Hear our full chat on my podcast “Beyond the Fame with Jason Fraley.”
Renowned a cappella group Straight No Chaser is about to have a banner week in Northern Virginia.
The group performs live at Wolf Trap this Wednesday, just days before dropping their new album Friday.
“Very honored to have played Wolf Trap before,” tenor Tyler Trepp told WTOP. “It is an awesome venue and we look forward to it every time. You just can’t believe you’re playing a venue like this. It’s so awesome, it’s outdoors and people are on the lawn and in the seats. It’s just a great venue, and we look forward to it every year and we’re so happy that we get to come back this year to do our ‘Yacht Rock’ tour with this new album coming out.”
The new album is called “Yacht on the Rocks,” featuring beloved summer songs like Rupert Holmes’ “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” and Christopher Cross’ “Sailing,” as well as covers of Kenny Loggins’ “Heart to Heart,” The Doobie Brothers’ “Takin’ it to the Streets,” Boz Scaggs’ “Lido Shuffle” and Steely Dan’s “Reelin’ in the Years.”
“For the record, none of us in the band own yachts,” Trepp joked. “You might be like, ‘I don’t know really what that is. I don’t have a yacht.’ But no, no, no, it’s music you’ve heard: Kenny Loggins, Christopher Cross, Toto, Bill Withers, Earth, Wind & Fire. We’ll do a lot of stuff from the album, but I’m sure there will be a sprinkle of SNC classics.”
Formed in 1996, the group began as a campus singing group at Indiana University. In 1998, their spoof of “The 12 Days of Christmas” went viral on YouTube, eventually earning a five-album deal with Atlantic Records in 2008.
“I was a part of the group in college, then like everybody else, we left the group to be a college thing for other people to enjoy,” Trepp said. “Then, this whole lucky chance record deal came along in 2008, and we got signed to a record deal. I was one of the guys that they called to say, ‘Hey, do you want to do this a cappella group full time?'”
Their breakthrough album, “Holiday Spirits” (2008), naturally featured “The 12 Days of Christmas.”
“That’s our ‘hit’ that people usually know us from and the song that people will know for sure if they come to see one of our shows,” Trepp said. “That’s the video that people saw in 2008 and what eventually got us signed.”
They recreated holiday magic on their second album, “Christmas Cheers” (2009).
“I had my first arrangement on that album … so ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas’ is my favorite,” Trepp said. “There’s a bunch of fun ones on there … A lot of requests we get are for ‘The Christmas Can-Can’ — that’s a fun one.”
Not wanting to be typecast as just making holiday music, Straight No Chaser went a different route on their third album, “With a Twist” (2010), which did feature a track called “Joy to the World,” but not the Christmas song. It was an a cappella cover of Three Dog Night’s classic-rock hit, best known for its opening line, “Jeremiah was a bullfrog.”
“It was important for us to do some music outside of the holiday genre, so we could tour all year like we’re doing now,” Trepp said. “The record label wanted to make sure that we could do an album of non-holiday tunes that people would enjoy as well, so we just went back to the drawing board to what songs would be good and came up with that album. And people seemed to like it … ‘I’m Yours’ is a very popular one that we still do today.”
Their fourth album, “Under the Influence” (2013), was fittingly titled as the group collaborated with Barry Manilow, Elton John, Seal, Sara Bareilles, Jason Mraz, Rob Thomas, Stevie Wonder, Dolly Parton and Phil Collins.
“We wanted to do kind of a duets album,” Trepp said. “Our record label at the time was trying to take a big swing, so they basically picked up their Rolodex of phone records and called everybody they could. Every time we got somebody on this album, we were just totally shocked like, ‘How are we getting this big name on our album?'”
After their fifth album, “The New Old Fashioned” (2015), they returned to holiday tunes for “I’ll Have Another … Christmas Album” (2016), followed by their seventh album, “One Shot” (2017). When the world shut down for the COVID-19 pandemic, the group recorded “Social Christmasing” (2010), a play on the phrase “social distancing.”
“That was in 2020 when nobody was touring and nobody was getting together,” Trepp said. “That will always hold a special place in my heart, because that album was all recorded from our own homes. Everybody recorded from their own homes in their own towns … and then sent them in, then we had the album put together by one guy.”
Through it all, Straight No Chaser continues to popularize the a cappella genre for the masses to enjoy.
“There [are] no instruments, it’s just voices … When people hear something that’s just voices, their ear automatically turns to it whether it’s a cappella, a choir or a barbershop group; it’s just something that’s soothing to the ear,” Trepp said. “When you add some percussion and low bass on it like we have, it kicks it into another gear … We’re going to sing songs that you all know, but we’re also going to have fun, make fun of each other and make you laugh.”
Hear our full chat on my podcast “Beyond the Fame with Jason Fraley.”
