groups like The Bobs, The Nylons, and Take 6 that were around at that time, as well.
Around that time, Bobby McFerrin was breaking with “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” as well, where he multi-tracked vocals and created vocal percussion. But Rockapella started with just four guys singing a cappella. It was a while before we added Jeff [Thatcher]. We felt so many of the songs we did and covered had a driving beat, and we didn’t want to use looping and sampling, so we brought him in to add that dimension — a vocal percussionist. And he’s been with us for 25 years
TNB: At University of Tampa, you completed your voice major. Did you develop your arranging skills from the curriculum course work I imagine was part of your course load, or did you take further training, or were you mentored beyond that to further develop your arranging skills?
Leonard: I think my mentorship came from my mother’s collection of 45 [RPM] records — The Mills Brothers, The Crew Cuts, and of course The Beach Boys were big influences. So from those records, I developed a love for male harmony groups. I guess I learned a lot about the mechanics of arranging from getting a voice degree, but I also was influenced by big band arrangements from people like Glenn Miller.
I always approach arranging chords that are more than just typical for choral groups. Rockapella is a band, so our songs tend to use bass, drums, and a melody, and the remaining voices fill out the chords, but in a really unique and interesting way. We’re a lot more than "shooby doo wah-wah." So we use big band counterpoint to keep arrangements interesting without getting in the way of the melody. It’s challenging and liberating musically.
TNB: When you discover a song that might be a good fit for the band, do you jump right in working up a demo arrangements before presenting it to the group — or do you simply pitch the original version first?
Leonard: I do it up every time. I work up the complete arrangement with all the parts and then work up recordings where I put all the remaining guys in one ear, and each member’s primary part in the other ear. And they can learn it that way and eventually take their ear piece out and it’s like they’re singing with the group. That way, we can keep working on new stuff independently without having to work out the parts and getting in each others’ faces. In the early days, we would just have to work it out. And with the TV show, we’d just work up song after song after song; we’d just churn out the material in these marathon sessions. But by the late ‘90s, I just took over doing the arrangements to make them happen more quickly. Then we work them up in sound checks and when they’re ready, we put them in the show.
TNB: How far back in time do you go for material audiences will hear in Newtown — and how recent are your newest additions?
Leonard: We really can go from The Mills Brothers’ era on up to today. We love the classic vocal stuff even going back to the ‘30s and ‘40s, but we also love Motown and classic rock. But we’re also doing stuff that’s hot on the charts right now — Ed Sheeran, Bruno Mars, Justin Timberlake. There’s so much fun stuff out there now to cover; there’s never any shortage of pop material that younger audiences will enjoy.
TNB: Will you change up the setlist for each of the three shows here — or once your show is set — it’s pretty much set in stone?
Leonard: We have a lot of people who follow us around and see multiple shows, especially in places like Newtown where we’re in the same room for several shows. So we will change up the set and do older or different stuff. Our demographic runs from little kids to their grandparents, so we need to be sure to do a wide range because some of the older fans may not know the new stuff.
We have recently launched a few new YouTube videos, including a new Jim Croce mash-up, and there’s also a brand new original Rockapella song. We pride ourselves on being one of the lone a cappella original music creators as well, and folks can be among the first to see it at rockapella.com.