STILL DRINKING TO SUCCESS A cappella group Straight No Chaser to play Easton’s State Theatre on Dec. 22
When a cappella group Straight No Chaser’s mash-up of “Twelve Days of Christmas” and Toto’s “Africa” went viral a dozen years ago, it was easy to see it as a novelty hit in a novelty genre with a short shelf life.
Even Easton-area native Walter Chase, a Straight No Chaser member and musical director, says he never imagined that, now age 42, “we would still be together, first of all. And second of all, that we’d be thriving like we are.”
But thriving, Straight No Chaser is.
Of course, it’s back out on a winter tour that brings it to Easton’s State Theatre for two nearly sold-out shows Sunday, Dec. 22 as it prepares for the biggest touring year in its history, Chase says. Earlier this month, it again performed on the “Today” show and at the Christmas tree lighting in New York City’s Rockefeller Square.
On Nov. 15, the group released its fifth EP, “Open Bar,” in addition to seven full-length albums (two of them gold-sellers) it has put out since the 2007 success of “Twelve Days of Christmas.” That follows last year’s release of the full disc “One Shot” — a career-retrospective that tells the Straight No Chaser story.
It also has signed a new recording contract with Warner Records and started its own label, and even has partnered with a distillery in Indiana, where the group came together at Indiana University, to release its own brand of vodka, Hard Truth.
“So even though we all have kids, we all established our families and we’ve all settled down — in the adult form of settling down — our group is maybe running faster than it ever has,” Chase says in a call from a tour stop in Evansville, Ind.
Chase says the new EP came together as the group designed its current tour, for which he says the set and lighting design makes it feel “like the most complete show that we’ve done.”
“We were thinking about the name of the tour and thinking about what we wanted to do … and the idea of having a vibe on stage that is inclusive and fun, we came up with ‘Open Bar,’ ” Chase says, noting that it continues the group’s use of drinking references such as “Under the Influence” and “Happy Hour.”
“It’s our attempt to make us edgy — which is obviously not working, ‘cause usually when we say that, people laugh,” Chase says.
The EP uses songs to tell the chronological story of a night at a bar: Eddie Money’s “Take Me Home Tonight,” “Tennessee Whiskey,” “Tequila,”
Smash Mouth’s “All-Star” and Semisonic’s “Closing Time.”
“We started thinking about songs that we would hear if we went to a bar — songs that weren’t necessarily our parents, or the younger … just like our generation’s songs that we would hear or sing along with at a bar,” Chase says. “That gave us that kind of vibe that also worked with a cappella.”
The album was released just two months after Eddie Money’s death, but Chase says “Take Me Home Tonight” was recorded in August.
The song was chosen by member Tyler Trepp, who “has a knack for these big, rock songs that we can open the show with and Tyler’s voice is perfect for that style and that range. And it’s a fun, quick way to open the show and get everything going.
“Closing Time,” Chase says, has become the tour’s appropriate show closer — sung with no microphones. “It’s a great way to close the show — closing the bar,” Chase says.
While “Open Bar” is a document of the new tour, Chase says the group chose to release “One Shot” — another drinking reference — as an acknowledgment of the group’s 10-year journey.
“We’ve never really gone through on an album and explained our story,” Chase says. So the group used songs relevant to the group’s history, with spoken interludes, to do just that.
“We liked the idea of doing interludes, we liked the idea of doing a timeline of songs,” he says. He says the album’s first song, a Motown mash-up with Montell Jordan’s “This is How We Do It ,” was one of the first songs Straight No Chaser did in college.
“Each song, each interlude, it builds to the very end, where we go through our genesis at Indiana University 23 years ago to now being with Atlantic Records, having toured for over a decade professionally, having started our own families,” Chase says.
“So it worked backward. Usually, we have a couple of songs that we’re, ‘OK, we’re definitely doing these songs, let’s figure out the concept of the album based on that.’ This way, it was, ‘OK, what we want to do is we want to tell the story of Straight No Chaser — let’s find a song for each individual spot.’ ”
He says the spoken interludes actually came from a group dinner in Bloomington, Ind., the home of Indi— ana University, where the album also was recorded.
“We got nine lavalier mics and put them on and had our engineer bring a mobile recording device into a restaurant,” Chase says. “So we’re in a back room, like a big room at a restaurant. We just started ordering, pouring some wine, ordering some drinks.
“And we did an interview over dinner — very loose, you know, a little drunk for all of us, just talking about different things. And just answering the questions, hoping to fill the gap of explaining the song, or explaining the time we’re talking about on the album.”
Chase says there’s “a blooper reel somewhere of the things that didn’t make it, that would be … either it was too tasteless or it didn’t make any sense for the album but it was a great story. But we plucked some gems from there
talking about different times,” such as Allentown native Jerome Collins “splitting his pants or talking about graduating and not knowing where we were going.”
Straight No Chaser’s new recording contract, after more than a decade with Atlantic Records, moves the group to Arts Music, another label under the Warner Music umbrella. It also starts SNT Records, on which Chase says Straight No Chaser not only will release its own records but “sign artists who are appropriate to our audience.”
Chase says the vodka brand is “a fun thing that we’ve always wanted to do. … It just makes so much sense that Straight No Chaser would be involved … especially with all of the small breweries or distilleries that are coming up.
“But this distillery is legit. They’ve really made a place for themselves and they pitched the idea to us. And we’re just, like, ‘So what do we have to do?’ They’re like, ‘All you have to do is help us design the label so that it fits your vibe, and then just allow us to use your name.’
“We’re like, ‘Well, that sounds good.’ And so we were all trying it out last night, and it’s a really good vodka!”
Chase says the Open Bar Tour has Straight No Chaser playing 59 shows in 69 days — its most ambitious tour ever, and the group’s schedule next year will “make more trips to Europe than we’ve done in a calendar year before.”
But he says the group also finds time for personal lives. “We definitely find our times during the year to just have a couple of months off … that allows us to still be home to be with our kids for a solid chunk, so that when we go out for these large chunks, it’s not as hard.”
Chase, who a couple of years ago moved back to the area from New York and settled in Bucks County, says the older of his two sons is 5 and has started elementary school, “so we definitely cemented our roots.”
Chase says that dinner at which Straight No Chaser recorded the stories for “One Shot” included talk about Straight No Chaser’s chemistry.
“And not being able to explain it, but knowing that it’s something that we understand – it’s magic and its something that’s not worth trying to write down and figure out, but just to acknowledge it,” he says.
“So that obviously was a lot of fun, and it gave us a reason to do a group dinner and charge it to the record label.”
Morning Call Lehigh Valley Music reporter and columnist John J. Moser can be reached at 610-820-6722 or jmoser@mcall.com