Free Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate a Cappella Glory by Mickey Rapkin Page B

laid down tracks for a new disc, including songs by Justin Timberlake and Rascal Flatts, but don’t want to put the album out too soon. “ Off the Dock is still selling well,” says their music director. Though not as well as it should be. Like the major music labels, the Hullabahoos have to deal with piracy. “Our shit is all over LimeWire,” Morgan says.
    Salvation for their financial woes came from an unlikely source: the Republican Party. A company called Ashley Entertainment (who’d worked with the Hullabahoos on and off since the mid-nineties) hired the boys to perform for a series of events at the 2004 Republican National Convention in Manhattan, including a Union Pacific Railroad pep rally. The boys learned a bunch of songs about trains, including Marc Cohn’s “Ghost Train” and Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready.” Later, at an RNC event at Sotheby’s, Trent Lott actually joined the B’hoos on “God Bless America.” (Footnote: Lott was part of his own a cappella group, the Singing Senators, a barbershop quartet that also included Larry “Wide Stance” Craig.) The Hullabahoos earned thirteen thousand dollars for three days’ work. Suddenly they were flush with cash. Yet, in typical Hullabahoos style, the group quickly lost touch with their contact, the owner of Ashley Entertainment and the man who had hired them for their most lucrative gig in years.
    But in the fall of 2006—not long after Joe Whitney and his microwave show up—Morgan Sword gets back in touch with Howard Spector at Ashley Entertainment. Morgan is now planning the group’s winter-break trip, which is set for January 2007, and he’s set his sights on booking one major gig: singing the national anthem at a Los Angeles Lakers game. Morgan has been chasing the booker at the Staples Center for months, sending press kits and following up with phone calls, and he reaches out to Howard Spector for a letter of recommendation. Then there is the talk of a possible B’hoos trip to Hong Kong for the summer of 2007. If the Hullabahoos have a goal for this 2006-2007 school year, it’s to compete on the level of a group like the Tufts Beelzebubs without sacrificing their laid-back soul. But can a group pull off a tour of Hong Kong when its music director still says, “It’s just a cappella!” Or when its treasurer regularly forgets to cash checks—and compounds the problem by siphoning cash from the Hullabahoos’ account to pay for beer?
    “The Hullabahoos are nipping at the heels of the Beelzebubs in terms of success,” says Lib Curlee, the business manager of the all-female UNC Loreleis. “But there’s an aura around the Bubs’ name.” In a few weeks, the two all-male groups will collide at UNC, courtesy of an invitation from Lib, who invited both to North Carolina for the Loreleis’ 2006 Fall Jam, setting the stage for an a cappella showdown.
    On campus, meanwhile, the Hullabahoos have gotten a reputation for being cocky. But they may just have the goods to back it up. Not only is Hullabahoos B looking solid—they’ve got a new recruit, a freshman named Bobby Grasberger—but musically, as the group approaches their twentieth anniversary (with arguably its strongest lineup), this may be their best year yet. Which could be their downfall. Most a cappella groups are lucky to have one standout soloist. This year, the Hullabahoos have three—and another two who would be starters on any other team. But the proliferation of talent has actually led to a divide in the group. The biggest fear? “That we’ll become Patrick Lundquist and the Hullabahoos,” one of the B’hoos says.
    Patrick Lundquist is the blond Hullabahoo, and he’s hard to miss. He’s six foot three, a natural athlete with an easy smile and cartoonish dimples, a man so good-looking your dad might sleep with him. It’s almost an accident that Patrick finds himself in the Hullabahoos. When he was a kid, an older brother told him singing was “gay.” But