Singing Their Hearts Out

By Meg Ryan Heery
Photos by
WIX PIX/Mike Karcher
68 MAY 2012 • JOHNSTOWN MAGAZINE
“I
t’s OK to sing!” says Elizabeth Good, choral
music director at Westmont Hilltop High School
and one fifth of White Noise, Johnstown’s own
professional-level vocal jazz ensemble. “I want people to
not have to worry about singing ... our culture has gone
the way of you’ve got to be an expert or you don’t open
your mouth. And that’s just not the case.”
This is a story about a few Johnstowners who like to
sing together and how you should be singing, too. Most
of the people in this story prefer to sing a cappella —
without instrumental accompaniment. Most of them
are also trained musicians, but one of them is not — he’s
just a guy who likes to sing, like you might be. He’s also
older than the rest of them by at least a quarter century,
which means you should listen to him when he says
(and the rest of them say) that if you like music and you
want to sing, you have no reason not to let ’er rip.
SUBMITTED PHOTO
The JoPa’s of Penn State.
JOHNSTOWN MAGAZINE • MAY 2012 69
Billy’s Boys are (clockwise from top left) Bill Leininger,
Floyd Roussell, Phil Parlock and Owen P. Standley.
“V
ocal music ... brings a humanizing element back into
music that a lot of people, especially those fr om my
generation or older, have been missing from much of
pop music,” says Shawn Pearce, 41, of Johnstown, a regional ambassador of the Contemporar y A Cappella Society (CASA) and
owner of Value Vocals, which arranges music for vocal groups. If
you’ve seen Glee or The Sing-Off, you’re familiar with the kind of
music he scores.
Good and Pearce are not alone in their passion for singing. According to a 2009 study by Chorus America, a national nonprofit
that researches and promotes vocal music, 42.5 million Americans
participate in some kind of or ganized singing activity. And over
the past couple of decades, study after study has pointed to a connection between singing and better health.
Barry Bittman, MD, CEO and medical dir ector of the Mind-
70 MAY 2012 • JOHNSTOWN MAGAZINE
Body Wellness Center in Meadville, was one of the first researchers,
in the early 1990s, to quantify the many physiological and neurological benefits of making music for fun (technical ter m: recreational music making, or RMM). His work found that when even
inexperienced musicians banged out a tune with other people, their
heart rates went down and their memory improved, signaling significant stress reduction.
But, Bittman says, it’s nearly impossible to pinpoint with har d
data alone why humans respond to music. “We had to look at the
transcendence of music,” he says. “The stuff we keep inside tends
to destroy us. Creative musical expression helps us get that out …
and move beyond per ceived obstacles.” And of all the for ms of
creative musical expression, “the human voice is the most pr ecious,” Bittman says, because it’s both the most personal and the
most universal. After all the science, the benefits of singing may
Vocal arranger
Shawn Pearce.
boil down to some pretty conventional wisdom: Singing can make us less stressed and
happier because it feels good and it connects us with other people.
Even White Noise came out of those two
simple but essential ingredients. Area musicians Doug W ilkin of Pittsbur gh, Mark
Weakland of Hollsopple and Nathan Santos
of Upper Yoder cemented their friendship
around their jazz/folk trio, Acousticity .
They soon discovered their shared love of
singing harmony (think Ink Spots,
Kingston Trio, Manhattan Transfer), and
after many happy weekends making music
together, the legend goes, they wer e reminded that they had wives. Who sing.
“Beth [Good] and I joked that if we ever
want to see our husbands again we ought
to perform as a gr oup,” says Kristen Santos, who leads the choral program at Westmont Hilltop Middle School.
And White Noise was born. Since 1998
the quintet has been a favorite side project
for these busy, passionate musicians and educators, delivering sizzling, tight harmonies
with the Johnstown Symphony Or chestra
and the Jazz In Your Face big band and in
various casual appearances throughout the
region. They’ll present a recital as part of
the Pennsylvania Consort concert series at
St. John’s United Methodist Chur ch in
Bedford on May 19.
“This is one of the many musical projects
we all have,” says Good. She and Mr. San-
tos play in the JSO; Wilkin runs a recording
studio in Pittsburgh; Weakland, Good and
Santos manage heavy teaching loads; and
they all fr eelance on top of ever ything.
White Noise sticks together , Good says,
“because we are good friends ... and we all
love a cappella vocal music.”
Considering the wild
popularity of TV shows
like Glee and The SingOff, it would seem
there’s just something
about the unique camaraderie of singing with a
small group that, well,
strikes a chord with people.
“I got introduced to a
cappella singing about
four years ago, just before I was a senior in
high school, with a few
friends,” says Jim Hogan, 21, a sophomore
at Penn State and music dir ector of The
JoePa’s, who gave a fr ee concert at Richland Performing Arts Center in March as a
warm-up for their trip to the International
Championship of Collegiate A Cappella
(ICCA) Mid-Atlantic semifinals at Rutgers
University. “It forms a really unique sort of
bond between the people you’re with. The
JoePa’s ... are like brothers. It forms relationships that you might not get when
you’re just hanging out with your friends.”
But a cappella is nothing new .
“It is not surprising to me that a
cappella group singing ... should
be so popular , as young people
[like the G.I. Generation befor e
them] wish to celebrate their talents ... in groups rather than as individuals,” says Mr . Santos, 41,
who also serves on the music faculty at IUP. “We are currently living in an era similar to that of the
1930s and ’40s, when groups like
the Andrews Sisters and the Ink
Spots were very popular.”
And even before that, there was
barbershop.
This is the par t where we meet
the old guy, though Bill Leininger
is anything but old. He founded
Billy’s Boys in the spring of 2011,
after he moved to W indber from the
Philadelphia area to be closer to his daughter. He formed the group through his contacts in the Johnstown Symphony Chorus,
recruiting Phil Parlock, 28, and Owen P .
Standley, 25, as lead and baritone, r espectively. Bass Floyd Roussell, 26, came along
soon after. They like to
point out that Leininger
is older than the other
three combined.
“My kids have seen us
perform before ... and
they love Bill. They say,
‘That guy’s awesome! I
would never think someone so old could sing
that high!’ So he’s their
hero,” says Parlock,
choral director at Forest
Hills High School, of his
students.
“A lot of people don’t r ealize how far
back barbershop music goes,” says
Leininger, 80. “Actually it is one of the
original styles of American music.” In fact,
barbershop’s roots go back to the minstrel
shows of the late 19th century — the genre
found its current form around 1940.
At a r ecent rehearsal, it’s clear that
Leininger simply loves all things barber shop. He’s an encyclopedia of its histor y,
repertoire and culture. He would be, having sung in choirs and quar tets since the
“A lot of people
don’t realize how
far back
barbershop music
goes — actually it
is one of the
original styles of
American music.”
JOHNSTOWN MAGAZINE • MAY 2012 71
SUBMITTED PHOTO
White Noise is (from left to right) Mark Weakland,
Kristen Santos, Doug Wilkin, Beth Good and Nathan Santos.
1950s, first while ser ving in the Navy and
later as a member of a quar tet and a competitive choir in eastern PA. It’s a wealth of
experience his bandmates r elish, and
Leininger himself is their living pr oof that
they can do what they love for their entir e
lives.
“Charlotte’s Web is what turned me on to
barbershop, ‘Zuckerman’s Famous Pig,’ ”
says Parlock, his attention divided between
this interview and his young daughter . “I
loved that song, and then I thought, ‘Oh,
that style is dead, it’s old, it’s gone ... And
then I found out ther e was a whole international society devoted to this stuf f. It’s
great.”
But even longtime singers acknowledge
barbershop’s sometimes cartoonish tropes.
“I had the ster eotype that barbershop
was just a bunch of old guys in straw hats
that got together and sang cheesy songs,”
says Roussell. “Then I star ted going to
shows and seeing people in their 30s and
40s, and ... their voices just have that ... ring
in a quartet that mesmerizes people when
it’s done right.”
It’s true, Leininger says, barbershop is
not for everyone. “Some people just don’t
like barbershop music. My wife is one,” he
says, laughing. “She will go to shows, but
barbershop music per se is not her style.
72 MAY 2012 • JOHNSTOWN MAGAZINE
What we do is attract a cer tain element of
the population, and they come back for
seconds.”
Tonight Billy’s Boys are rehearsing tags
— those long, juicy strings of notes at the
end of every tune that give barbershop its
distinctive sound. They attack the first progression, but their shoulders stif fen and
they glance tentatively at each other. Their
pitch — not coincidentally — falters a bit.
The juice just isn’t there. That’s the tricky
thing about singing in a small gr oup:
Everyone’s part is different, so each singer
is responsible not only for their individual
line but for adjusting so that all the pieces
of this moving puzzle stay together per fectly. When that happens, you get what
Parlock calls the “buzz” — subtle new
pitches in the harmonic series that are created, seemingly out of thin air, when all the
sung notes hit just right. It’s that thing that
gives you goosebumps.
Even for Parlock and Roussell, who ar e
formally trained musicians, this stuff is not
easy. The group rehearses every week, and
after nearly a year, they have mastered a set
of about a dozen songs. They consider this
an accomplishment. Doing it simply for the
love of singing may be enough r eason to
keep at it, but you can’t help but wonder if
there’s more reward in it than that. Some-
thing about “self-expression and socialization,” perhaps.
“When I got into barbershop chor us
singing, we had a director that set us up so
no one was standing next to anyone
singing the same par t,” Leininger recalls.
“That was when I lear ned to depend not
on the people around me but myself.”
For Parlock, it’s the challenge. “I like it
because if my part is wrong, I have no one
to blame but myself. And you feel it all over
when it’s right. You don’t get that in a chorus setting.”
And, says Roussell, “it’s the bond you
get with three other guys. Owen is the one
who got me to audition. At the time I
knew Phil only as the teacher fr om Forest
Hills, and I’d never met Bill befor e. And
after not quite a year I consider these guys
three of my closest friends.”
Bingo.
“Now let’s sing it with a little less volume,” Leininger suggests. “In other words,
let’s try to make it a little bit pretty.”
They give it another go. Holding back,
they listen more. They breathe together.
They move together. The pitches lock in.
Four voices, each unique and personal,
unite and transcend their individuality to
express a universal emotion.
Goosebumps. JM
Sing!
C
an anyone really do this? Isn’t a cappella just for people who have
“good” voices or who “understand”
music? What about the guy who thinks he
can’t carry a tune in a bucket?
Either way, says Shawn Pearce, don’t let fear
stop you. “I can say from experience that starting a group is less about the talent you already
have and more about the desire and drive that
you have to make it happen.”
Whether you’re ready for the next Vocal
Adrenaline or just want to sing in the choir,
here’s where to get started:
FOR KIDS
Kids On Stage
The group: A musical theater program for
kids ages 5 to 12 launched by Jennifer Jones
and her husband, Kenneth, of Westmont in the
summer of 2011. The program now has 37 participants, plus a waiting list. “It’s grown beyond
my wildest dreams, that’s for sure!” Jones says.
Auditions: None. Registration for the fall session (a $65 fee) will be first come, first served.
Spaces have been filling up the same day registration opens. “I inevitably have way more than
I can handle,” Jones says.
Contact: www.kidsonstagepa.com
Join us as we honor
Nine Remarkable Women
Arts & Letters
Aspen Brianna
Mock
Business
Linda Fanale
Professions
Community Service
Megan Seese
-Livingston
Lady Liberty
Betzi White
Sgt. 1st Class
Annamaria Grunza
Education
Karen A. Chirillo
S.T.E.M.
Allison Felix
Non-Profit
Patricia Felton,
RN, BSN
Yellow Rose
Rev. Sylvia King
Thursday, May 31, 2012
5:00 p.m.
Frank J. Pasquerilla Conference Center
Downtown Johnstown
(814) 536-3519 • www.ywcajohnstown.org
FOR TEENS AND ADULTS
Contemporary A Cappella Society
The group: CASA helps groups advertise their
concerts and find other groups to sing with,
helps individuals to find groups and helps fans
find a cappella in their backyard.
Contact: www.casa.org
Barbershop Harmony Society
The group: Helps singers, groups and fans
find each other. Provides training in barbershop
singing, plus music, competition and support.
Contact: www.barbershop.org
FOR ADULTS
Greater Johnstown Community Chorus
The group: The 40-member choir performs
three concerts per year.
Auditions: Interested singers are welcome to
sing in three rehearsals with the group and are
then invited to an informal audition.
Contact: Margaret Raslevich, (814) 536-6053
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JOHNSTOWN MAGAZINE • MAY 2012 73