A cappella group has life beyond ‘12 Days of Christmas’

NEW YORK (AP) — By day, they were 10 businessmen, working the 9 to 5. Nights and weekends, however, were spent onstage, singing a cappella songs in small venues while recording an album for Atlantic Records.

That was the double life for the members of Straight No Chaser, an a cappella choir the men formed in 1996 as students at Indiana University.

They said their musical pursuit was experimental at first. Dan Ponce even joked that they got together because they “wanted to sing to sorority girls.”

“It was an interesting balance for that first year,” said Ponce, who formed the group. The group currently is made up of eight of its original members.

Charlie Mechling elicited laughs from the other members when he recalled how he earned a lot of frequent-flier miles jetting between his job and rehearsals.

“I was leaving Friday night from my life in Vegas, coming to New York, recording, rehearsing, and then taking a red-eye back,” he said. “I felt like a businessman that didn’t have any benefits or paycheck.”

In college, some of the guys, but not all of them, studied music. Others focused on mathematics, journalism or biology, among other subjects.

“We were there connected because we all loved a cappella singing,” Ponce said.

The group first caught attention when the CEO of Atlantic Records saw on YouTube its rendition of “12 Days of Christmas,” which has been viewed more than 10 million times.

Once signed, the group recorded a Christmas CD, “Holiday Spirits,” released in September 2008. It followed that with another holiday album, “Christmas Cheers,” which has a studio version of “12 Days” and was released last month.

“Our first album is your more traditional, gather-round-by-the-fire, relaxing, very soothing album,” member Seggie Isho said. “ ‘Christmas Cheers’ is where you loosen up your tie, and it’s the party album.”

But more than just creating CDs good for stuffing Christmas stockings, the singers hope to be played on iPods off-season, too.

“Come Jan. 1, I am done with Christmas music,” Mechling joked.

While on a North American tour, which wraps up this month, the group is performing holiday tunes as well as hit songs from the Billboard charts. In August, it released “Six Pack,” a six-song EP with covers from Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab” to Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours.” The group’s members said they also are working on a pop album to showcase how Straight No Chaser can be more than a “Christmas comedy act.”

“Some of us have been concerned that people will only think of us as a Christmas group, and that’s not the case at all,” Ponce said.

Crossing over to top 40 radio with an a cappella sound and style will be a challenge — but one the group said it’s up for.

“A cappella music still has yet to really cross to the mainstream, where we can be on a top 40 radio station,” Ponce said. “That’s bold. I think we can do it, but we gotta go with baby steps.”

The singers say they don’t always agree with one another, and a tour bus full of that many guys can be too much.

“A lot of sprays of Febreze (odor remover) going on,” Isho said. Ponce added: “We’re thinking Febreze should be our sponsor for this tour.”

But they say their musical brotherhood is too tight to break.

“We fight like brothers, we make up like brothers, but at the end of the day, there really is a strong friendship and camaraderie that you don’t see in a lot of modern pop groups,” Ponce said. “We weren’t put together by Atlantic Records, we weren’t put together by Simon Cowell … we just did this ourselves.”

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