Heartland Article

On January 10th, 2003 The State Journal Register ran an article and some photo's featuring our chorus. Their Heartland section is published every Friday featuring new or unique areas of interest in Springfield. Ann Londrigan and Michael Tercha had been to our practices and to the fall cabaret for material. Many, many thanks to them for their efforts.

Its after 10 at the Barrel Head and 24 men, seated at a long table reserved for them, are singing "Hello, Mary Lou" a cappella to their waitress, Teresia Terlecki. "They always sing that one for me" she beams as she serves pitchers of Millers and Guinness, Brats and fish and chips to her regulars. On the first and third Tuesdays of each month, The Barrel Head restaurant on Wabash Avenue is the post-practice gathering spot barbershop singers from the Land of Lincoln Chorus.

Above, Mark Bayler gives Barrel Head waitress Teresia Terlecki a hug after she is named an honorary member of the Land of Lincoln Chorus. Terlecki has been the chorus' waitress at the Barrel Head on their twice-monthly visits for several years.

The restaurant sounds more like a music hall as they break into songs between sips and talk. Someone sounds a harmonica, there's a short pause, and the voices join in a melodic rendition of "My Wild Irish Rose". The singers take requests from the audience, and some patrons make a point of being at the bar just to hear some old time harmony. Close your eyes and you can see the vaudeville stage where four men wearing pinstripes and straw hats croon favorites such as "Danny Boy", "For Me and My Gal" and "By The Light of the Silvery Moon".

Music historians date "Barbering" back to the late 19th century, when cutting hair was usually a low status job held by gypsies, immigrants, and African-Americans. The barbershop itself was considered a sort of black community center then, where men harmonized spirituals and folk songs. The sound was imitated by white minstrels who parodied the black dialect and sound, according to the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America, founded in 1938 to promote the barbershop singing style.

Eventually, the sound became so popular that white professional quartets brought it to the recording scene, and it stayed mostly a white music form. Today, SPEBSQSA's membership numbers 34,000 men in the United States and Canada. Women barbershoppers have their own organization called the Sweet Adelines. In a culture heavy in pop and rap stars, who sings this kind of homespun kind of music anymore?

Among the Land of Lincoln Chorus' 43 members, who are ages 24 to over 80, there's a Harley rider, a mailman, an engineer, a farmer, and accountant, a real estate investor, several retirees and- believe it- a barber. "After I got out of school, I got married, I went to barber school, all this and that, and I thought I needed a night out," says Bob Brown, a chorus member since 1963 and owner of Bob and Gale's Barber Shop on Springfield's north side. "One of my customers was an old time barbershopper, back in the 1940s ...Pat Masterson, he comes into the shop and says, "Why don't you come on down sometime?" So I did and I've been hooked ever since. "I like the four-part harmony," Brown says. "It's fun to sing and fun to listen to, but it's fun to sing more than anything."

In barbershop arrangements, for a chorus or a quartet, three voice parts-tenor, baritone, and bass- closely harmonize to the fourth voice part, the lead. Typically, the lead sings the melody, the tenor sings above and the baritone and bass sing below. Like many in the chorus, Brown sang in his high school choir. He played clarinet for the Lanphier marching band and says he always had an instrumental background, but never was very good at it. "Most of us don't read music," he says.

Bill Helton, left, Kent Boucher, Rick Falzone and Bob Walbert warm up before they perform as the Four Fathers.

Greg Weickart never sang in a choir before joining two years ago. "I always thought I sang well in the shower and in church," says Weickart, a Springfield mail carrier. "I saw a guy on my route who had a license plate cover that said "Like to harmonize? SPEBSQSA." "I wondered, What the hell is SPEBSQSA? so I knocked on the door and asked him." On his first night, Weickart, who sings bass, was teamed with a bass and three other men to sing a song. "When I heard the four voices creating a chord that gave me an overtone I heard a note an octave higher than anybody was singing," Weickart says. I started to get goose bumps, you know. When you really nail the chord, when every part is singing right on their note and shaping the vowels perfectly and everything, it really locks."

The phenomenon, called "ringing a chord," according to chorus director Bill Helton, is the challenge of barbershop and a matter of good musicianship. "(Barbershop) is a little more demanding than church singing," Helton says. "First they have to learn the music, then I'm constantly fussing at them to do this or do that, here's what you're doing wrong and here's how we can fix it." Helton, 77, retired from a career in education in 1986, then took voice lessons and studied music for seven years to enrich his barbershop hobby. He also sings in a barbershop quartet called the Four Fathers and coaches boys and girls high school barbershop singers at Glenwood High School.

The boy's quartet, called Out of Time, placed second last year in a state competition, and Helton sees a growing interest in barbershop singing from this age group. "The harmonies, when they are in tune, there is an energy in the sound that is very appealing." says Kari Jones, Glenwood choral director. "Once they have an experience with it, they really love it." Jones says the group, formed by seniors Kellen Fant and Zachary Forbes and juniors Nicholas Forbes and Chris Rishel, is special. "All but one are accomplished jazz instrumentalists, and I think that makes their power," Jones says. "Their ear development is very advanced and they're also great singers."

"(The young singers) like the new stuff," says Helton, pointing to a controversy in the barbershop world about older, more traditional songs versus newer, jazz-influenced arrangements. "The older songs with the simpler melody are easier to sing. The melody rarely goes an octave in any direction. The newer songs oftentimes go an octave and a third, and it creates a stress on trying to arrange that in barbershop style."

Kent Boucher also believes in a revival of sorts in barbershop singing. His son, Chris, a senior at Springfield High School, sings in the show choir's quartet and he has seen a push for more barbershop in high school and college competitions. "The songs from the period,'20s and '30s, lend themselves well to barbershop harmony," says Boucher. "A lot of the younger choruses don't even know the songs, but all of a sudden they'll hear one in a movie and say 'I know that.' "It's a great hobby, but I'd be the first to tell you it's a lifestyle, not a hobby," says Boucher, 45, a programmer for St. John's Hospital. "My wife hates it. It consumes every free moment."

Boucher sings tenor for two show quartets, the comedic Four Fathers and the younger more competition-oriented Railsplitters. His father, Emil Boucher, formed the original Railsplitters quartet in 1962. Kent's quartet took the name a little over a year ago with the approval from the surviving spouses in homage to his dad's group. "My daughter has a fear that I'll sing in her wedding." Boucher says. "It happened at mine. My dad's quartet got up and sang. A lot of people like it. if you get four guys together who can sing like that, all four parts, chances are you're going to hear a song."

The chorus performed two sold out shows for the Fall Cabaret at St. John Vianney Church in Sherman. The concert included two sets by the chorus as well as sets from several area barbershop quartets.

At an evening practice, the lights are on in the basement fellowship hall of Faith Evangelical Lutheran Church, where Helton stands front and center, facing the 30 men spaced apart on risers. He urges good posture and even good smiles. It takes two on "There's No Business Like Show Business," one of 22 songs in the group's current repertoire, which they sing in shows, at events like First Night Springfield, and their signature Singing Valentines quartet serenade service on Feb. 14th.

Arthur Bass, 78, of Hillsboro is sitting at a table nearby, singing along quietly. A member for 35 years, he comes only occasionally now to these practices to enjoy the music because his wife, Dorothy, has lymphoma and he can't be away too long. "Shenandoah" is next and Bass, a bass singer smiles and whispers: "This is one of my favorites. It has a good bass part."

Says Helton: "(Barbershop) is just a hobby, but it becomes a fellowship of men, a brotherhood. This group, they'd take a whipping before missing a practice."

The practices of the Land of Lincoln Chorus, which are open to the public, are held every Tuesday from 7:30-10 pm at Faith Evangelical Lutheran Church at 2313 Whittier ave. in Springfield. Their next performance is April 5th at Springfield High School Auditorium. For more information, call chorus vice president Carl Follin at 415-2112.

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Free-lance writer Ann Londrigan can be reached through the features desk at 788-1515