Straight No Chaser

Straight No Chaser 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 a dozen years ago while students together at Indiana University, the group has reassembled and reemerged as a phenomenon – with a huge fanbase, millions of viewers on YouTube… and a contract with Atlantic Records. 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. In the fall of 1996, Indiana University was a rarity among colleges – a campus without a single a cappella group, where other schools often had multiple ensembles (Yale boasted 15!). So ten students came together to remedy the situation – hand-picked by Dan not only for their outstanding voices, but for their personalities. Standing alone, they knew they had to stand out to succeed. Purposefully avoiding the stereotype of the traditional college a cappella group, they treated themselves more like a local band that just happened to use their voices as their instruments. As Dan recalls, “We needed to be a group that would blend in terms of both sound and character.” Beginning with Billy Joel’s “The Longest Time,” they built up enough of a repertoire to play the school’s annual 36-hour non-stop Dance Marathon. As the new group, they were booked to sing at 7a.m. Sunday morning – and they stole the event. “Everyone stopped what they were doing and listened to us,” says Dan. “After each song ended, they screamed and cheered… we walked off stage feeling like The Beatles after their Ed Sullivan Show debut.” SNC began performing at a variety of campus events and sorority functions (“Where else could we get the attention of hundreds of women on campus?,” says Dan). It wasn’t long before they were headlining concerts, and within two years, they were touring nationally. They opened for artists like Lou Rawls, performed at Chicago Cubs and White Sox games, and even made their way to Carnegie Hall, where they blew away the crowd at the National Championship of Collegiate A Cappella. The original line-up of Straight No Chaser released three albums, which sold over 50,000 copies. Straight No Chaser forged a unique style based on a combination of musical brilliance balanced with a healthy dose of self-deprecating humor. “We would dip into something contemporary that you wouldn’t think an a cappella group could pull off. But instead of having people say, oh that was funny, we wanted them to say, ‘Wow, I can’t believe they did that,’” Randy explains. “But at the same time, we’d try to make each other laugh on stage, because if we weren’t having fun, how could the audience be enjoying the show? If we had a good time on stage, then the audience would have a good time as well.”