Back to Top
Band Info
If the phrase "male a cappella group" conjures up an image of students in blue blazers, ties, and khakis singing traditional college songs on ivied campuses... think again. Straight No Chaser (SNC) are neither strait-laced nor straight-faced, but neither are they vaudeville-style kitsch. As original member Randy Stine comments, "We take the music very seriously; we just don’t take ourselves too seriously." In the process, they are reinventing the idea of a cappella on the modern pop landscape.
Originally formed over a dozen years ago while students together at Indiana University, the group has reassembled and reemerged as a phenomenon – with a massive fanbase, over 20 million views on YouTube, numerous national TV appearances, and proven success with two holiday releases, 2008’s HOLIDAY SPIRITS and 2009’s CHRISTMAS CHEERS. In an era when so much pop music is the product of digital processing and vocal pro-tooling, Straight No Chaser is the real deal – the captivating sound of ten unadulterated human voices coming together to make extraordinary music that is moving people in a fundamental sense... and with a sense of humor.
Filled with sophisticated harmonies and uniquely stylized arrangements, WITH A TWIST, the third offering from a cappella group Straight No Chaser, is a different, well, twist on what SNC does best. The group members are thrilled to be displaying a different side of their unparalleled vocal mastery. "It's definitely my favorite collection of songs we've recorded so far," says Dan Ponce, who organized SNC during the fall of 1996 at Indiana University in Bloomington. "Not that I don't love the Christmas music, but this is nice for a change. It certainly was refreshing to record some non-holiday songs."
Collaborating with CHRISTMAS CHEERS producer Deke Sharon, SNC crafted 12 songs for WITH A TWIST. The album cuts a wide swath, fusing Jason Mraz's "I'm Yours" with Israel Kamakawiwoole's treatment of The Wizard of Oz classic "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," vamping its way through Soft Cell's "Tainted Love," Queen's "Your My Best Friend," Oasis' "Wonderwall," Coldplay's "Fix You" and the Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Under the Bridge," and featuring Barry Manilow -- an SNC fan -- for a buoyant version of his "One Voice."
One of those twists can certainly be heard on "Tainted Love," which is sped up and delivered with a swinging, finger-snapping rhythm driving its familiar melody. "That's one of those songs that you can play for any person in America and they'd recognize it instantly," explains Ponce. "So I thought it would be really cool to turn that into a big band kind of song -- fast and hard-hitting."
Ponce credits an ex-girlfriend with the "I'm Yours"/"Over the Rainbow" combination. "When I was playing the chords to 'I'm Yours,' she said, 'That sounds like 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow,' " he says. "I started laughing and said, 'Wouldn't it be cool to combine those two songs?'
SNC's arrangement approach combines vision with "trial and error." Ideas are thrown out and debated, sometimes vigorously. Ponce recalls sitting at a piano, "jamming" ideas for harmonies and textures. And Stine explains that the prevailing goal is to find the right "twists" without losing the identifiable character of the songs.
"You have to figure out a way to make things familiar yet different," he says. "You want to find what people love about the song and carry it over so it's not too shocking to the ear and still has that known melody that people like. It's tricky, but it's a lot of fun, too."
A highlight -- and validation -- for SNC on WITH A TWIST is "One Voice," the title song from Barry Manilow's 1979 album that the group recorded with Manilow himself. The collaboration was the result of opening for Manilow during October of 2009 at the Hollywood Bowl -- before 17,000 people, SNC's biggest crowd to date. "Barry just really took a liking to the group," Ponce says, "and we were just thrilled, because to have a legend like that on your album says a lot about how far our group has come. He and Deke put the arrangement together, and we just went with his direction."
Stine says Manilow's interest was "very flattering.. He's one of those iconic musicians everybody from all ages knows. Whether their favorite song is 'Copacabana' or 'Mandy,' they can identify him and know his music. When you look at his body of work and everything he's done, it's pretty amazing."
WITH A TWIST marks Straight No Chaser’s first full-length departure from holiday music. Christmas, however, has been good for SNC. The group's 2008 debut, HOLIDAY SPIRITS, hit No. 4 on Billboard's Top Holiday Albums chart and spent two weeks in the No. 1 slot on Amazon and five days atop the iTunes sales chart. Its version of "The 12 Days of Christmas," which incorporates Toto's "Africa," reached No. 5 on the Hot AC Tracks survey and was Top 10 on the holiday singles chart. The subsequent CHRISTMAS CHEERS in 2009 was No. 6 Top Holiday Albums and rolled into the Billboard 200 at No. 38, while "The Christmas Can-Can" kicked its way to No. 18 on the Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks chart.
Mostly, however, those two albums gave music fans a taste of SNC's musical magic that's fleshed out further on WITH A TWIST.
Original member Randy Stine adds, "We were never really a 'Christmas group.’ In college we did maybe two songs total that were Christmas. The majority of the time we sang pop music, so we're excited to put something out there that fits into what our repertoire used to be like."
"While we were on the road singing mostly Christmas music, everyone was throwing around non-holiday song ideas," Stine recalls. "It was an interesting process, because sometimes the guys came up with a new arrangement of something that we might like better than the original...That's where the album title comes into play; we wanted every song to be a twist of the original. We wanted to give the audience a reason to listen to these songs again."
As WITH A TWIST comes out and opens up fertile new territory for the group, SNC's primary goal is to get back on the road and start singing the material -- some of which has been in their shows before -- to live audiences. "As we perform live, the songs take on a life of their own," Stine notes. "That's what's most exciting, to get this stuff out there live and then see what else we can come up with on the road. We get to see how people react and see what they like and then start to think about what else we can do on the future pop albums we're going to record."
Even after all the success, the members of Straight No Chaser still consider the group "kind of like a glorified college reunion," according to Ponce. "I know I had no intention of ever coming back to this in my professional life, and I think most of the guys felt the same way."
Ponce put the group together in the fall of 1996 at IU, basically as "10 guys who happened to be good friends who also liked to sing." Choosing the members carefully for personality as well as vocal talent -- Stine, Charlie Mechling, Jerome Collins, David Roberts and Walter Chase remain from the original lineup -- SNC set itself apart from other a cappella groups with its contemporary repertoire and dynamic approach, quickly headlining concerts both in Bloomington and on road dates. SNC recorded three independent albums, and John Mellencamp even invited the group to his home for a private performance.
When the founders began graduating in 1999 and went on to jobs mostly outside of music, they chose replacements and established SNC as an ongoing group on campus with future generations of ambitious IU undergrads. More than 50 members have passed through the group's ranks so far. Such was the impact SNC made at IU that the school hosted a 10th anniversary reunion show for the original lineup in 2006, and when Stine posted clips from a 1998 concert on YouTube, SNC's fan base grew exponentially. In 2007 alone, the group's version of "The 12 Days of Christmas" was viewed more than seven million times. Today that number has surpassed 11 million.
Among those viewers was Atlantic Chairman/CEO Craig Kallman, who found SNC's music "brilliant, fresh and totally compelling." Kallman e-mailed Stine, who initially thought it was a prank but thought otherwise when he and Ponce were whisked to Los Angeles to meet with the label chief. A few days later, the entire group was in New York City to sign its recording deal. The current incarnation of SNC includes later members of the group, including Michael Luginbill, Ryan Ahlwardt, Seggie Isho and Tyler Trepp. "It's definitely not something that was on the radar, 'OK, here's the next step for all of us -- we're going to get back together, not just to see each other at our weddings and bachelor parties but to spend the majority of the year together in this singing group we started,' " Stine says. "I pinch myself all the time and hope it continues and becomes a longstanding career."
"That's exactly what we'd like to see it become," Ponce acknowledges. "We love what we're doing right now."